Aug 17, 2026 · 59 min · 11 segments
That is the Property Council's number, not mine. So I sat down with its Chief Executive, Mike Zorbas, and asked him to walk me through the 40 cents. New episode of The Jason de Sousa Show. We got…
well you know a great a great schooling to become the chief executive yeah and what is it like now being the national chief executive because as i understand it for the property council you've got you've got state divisions and each is focused on state issues but you're focused on the entire country how does it work because you've got a large membership as well yeah
we've got a broad church there's 2600 member organizations and roughly the same number of individuals who are on our committees around the country,
And increasingly, as differentiation in our market has become more profound, the need to have advocacy that is specific to different asset classes has been elevated.
So we have a retirement living council, we have a purpose-built student accommodation vehicle, there's also a retail property arm, and all of these things have their own very sophisticated legislative requirements and so we need dedicated resources on those in addition to general state and territory.
And is your advocacy largely focused at policymakers or is it focused across policymakers and industry or is it, what is advocacy?
Advocacy is the sum total of our members expertise and their needs for their businesses.
How do they grow in a market, particularly in relation to investment settings, planning, and productivity.
And productivity might include things like skilled migration as well, because that's a
And it's pretty consistent around all the states and territories at a local government level.
at a national level, if policy makers, by which I mean elected representatives and the public service, are thinking about how do I make investment settings better, how do I make planning better, how do I increase the productivity of this sector through light touch, intelligent
We want better investment settings, better planning and better productivity, which includes that element of skilled migration, which is absolutely essential to the future of this country.
And without traversing any of the stuff that we're going to talk about later on, The fact is we've got a very unhealthy debate at the moment.
And organisations like the Property Council, I think, have never had a steeper hill to climb on behalf of their members.
This is really an extremely fragmented, economically illiterate series of parliaments and parliamentary players that we are dealing with.
who genuinely don't understand how cities are financed, how they are built and developed and how they are maintained unless they're actually plonked into those roles which have direct control over those things like planning ministers, treasurers, premiers to some degree, infrastructure ministers and it is such an area of you know, I think deficit in our public discourse, that failure to understand that these engines of prosperity really do drive the vast bulk of our historically high living standards, that we really do need to push even harder up that hill to get the message across.
well you know a great a great schooling to become the chief executive yeah and what is it like now being the national chief executive because as i understand it for the property council you've got you've got state divisions and each is focused on state issues but you're focused on the entire country how does it work because you've got a large membership as well yeah
we've got a broad church there's 2600 member organizations and roughly the same number of individuals who are on our committees around the country,
And increasingly, as differentiation in our market has become more profound, the need to have advocacy that is specific to different asset classes has been elevated.
So we have a retirement living council, we have a purpose-built student accommodation vehicle, there's also a retail property arm, and all of these things have their own very sophisticated legislative requirements and so we need dedicated resources on those in addition to general state and territory.
And is your advocacy largely focused at policymakers or is it focused across policymakers and industry or is it, what is advocacy?
Advocacy is the sum total of our members expertise and their needs for their businesses.
How do they grow in a market, particularly in relation to investment settings, planning, and productivity.
And productivity might include things like skilled migration as well, because that's a
And it's pretty consistent around all the states and territories at a local government level.
at a national level, if policy makers, by which I mean elected representatives and the public service, are thinking about how do I make investment settings better, how do I make planning better, how do I increase the productivity of this sector through light touch, intelligent
We want better investment settings, better planning and better productivity, which includes that element of skilled migration, which is absolutely essential to the future of this country.
And without traversing any of the stuff that we're going to talk about later on, The fact is we've got a very unhealthy debate at the moment.
And organisations like the Property Council, I think, have never had a steeper hill to climb on behalf of their members.
This is really an extremely fragmented, economically illiterate series of parliaments and parliamentary players that we are dealing with.
who genuinely don't understand how cities are financed, how they are built and developed and how they are maintained unless they're actually plonked into those roles which have direct control over those things like planning ministers, treasurers, premiers to some degree, infrastructure ministers and it is such an area of you know, I think deficit in our public discourse, that failure to understand that these engines of prosperity really do drive the vast bulk of our historically high living standards, that we really do need to push even harder up that hill to get the message across.
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