Simple but significant rewards for our key workers

Don’t be put off by a tinkle or two of classical music at the start of this week’s podcast. It’s just a small acknowledgement of the fact that we are in Warsaw, where Polish-born piano master composer Frederic Chopin was raised.

What do Warsaw and Gdansk have to do with apartments? Heaps as it turns out. Having been flattened by the Nazis during the Warsaw uprising of 1944, the city was completely restored to its former glory by Soviet overlords after WWII.

And you can take a guess at what the reward was for outstanding contributions to the project, whether it was as an architect or a bricklayer.

A couple of hours north in Gdansk, the shipyards made famous by union leader and eventually president Lech Walesa are mostly silent now. But there are still cranes sweeping the skyline – only now they are building apartments rather than boats.

Oh, and in out mini-rant about how to keep electric bikes and scooters under control, we should have said they have similar system in Hobart.

Closer to home we examine the result of wayward strata manager Whitney Wang’s appeal against having his licence cancelled.

And we look at the pile of money it took to by Australia’s most expensive property -almost as high as the building in which it sits.

That’s all in this weeks’ Flat Chat Wrap (although Jimmy can’t believe he didn’t describe Warsaw as a Chopin centre). Enjoy.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Transcript

Jimmy

Now, it's okay, we haven't turned into a musical podcast. That was a little bit of Chopin, which we have been hearing a lot of this week because we are in Warsaw in Poland, which is a big Chopin city.

Sue

It was his birthplace, wasn't it?

Jimmy

Yeah, and this is where he became famous. He had French parents, hence the name Chopin.

Sue

And he performed his first concert at the age of eight at the University of Warsaw.

Jimmy

Which funnily enough, was in the same room where the Warsaw Pact was signed and where the round table that led to the democratisation of Poland.

Sue

So, it's a very educational podcast this week.

Jimmy

Yes, it is, yes. So, we're in Poland, we're in Warsaw, a really interesting city, I mean, beautiful city, but kind of a bit fake as well in some ways. So, we'll be talking about that and yes, there are apartment related stories, so don't worry.

And we'll be talking about the decision on Whitney Wang and his appeal against having his licence cancelled for general strata management naughtiness. And we'll be talking about the record property sale in Australia ever, which is not a big giant house, but an apartment. I'm Jimmy Thomson.

I write about apartment living for anyone who'll publish it and I edit the flatchat.com.au website.

Sue

And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for the Sydney Morning Herald, the AFR, The Age and Domain.

Jimmy

And this is The Flat Chat Wrap. So, Warsaw, Sue, what do you think?

Sue

I think it's an amazing city. It's so elegant and beautiful and unfortunately, not many people speak English, which is really hard.

Jimmy

Well, but neither of us speak Polish.

Sue

Yes, and the words are so difficult, so many S's and Z's and Y's.

Jimmy

Yeah, we saw an eight letter word with one vowel in it and two Z's the other day.

Sue

But it's a beautiful city and there's not too much traffic. And there's some amazing apartments here as well. But the most interesting thing is, as most people probably know, Warsaw was razed to the ground after the Second World War or during the Second World War.

And we had the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation. And the city was just bombed out of existence, really. But when the Soviets came in, which was another really, really difficult time for Poland, the one thing that they did was they rebuilt the whole city according to how it originally was.

Jimmy

Yeah, the old photographs and plans.

Sue

And sometimes the old architects. And they got them to redesign and rebuild, reconstruct the buildings just as they were.

Jimmy

You wouldn't know, would you?

Sue

Absolutely not. So these are fabulous buildings, you know, look as if they're from the 17th century or even the 16th century sometimes. And they're actually all replicas of the originals that were there in the first place.

And the only way you can tell the difference on either side of the road between the replicas and the originals are the originals all have bullet holes in the bottom of the buildings. So you can tell from there. Because they did save some buildings because the Nazis didn't want to destroy the buildings that led onto the river at Warsaw because they were nervous of the Russians coming and they kind of thought the buildings would stop the Russian.

So they didn't demolish one side of the road. It's quite bizarre, really.

Jimmy

But it's a beautiful place. And we did a walking tour, which was great. Absolutely fantastic, actually.

A guy called Peter, who's an architecture tragic. And a lot of the stuff was really, really fascinating. Some of it was very sad.

But one of the things we learned was that it's kind of counterintuitive that the Russians have this or it was the Soviets then had this reputation for being cruel and harsh and destructive. But in fact, they rebuilt the city.

