NEW BRUNSWICK HEADS COMMUNITY NEEDED TO HELP EASE HOUSING

OSCAR Wilde, the Irish grand master of nonchalant wit, once chided, “WORK is the curse of the drinking classes.” It is also arguably the cause of rampant consumption by those previously non-disposed to a tipple at their nearest pub on their way home from work.

In 2017, Curtin University conducted a study that found around 12 million Australians worked an estimated 20 billion hours that year in paid employment. To put this numerical babble into perspective: there are 8,760 hours in a year, and the average life expectancy in Australia is 81 years; thus, the average life totals a mere 709,560 hours.

To provide some additional context, according to the Curtin University study, apparently 1-in-4 workers are currently looking for a new job because they are unhappy with their present one. The leading causes for this were: stress (most of the time at work), general dissatisfaction with work, and not having a clear sense of purpose. In conclusion it stated, “pay matters, but only to an extent. More importantly, it’s what you do, how you are able to go about your work and who is alongside you that matters the most when it comes to job satisfaction.”

Another Australian Workplace Happiness study conducted in 2022 found that a staggering 72% of Australian workers have felt unhappy at their work in the past 12 months. The leading causes were listed as: demanding workloads, poor communication, bad relationships (at work), long hours, and monotonous work. Nothing complex in themselves, but the implemented remedies for each one, are what differentiates the workplaces you’d want to be a part of, and frankly, those you’d avoid at all costs.

Additional to the typical gripes and snipes of your standard Australian workplace that generate such malaise, are the triplicate organisational spectres of talent identification, talent development, and talent retention. Each facet of this clear talent conundrum – that perennially needs addressing – is something an increasingly ‘removed’ managerial apex (intoxicated with notions like meritocratic accomplishment) fail time and time again to objectively see, let alone do anything about.

Not that any of this is even remotely new, as the Nobel Prize-winning Czeslaw Milosz identified over 70-years ago, “Western economy squanders talent to an incredible degree; and the few who do succeed owe their success as often to pure luck as to native ability.” Thus, career success and the ‘Loch Ness monster’ of work satisfaction, might one day become not so much the result of what you can spruik in an interview; but how you can honestly convey, albeit activate by way of your own sincere sense of purpose, passion, and dare I say – talent.

Deflatingly, for many, who are just trying to make ends meet, the comments of Philip Larkin reverberate like a thick whitewash through the soul, “How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It’s sad, really.” But that said, no one but our very own selves can pigeon hole us into lines of work that reflect nothing of who we are, or what we deem most worthwhile.

Almost 7,000 new homes will need to be delivered across the Byron Shire over the next 20 years to keep pace with market demand, with Brunswick Heads earmarked as a priority development area, according to a recent report from Council.

Byron Shire Council’s September 2023 Draft Housing Options Paper shows 6,695 new dwellings are needed for the shire over the next 20 years, with 1,990 of those homes - or 30 per cent of forecast requirement - earmarked for Brunswick Heads. Mullumbimby will target 24.5 per cent of the new housing requirement, with Byron Bay/Sunrise taking in 18.5 per cent.

Council’s future housing strategy is for more than half of all new homes in the Byron Shire to be created in ‘new release’ areas, including “sites identifed in the Draft Northern Rivers Resilient Lands Strategy near Bangalow and Brunswick Heads which are on signifcant farmland.”

With the housing crisis escalating in tandem with local population growth, the release of new land is welcome news for many young families according to Clarence Property General Manager Paul Rippon.

Mr Rippon says demand continues to outpace supply and Clarence Property’s Wallum community - which is the only already-zoned and approved Brunswick Heads site included as part of the housing strategy - is a key project in helping address the problem.

He says recent sales demonstrate the majority of locals support the project and want new land to be made available as soon as possible, to avoid being priced out of an already heated market.

“We purchased the Wallum site in 2021 and sold the frst 19 homesites in one of the most severe property shortages in the past 20 years, due to the lack of supply and pent-up demand for land in the Brunswick Heads region,” he said.

“The Wallum site has been earmarked for residential development since 1988 and while waiting for this land to be released many locals have been priced out of the market.”

Mr Rippon said purchasers in the frst stage of Wallum were mostly local, young families.

“A number of purchasers are young people who have grown up in and around Brunswick Heads who want to buy a home and raise their family in the community they know and love, but the opportunity to do so has been limited,” he said.

“When stage one of Wallum was released, local owner occupiers seized the chance. We even had a duplex lot bought by two young families who plan to build a house each, so it’s providing new pathways for people to enter the property market and is being delivered with the Brunswick Heads community front of mind.”

To review a fact sheet about the Wallum development, please visit wallumbrunswick.com. au