When Governments HAVE to listen
Running a successful printing business in Australia today is not the easiest of vocations. This is one reason why I have the utmost admiration for printers of all sizes who manage to accomplish this.
Some may even make it look easy with automated workflows, MIS and W2P portals enabling the jobs to glide through production like ball bearings on WD40. Others are just damn good business people, while some have morphed into exciting new market service providers, embracing demand for short run and personalized printed products of all kinds, e-marketing, cross-media campaigns, trade services, functional printing where print is not the main product but the bag, hat, coffee mug or canvas wall décor is. Some just focus on providing excellent services to long-established customers in their area, irrespective of the technology used.
This is why, thanks to information from my colleague James Cryer, I am lasering in on one particular NSW family printing company, soon to celebrate its centenary – unless the NSW Government destroys it first and forever.
Gold standard SME
The company is Edgar Bragg & Sons Pty Ltd (Bragg Printing) of Waterloo, Sydney; established 1917 and still going strong under the ownership of the Habib family since 1981. Bragg is SME ‘gold standard’ – an example of our economy’s vital DNA. It employs around a dozen people and generates revenue of several million dollars a year. It out-performs all averages for small-to-medium enterprises: higher revenue-per-employee; better profitability than the industry average and is debt-free for both its premises and equipment.
Not just this, but Bragg Printing has a succession plan, as Arthur and Miriam Habib approach retirement. Two of their children work in the business and already have plans for exciting new service offerings for Sydney’s business community – if they can survive the inevitable Gog and Magog duopoly of a physical wrecking ball and a metaphorical one swinging towards their business, jobs and lives. Bragg Printing is subject to compulsory acquisition by the NSW Government as part of The Sydney Metro project and building of thousands of high-rise dwellings at Waterloo.
Not against development
In a question session on 17th August before The Hon. Gladys Berejiklian, MP, NSW Treasurer and Industrial Relations Minister, attended by the Habibs; James Cryer made it clear that neither he nor the Habibs are against development by the Baird NSW Government, nor the grander visions of the Greater Sydney Commission’s urban renewal plans chaired by the Prime Minister’s spouse Lucy Turnbull. In fact, the Habibs were very pleased that Waterloo was chosen as the station for Sydney Metro, over Sydney Uni.
What is perplexing for them is that no one in Government can, will or wants to tell them what the plan is to preserve their business, jobs and revenue to the state – it’s just a ‘get out before March 2017 before the demolition companies move in.’ The compulsory acquisition process – vital to all great cities if they are to modernize – is in chaos in NSW and, as seen with WestConnex houses in the city’s west, seems to be reduced to a combination of Stalinesque dictatorship and state-sanctioned thuggery. Sean Nicholls in the Sydney Morning Herald of 19th August features a photo of Mr Richard Capuano outside his house with a sign: “Our homes are being stolen by Baird and his WestCONex thugs.”
Get out, just leave, goodbye
But Bragg Printing is not a house; it is a business with an illustrious 99-year history and a bright future – were it not for being effectively told to: Get out, we will compulsorily purchase your building for an undisclosed sum, you can worry about the 100 tonnes of printing machinery that needs moving to unknown new premises, if any, and to hell with your business prospects and employment for the future. This is the nature of the message that Cryer delivered to Gladys Berejiklian, who to her credit promised to bring the Habibs situation to the relevant Minister’s attention - The Hon. Andrew Constance, MP, Minister for Transport & Infrastructure (someone to who the Habibs have written to several times but with no response).
Also revealed by Sean Nicholls of Fairfax is the fact that the NSW Government, two years ago, commissioned and received a report by David Russell, SC, into how to reform the compulsory acquisition system to make it fairer. If that sounds hopeful, forget it – it’s been kept classified and not released or acted upon. The logical conclusion is that the Baird NSW Government and Turnbull’s Greater Sydney Commission do not value ‘fairness’ in compulsory acquisitions.
The ultimate alpha winners in the Sydney Metro project are not the commuters, nor even the Government but property developers. Over and alongside each new station will be thousands of high-rise apartments to be built and sold for – well what’s a 2BR worth in Sydney next to a station? This is what will be on the site of 130 Cope Street, Waterloo where Bragg Printing currently operates from – 20 or 30-story residential towers with a population density that surpasses even Singapore or the most populated areas of London.
Waterloo’s social housing for some 4,000 residents will be demolished and rebuilt, yes, and former residents invited back into the new flats, which is commendable but behind this ‘benevolence’ is a massive high-density private housing project that will make billions for property developers.
A business such as Bragg Printing can not be ‘invited back in’ even if suitable premises could be found. Business depends on continuity and keeping loyal customers – they must be given the opportunity to relocate nearby and they must be told what the fair and reasonable compensation is, not just for the land, but for the cost and disruption of relocating heavy machinery, the preservation of jobs, continuity of supply and the legal costs they are being forced to incur as they try and get any sense at all out of the NSW Government beyond ‘Get out or else.’
Us and them?
Apparently, the Baird Government has appointed a quarrel (collective noun) of lawyers to handle the compulsory acquisition disputes – which then means SMEs like Bragg Printing need to consult lawyers too, since conventional logic dictates that only lawyers understand the mystical language they speak. It then descends into farce where the legal profession is second only to property developers in growing fat.
If the NSW Government wants to create an ‘us and them’ relationship with SME business constituents, turning its own supporters against them because of unfair treatment, they are going about it the right way.
Where Bragg Printing is concerned, I would advocate some direct communications and a genuine effort to understand what a loss, both financially and culturally, it will be if they wantonly destroy this fine firm of printers. Send the lawyers on gardening leave and release the other lawyer’s Russell Report into fairness of compulsory acquisitions, and see what can be done.
Above all listen – with only months to go before Bragg Printing is expected to vacate its premises, there is no time to lose. Recent experience with the Census and blocking of the sale of NSW electricity assets would suggest that Governments who don’t or won’t listen end up with egg all over their faces or worse – out of power. They have to listen.