Sue

Although they were certainly cruel and they were that too.

Jimmy

Yes, exactly. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Sue

And they often, as well as rebuilding some of the grand old buildings, they issued an instruction to the architects that they didn't want buildings of a certain style for new buildings. They wanted buildings all to be in the socialist realism style. And nobody, of course, knew what the hell that meant.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

So as a result, this guy, Peter, pointed out all these apartment buildings where they're kind of a real mix of so many different styles.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

And he was saying it's like the architects were taking the mickey out of the Soviets.

Jimmy

Because the Soviets didn't know what socialist realism was. Yeah. But then when Stalin died, it all stopped.

And they went into what has become known as the brutalist kind of very basic, very...

Sue

Functional buildings. No adornment at all, really.

Jimmy

But one of the things that struck us was, one of the things that made it possible for Russia or the Soviets to rebuild Warsaw was cheap labor. They controlled the labor market. So people were not getting paid the kind of money we pay brickies and plumbers and whatnot to build our houses.

They were basically told to turn up for work. However, the reward was if they made an exceptional contribution to the rebuilding of Warsaw, they got a flat.

Sue

And that made you start thinking about social and affordable housing in Australia, didn't it?

Jimmy

As we mentioned last week in the website that, you know, they're talking about building affordable, more affordable housing for essential workers, you know, as part of a scheme. And it's all got to do with making it easier for developers and giving them guarantees that they'll get the money that they need, even if they don't sell the flats immediately. And it struck me that they could do something where the government, they being the government, either state or federal, where they say, look, we need teachers.

We need maths and science teachers. If you're a maths and science teacher and sign up for five years, we'll give you some really significant assistance in buying an apartment or renting an apartment. And the same applies to firees and police officers and nurses and, you know, trainee doctors and people like that.

I mean, it's all, you know, it comes from a bad socialist place, but the idea that you get rewarded for your social contribution and more than just a wage, and that reward is you get to jump the queue in housing.

Sue

Yeah, which is fair enough, isn't it really?

Jimmy

Absolutely.

Sue

I think that would be great.

Jimmy

I mean, it seems ironic and wrong that the people that we get to help us in our lives, the doctors and the nurses and the police don't get any help when it comes to living among us. Yep. And teachers included as well, because they really need science teachers and they're in desperately short supply.

Sue

Absolutely. And it's really interesting in Poland because we went yesterday to Gdansk for the day. And probably many of you will remember that from the days of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Movement, which kind of kicked off the fall of Eastern Europe in lots of ways, the Soviets in Eastern Europe, his series of strikes against the Russian regime, the Soviet regime.

And they're now in the old historic shipyard, they're now just like everywhere around the world, converting it into apartments.

Jimmy

Yeah, and they were really nice, those apartments.

Sue

They do. So just like Docklands in Melbourne and Rangaroo in Sydney and Docklands in London, they've got brand new apartments there looking out over the old historic docks because the docks these days employ far fewer people because industry's kind of changed.

Jimmy

Yeah, I think it's something like, is it a tenth of the- The work force that they used to have, absolutely. Yeah, they still build boats there. Apparently they built Rafael Nadal's yacht in that shipyard.

And we're not talking about a little sailing skiff either. It would be a very nice boat.

Sue

And we had another really interesting tour. They do a lot of tours on golf carts in some cities in Poland. And so we went on a golf cart and our guide there happened to be Lech Walesa's grandson, which was astonishing, really.

Jimmy

Yeah, but he didn't suggest it, he didn't mention it. It's just you asked if Lech Walesa is still alive and he said, I'm going to show you something that will blow your mind. And there it was, his name.

Sue

A picture of him with his grandfather, Lech Walesa, and pictures of them with Ronald Reagan.

Jimmy

It was actually a picture of his dad with Ronald Reagan.

Sue

Yeah, okay, his dad.

Jimmy

And Lech Walesa.

Sue

Yeah, that was quite incredible, really.

Jimmy

Yeah. One other thing I want to say before we leave Warsaw, there are scooters here. We were electric scootering around.

I know they're a problem in some cities in Australia, and electric bikes as well. And especially the way people just dump them at the side of the road, or in the middle of the pavement, or they park them wherever they end up their journey. And then some idiot thinking they're making some sort of social comment comes along and kicks them over.

In Warsaw, in the middle of the city where the tourists are and where most people use scooters, you have to park in a designated zone. And as we found out, we tried to park where we were going and it wouldn't let us switch off the scooter.

