“How I think about and rationalise concepts and realities has been hugely influenced by my quite eclectic career and working class roots but my best teacher has been marriage and parenthood. I’m a better person now than at the start of my journey because of the important people in my life. I have a more nuanced perspective on society and I’m very interested in how to improve social inequality — especially in housing.”
My professional life spans nearly 50 years and has traversed the front-end planning, concept development, financial analysis, project management and market development phases of a diverse range of capital asset, economic and enterprise initiatives in New Zealand and Australia in both the private and public sectors.
I’ve spent much of my career as an independent property economist and project director and I’ve also pursued a number of personal entrepreneurial initiatives across tourism, property, and e-commerce sectors and these are what I’ve enjoyed the most. They have given me a hands-on appreciation of the hard work, highs and lows that go hand-in glove with self-employment, converting an idea into a financially viable reality, and valuable lessons on when to dig my toes in, when to change direction, and when to walk-away.
How I think about and rationalise concepts and realities has been hugely influenced by my quite eclectic career and working class roots but my best teacher has been marriage and parenthood. I’m a better person now than at the start of my journey because of the important people in my life. I have a more nuanced perspective on society and I’m very interested in how to improve social inequality — especially in housing.
For someone who has spent his entire career working in “the machine” it was pretty easy to connect the dots between a “neo-liberal” state policy agenda focused on growth and some of the worst housing price inflation and affordability metrics in the OECD. Growth is not synonymous with social equality — the latter akin to the “ghost” in the free market.
Our almost exclusive reliance on for-profit market actors to deliver housing means that for roughly ⅓ of households traditional home ownership at market pricing is simply out of reach. These people are the “missing middle” in our society. They earn too much to qualify for social housing and too little to get a loan from the bank and as such they’re stuck paying market rents as their only current option. Economist Thomas Piketty describes the idea of equality emerging from the free market as an “illusion” and, that, “real democracy and social justice require specific institutions of their own”.
I’m passionate about the potential for a cross-party housing policy modus vivendi focused on enabling the “third sector” to achieve better and socially-diffuse outcomes. The sector which sits outside of the state and private sectors and is ‘not-for-profit’. I’m directing my energy to learning about third sector housing policy interventions and systems, especially in exemplar European countries that have succeeded in widening access to affordable good quality housing and how we can simulate those here (or pretty well anywhere for that matter) to shape better future housing environments.
I hold a Master of Philosophy Degree (Distinction) from Auckland University of Technology School of Future Environments, a Master of Business Administration Degree (Distinction) from Massey University School of Business and a Diploma in Valuation from University of Auckland School of Architecture and Town Planning.