UDIA National Awards judging to commence
UDIA WA will host the UDIA National Awards for Excellence judges early next week as they tour the state entrants in our prestigious national program. State entrants include:
- Lakelands Estate by Peet Limited
- Trinity at Alkimos by LWP Property Group
- The Cove by Blackburne Property Group
- Liv Apartments by Defence Housing Australia
- Yagan Square by Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority
- Rosehill Waters by Noahs Rosehill Waters Pty Ltd
- Evermore Apartments – WGV by Yolk Property Group
The national awards are presented at the UDIA National Congress in March 2019. More details here.
Positive news from the mining sector
Reinforcing UDIA’s expectation that an uptick in mining activity will have a flow on effect to the property market recovery in Western Australia, Woodside Petroleum has announced another strong performance in the fourth quarter, with Wheatstone’s production continuing to exceed expectations and Pluto achieving 99.7% reliability.
Woodside CEO Peter Coleman said production rose 10% compared to the fourth quarter of 2017, while sales revenue climbed 43% to $1,419 million on the back of higher prices.
View the full ASX announcement here.
First female chief executive officer for Western Australian Treasury Corporation
Treasurer Ben Wyatt has announced the appointment of Kaylene Gulich as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Western Australian Treasury Corporation (WATC) for a term of five years, commencing on February 4, 2019.
Ms Gulich has worked in a number of senior executive roles within the Western Australian Department of Treasury, and has previously held the position of deputy chairperson of the WATC Board. She has also served on the board of the Gold Corporation.
Ms Gulich will take over from John Collins who has held the CEO position since 2009.
New CEO at Infrastructure Australia
Romilly Madew has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer at Infrastructure Australia, stepping down from her current role as CEO of the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA).
Ms Madew has run the GBCA for over a decade and in that time was recognised internationally for her role in promoting sustainability in the Australian built environment. She won the World Green Building Council’s Chairman’s Award in 2017, and in 2015 she was awarded the International Leadership Award from the US Green Building Council.
More information here.
Last Chance to submit feedback for UDIA’s submission on draft SPP 2.4: Basic Raw Materials
This is the last call to members to submit feedback to inform UDIA’s submission on the draft State Planning Policy 2.4: Basic Raw Materials and associated guidelines (here).
One of the objectives of the draft policy is to enable responsible extraction of the basic raw materials used in building and development, whilst ensuring the protection of people and the environment, and broad land-use compatibility. Associated mapping (here) has also been developed and is also available for comment.
Please send feedback to UDIA’s Policy and Research team at policy@udiawa.com.au prior to Friday 25 January 2019.
We value your feedback
UDIA is currently working on several submissions on behalf of members. We encourage you to forward any feedback to these items to policy@udiawa.com.au:
Draft SPP 2.4 Basic Raw Materials (available here). Submissions close Friday 25 January, 2019.
Local Government Act Review, submissions closing 31 March, 2019. More information here.
Housing finance figures fall less than expected
Despite several economists expecting a 1.5 per cent fall in home loan approvals last month, the fall was much more subdued across the nation at 0.9 per cent.
Between October 2018 and November 2018, the number of owner occupied housing commitments actually rose in Western Australia (up 64, 1.3%), but fell in New South Wales (down 114, 0.7%), Victoria (down 55, 0.4%) and Queensland (down 52, 0.5%).
Rises were also recorded in the Australian Capital Territory (up 27, 2.2%), South Australia (up 27, 0.7%), Tasmania (up 4, 0.4%) and the Northern Territory (up 1, 0.5%).
The number of first home buyer commitments as a percentage of total owner occupied housing finance commitments rose to 18.3% in November 2018 from 18.1% in October 2018.
Dwelling commencements reflect improvement in market
In terms of building activity, in the September 2018 quarter total WA private sector dwelling commencements increased 11.7% from the June quarter to sit at 4,303, following two consecutive quarters of decreasing quarterly figures, and fell 8.5% from the same time in 2017.
WA commencements for private sector houses similarly lifted 17.9% in the September 2018 quarter to 3,415, following 3 consecutive quarters of decline. From the same time in 2017 house commencements fell 6.9%, after a 12.4% year-on-year decrease in the June quarter.
Update: Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments (IBSA)
The IBSA Project Team has provided an update on the program, including advising that stakeholder response to the IBSA requirements has been excellent. There are currently 241 biodiversity surveys registered in the IBSA Portal, from throughout Western Australia, all with metadata available and many with full datasets available. Members are encouraged to visit the Portal to view.
The team also advises that minor updates have been made to the IBSA Instructions document and IBSA Metadata and Licensing Statement. New IBSA data package submissions should reflect the updated Instructions and use the updated Statement template. A summary of what has changed can be found in the IBSA Revision History document.
The IBSA instructions page now hosts a downloadable example of an IBSA Data Package. It consists of a dummy fauna survey dataset that shows the components of an IBSA Data Package and how they should be presented.
An online recording of an IBSA stakeholder familiarisation session from last year has also been published, for those who were unable to attend a familiarisation session or who wish to have a refresher on the objectives and operations of IBSA (such users may also wish to review the IBSA FAQ page, which is updated as recurring questions are identified).