Sue

And you can get a fine if you park in an area which isn't designated. It works really well, doesn't it?

Jimmy

Yeah. And if you just leave your scooter with it still switched on, then somebody can jump on it and run up a fantastic bill on your credit card. And it just struck me that places like Sydney and Melbourne could put these designated parking spots in areas where there's most scooter use and most electric bike use.

So you know where to go to get one, and you know where to go to leave one. And you don't have these things littering up the streets.

Sue

And it just saves on so much car traffic as well.

Jimmy

Oh, it's one of the reasons there's so few cars here, I think, is people are very mobile. It's like Amsterdam. We seem to be talking about two-wheel transport a lot on this podcast the past couple of weeks.

When we come back, we're going to talk about Whitney Wang and what happened in his appeal against losing his license. That's after this. So Sue, what is happening with Whitney Wang?

Sue

Yes. Well, listeners to this podcast would have heard about Strata manager Whitney Wang. He was the director of his company, PSMG Strata.

And he was reprimanded and cancelled and disqualified for 10 years by New South Wales Fair Trading and banned from being involved in his company. And there was a multitude of allegations against him, including failing to act with honesty, fairness and professionalism, and accessing apartment buildings funds without approval. So he received a ban and his company lost their license.

And he recently appealed to NCAT to try and get it back again. And he has lost his appeal. The ban stays, and his company can't function for a while with him, obviously, as the director anymore.

Jimmy

Right. So has the ban been lifted or reduced?

Sue

Well, Whitney Wang's license has been cancelled, and that's for 12 months. And presumably then they can step in and cancel it again for another 12 months unless he can prove otherwise. He's also been fined and the company has been fined as well.

You know, it's hard though, really. This has been such a long time coming. There's been action against Whitney Wang for about at least two years now.

And people have been complaining about him for probably at least four years that I know of. And they have been in Fair Trading complaining about him. They've been in court complaining about him.

And there were obviously problems, but it's taken such a long time to resolve this. And even when he was banned, he was allowed to carry on pending his appeal. So he was allowed to carry on working.

And lots of the people running the buildings where he was the strata manager were saying, how can this possibly be allowed to happen? These are really serious allegations against him. And yet he is still being allowed to operate with abandon, really.

Jimmy

Well, at one point, there'd been complaints against him, which were found to have a sound basis. At one tribunal, at another tribunal, he was appointed statutory manager. That's right.

Which means he was given total control over that building's strata committee and owner's corporation. And it was just absolute madness. I think this is very much a case of Fair Trading clearing house.

They're tidying up some of these things that became evident because of or at the same time as the net strata scandal. And this is the second one this year that Fair Trading or NCAT have basically sacked the strata manager.

Sue

Yeah. The other strata manager was Michael Lee.

Jimmy

Michael Lee. Yeah. And he lost his appeal.

Now, that might hopefully be a warning shot to the other dodgy strata managers out there who are in the minority. Of course.

Sue

But we have to say that the NCAT process is so slow and cumbersome. That's the real problem.

Jimmy

The trouble with NCAT is you go to NCAT and say, look, here are the details of the case. What are my chances of success? And they won't tell you.

Sue

No.

Jimmy

The Attorney General's department will not give any advice to people in strata at all ever. You say, look, we need advice on this. They say, oh, you want advice?

Go to Fair Trading. They're the advice people. You go to Fair Trading and say, will this stand a chance at the tribunal?

They say, I don't know. Ask the Attorney General. There's a big hole there in the system.

And as soon as somebody in government fills that hole with something in the middle that says, look, this case you've got is weak. It's going to cost you a lot of money and a lot of grief. Don't even bother going with it.

Or somebody who says, yes, we think you've got a strong case here. In fact, we'll support you.

Sue

Because it's hard. I mean, you can go to a lawyer and you can say, do I have a strong case? But it's not really in a lawyer's interest to say to you, no, don't bother.

I mean, obviously some lawyers will. But it's sometimes hard. It's a bit of a conflict of interest there, really.

It's very, very hard. And you think also NCAT. I mean, they have all the commissioners there, but they're all kind of not really specialists.

They may be specialists in different areas, but they're certainly not specialists in strata law.

Jimmy

They're better than they used to be.

Sue

Yeah. But surely we need a handful of commissioners who are experts in strata law and they just rule on strata cases rather than having to do everything else at the same time as well. And that would make the system for strata work so much more efficiently and effectively.

