Author: Geoff Ebbs

Foreign investment is not taking over West End according to Rob Honeycombe, a director of the Real Estate Institute and BeesNees Real Estate.

Honeycombe is responding to recent reports that up to half of new housing stock was being snaffled up by foreign owners. He says that the fundamental reason this isolated statistic is not generally relevant is that foreigners cannot buy established or second-hand properties. Even with the spate of new apartments on the market, the statistics show that foreign investors currently hold less than one quarter of one percent of all residential housing stock in Australia.

In total at the end of 2013, the number of properties owned by foreign residents across Australia was around 72,000, with a little over 10% of them in Queensland. This has been steady for about three years. China, Canada and the USA each account for about ten percent of those foreign owners.

So, some new apartments coming onto the market will be sold to foreign and domestic investors and then rented to local renters. That will have little impact on the price of other types of housing but will keep some buoyancy in the apartment market which has flattened in cities like Sydney due to oversupply.

Honeycombe summarises the situation thus, “Many of these cultures have an ingrained love of bricks and mortar. Naturally as real estate agents we love them for that!”

Business owners working sixty hour weeks and more are not setting their priorities correctly, according to Matthew Snelleksz. The author, accountant and consultant specialises in fixing broken businesses, which he defines as businesses that do not make enough profit for their owners to take holidays, pay themselves bonuses or establish a comfortable retirement plan.

Regular readers of Business Voice will recognise his catch phrase, “Focus on sales, profit then cashflow”.

His focus is on organisations where the owner fails to delegate and where money is left lying on the table because the owner is not focusing on the correct priorities. Nearly all of the recommendations Snellecksz makes in his presentations are available in a range of business texts, the difference is that he challenges his students to make a short term action plan that will lead to immediate results.

Immediately obvious to this observer is the uncomfortable truth that many business owners, and line managers for that matter, work long hours, not because they have to but because it helps them avoid the reality of the rest of their life. Snelleksz has a no nonsense manner of shining a spotlight on the shadows of that addiction.

In one month since attending a two hour workshop, Westender has already changed two simply priorities that have begun to strengthen the business. If you owe us money, expect me to be knocking on your door any day with a crying baby or an agitated alligator.

Visit Matthew Snelleksz website for more information.

Action-coach Charmian Campbell was on Montague Rd last month delivering the keynote speech at Berwicks Better Business Breakfast. Cramming as much of her full day seminar into forty minutes as she could, the dynamic and knowledgeable Ms Campbell led attendees through a range of all-too-familiar scenarios that can be avoided with the right business culture.

Her key target is organisations where finger pointing and the blame game prevent real change taking place.

“A fish rots from the head,” she said. “If the executive of a company is not taking responsibility for the culture of the company, then the staff will sit back and go for the ride.”

Berwicks also introduced the Queensland Cancer Council to its customers and business partners as part of its ongoing charitable work. Berwicks is a fixture in the West End business community being a family company now 83 years old with a long history of supporting local customers, partners and charities.

<links>berwicksoffice.com.au, actioncoach.com/charmiancampbell

Brisbane entrepreneurs have the opportunity to get together once a fortnight for an informal networking event as part of the global MeetUp program.

The next Entrepreneur Meetup is at 6pm on Wednesday 11th June in the city. The MeetUp system requires you to register before you can see the location of the event. Westender can reveal that it is in Eagle St, though, if that helps you make up your mind.

Founder Luke Shavak describes the underlying ethos of the event as hinging on two simple ideas:

1. We should not be slaves to our business
2. One good idea can double your profits.

The opportunity to meet other motivated and like minded business owners who you can network and share ideas with vastly increases your chance of finding that one good idea and escaping slavery.

This Meetup repeats every 2 weeks on Wednesday

The week began and ended with depression. Since the depression belonged to someone else, was intelligently analysed and beautifully presented, I was elated, uplifted and educated.

Friday May 16, as my Anywhere festival treat, I went to see Fly: A theatre project in Padstow Rd, Macgregor. A layered journey into the mind of a depressed young woman, exposing the misapprehensions, denials and mistreatment of parents, mentors and medical advisers and celebrating the incredible strength of spirit that drives the individual to overcome their worst nightmares.