Jimmy

I'll tell you something else, a story that's not finished yet, I don't think. The net strata thing. I am still getting letters from people, emails from people, documents from people saying, we have just managed to get out of our contract with net strata.

We've had a terrible time because of all these things. Who can we complain to? Who is running the case against them?

And the thing is, I don't think there is a case against them anymore. I'm not sure, but the one person who we thought was still pursuing it at Fair Trading, he's gone now.

Sue

So there may be individual buildings, but if you're not a member of that individual building, you can't really join their actions. So yeah, it's very, very hard.

Jimmy

I was chatting to Alex Greenwich, the independent member for Sydney in the state government, and he said, what a ludicrous situation that net strata pays for the investigation into what they did wrong and gets to edit the final report. I mean, where's the sense in that? How can that possibly work?

Sue

The lunatic's running the asylum, isn't it really?

Jimmy

It seems like that. And when we come back, we will have a happier story. Well, it's happy for the person who just sold the most expensive property ever in Australia.

That's after this.

Sue

Well, it wasn't really a person who sold the most expensive property. It was the company Lend Lease. And they probably need a bit of good news at the moment, really, because they're in a bit of strife.

But yes, I mean, that's incredible, isn't it? Australia has just created a new record for a property sale in Australia, and it was for $141.55 million. And it was for an apartment, which is amazing.

Not, as Jimmy said earlier, not a massive mansion on the harbour, but a massive apartment. That was for a penthouse on the top three floors of One Sydney Harbour, which is one of the big towers, big new towers at Barangaroo South. And it was bought in cash by a millennial multimillionaire, Yang Zhang.

And well, congratulations for having a new home, really, which is amazing. He bought the penthouse, and then he bought the sub penthouse below, and amalgamated them all, which is quite nice. So he's got nice space for his parents and for friends and family to stay in, really, which is quite incredible.

I mean, it's an astonishing place. I didn't go to the penthouse, but I went to a display suite on an upper floor there, and it was incredible. I mean, the finishes, it just, everything was marble and quartz and no expense spared, really.

It was just absolutely beautiful.

Jimmy

And big, how big is it?

Sue

Well, the penthouse is 1600 square metres, and has nine bedrooms, an entry foyer, eight metre high ceilings, a rooftop swimming pool, a spa, a gym, and a big bedroom that's equal in size, probably to many family houses, on the 72nd floor. And those buildings were all designed by Renzo Piano, who we know so well.

Jimmy

So it's a pretty fabulous apartment. I mean, I'm guessing he won't be putting that on Airbnb.

Sue

I would very much doubt it. But nine bedrooms, he certainly could, couldn't he?

Jimmy

Yeah, he could.

Sue

What's he going to do with nine bedrooms?

Jimmy

A very good question. I mean, we don't have nine friends. And it made me think, going back to those architects and builders who were getting rewarded with an apartment, their guides, his grandfather was one of the architects for the reconstruction.

Sue

Yes, this is in Warsaw.

Jimmy

In Warsaw. And he was given access to an apartment, 45 square metres, for a family of six.

Sue

Yes. Quite a difference.

Jimmy

Right, well, we're in Warsaw now. I don't know, where are we going to be this time next week? I think in...

Sue

Wroclaw, maybe.

Jimmy

Wroclaw, or maybe Prague. No, Wroclaw.

Sue

I think Wroclaw. We're just going to two more places in Poland, Krakow and Wroclaw, and then we're going to Prague, and then we're coming home.

Jimmy

And may I recommend to anyone who hasn't seen the movie, A Real Pain is all set in Poland.

Sue

Yes, it's a great film, isn't it? It's Kieran Culkin, who won the... Did he win the Oscar for his...

Jimmy

I think it was Golden Globe.

Sue

Golden Globe, yep. He was fantastic in it.

Jimmy

Yeah, he is.

Sue

And we all know him from Succession.

Jimmy

Yeah, great film.

Sue

Oh, it was really good.

Jimmy

It was good to be watching a film set in Warsaw, when you're sitting in Warsaw, kind of. But there's other good reasons for coming to Poland to visit. Really interesting, really nice people too, apart from the waiters.

I think they've confused hospitality with hostility.

Sue

Yes.

Jimmy

Anyway, we're about to jump off and head down to Krakow, Krakow. And we'll talk to you again next week.

Sue

Bye.

Jimmy

Bye. Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You'll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au. And if you haven't already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcatcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W, click on subscribe, and you'll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.