A week later and I was off to Babadook, an Aussie movie, described as “quality horror” by one reviewer: “a small Australian movie, with a great heart, good story-telling and great characters”. Perhaps he did not want to mention the D word in case it hurt sales but my view is that most horror aficionados would find the special effects somewhat straightforward and the sound track not quite dramatic enough for their tastes.

I may be differently wired, but I saw Meryl Streep’s Margaret Thatcher as a study of dementia, constantly mis-reviewed as a poorly-focused biopic. I also saw Polanski and Depardieu’s two handed A Pure Formality an exploration of death and consciousness, regularly mis-reviewed as detective fiction. It seems to me that if you don’t understand the intent of the director, you should keep your mouth shut about the film.

Babadook is a psychological thriller, a journey of empathy that is gripping, heart-rending and inspiring. Many viewers know someone, or are someone, in the position of the mother – brilliantly played by Essie Davis. (How does she change from little girl to she-beast with so little apparent effort?) The film so palpably renders the challenges of grief, single parenting and the brutal, Kafkaesque inability of officials in any position to comprehend the reality of these perfectly normal human emotions, that viewers around me let fly with copious body fluids and strange sounds as they writhed in empathic pain.

Breaching that gulf between the official story and our inner world is one of the most important roles of art and these pieces deliver a powerful range of tools for understanding depression. That understanding goes beyond all the statistics, case studies and toilet advertising paid for by the official depression organisations.

See them and weep.

Read Marissa Ker’s full review of Fly.

The Queensland Police demonstrated today their highly militarised approach to the protection of world leaders visiting Brisbane for the G20 in five months. In a demonstration of firepower showing bomb detonations, baton charges and semi-automatic weapon deployment, the police left no doubt that all energy would be focused on ensuring the official G20 summit goes as smoothly as possible and that any citizens who wish to express a different view will be severely curtailed.

Westender’s coverage of the preparations for G20 over the last six months has indicated a wide diversity of views regarding the value of the summit and the appropriateness of the government’s preparation.

We have faithfully reported the police requests for Issue Motivated Groups (IMGs) to register their intent to raise their issues, legal advice regarding the pros and cons of dressing in black during the summit, the calls for indigenous people to hold a first nations conference at the same time, the possible impacts on business and the need for an alternative summit proposing different futures than those that will be discussed by world leaders.

The police emphasis on a military response to ensure the orderly progression of the official, summit, though, leaves no doubt that there will be little sympathy expended on residents, local businesses, indigenous people or activists. According to police spoksepeople, those seeking an alternative future to a World Bank dominated view of macro-economics should register as Issue Motivated Groups and sit meekly on the side-lines with police approved signs quietly stating the reasons they do not think world leaders have a monopoly on intelligence.

Given  the government’s stridency on this and its refusal to countenance alternative points of view, it is important to air the alternative view. Many Westenders are more than happy for the world leaders to come and drop $20million on 4101, we are even happy for them to bring their security guards, dominate hotel bookings, bars, nightclubs and what ever other venues they choose to entertain themselves at.

What they do not want to see is the nation’s and the state’s precious resources squandered on the opression of those who express a different opinion. It is clear to any thinking person that:

• an economy in which the top one percent have more wealth than half the world’s population is not healthy;
• that a world in which one billion people do not have clean drinking water or sufficient food and so die an undignified and horrid death while rich nations throw away mountains of  rotting unwanted food is unfair;
• or that the 80% of business owners who generate 57% of the wealth despite ongoing welfare to global corporations deserve a better go.

It is not clear that these views are best expressed in a designated protest area at the periphery of the action, or that police in military gear with semi-automatic weapons are best placed to decide which views should be heard and which views should not.

Westender’s role is to ensure that those views have a wider forum. If that puts us at odds with the official line on the G20 then so be it. If that limits our capacity to profit from the official largesse as the $20m is spread around the community then we will wear that as the cost of putting an honestly held alternative view.

Even if you do not agree with us, we hope that you will acknowledge and respect our integrity.