Joe Gersh thinks Melbourne is falling behind Sydney. And he knows how to fix it

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

Why? 'Because it invigorates … it's meant to be very good for you,' he says with enthusiasm, but adding that he is sceptical of the benefits.
'I'm, as you know, turning 70. I say 70 is the new 50,' he continues. Saint Haven pilates classes three times a week have got him within his ideal body mass index range. 'I don't know what fate has in store in terms of health, but until it tells me, I'm full steam ahead. I can't imagine anything, any fate worse than not having something to do – a new challenge every day.'
Gersh, who describes himself as centre-right, is executive chair of specialist real estate investment firm Gersh Investment Partners, a former senior partner at Jewish law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, a director of right-wing policy forum The Sydney Institute, and governments of both stripes have appointed him to numerous board directorships, including the Reserve Bank payments system board, Artbank and the Australia Council.
The lawyer-turned-businessman enjoys making connections. Ex-treasurer Peter Costello is a friend from university. He sat with publisher Louise Adler and businesswoman Carol Schwartz in his English class at Mount Scopus College. Seek co-founder Paul Bassat was his articles clerk at ABL.
When I moved to Melbourne in 2021, someone said to get in touch with him. We have been to lunch a few times at establishment restaurants. He clearly enjoys the company of journalists. I once went to dinner at his house (well, one of them).
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Before our meeting, I wrote out my list of topics:
The ABC and controversies.
Israel/Gaza and antisemitism.
Being a Melburnian.
Split with wife/coming out as gay.
Buying a flat on The Block.
Turns out I had forgotten one – solving Australia's housing crisis.
Gersh looks puzzled when I bring up the reality TV program. He moved into one of the TV show's transformed apartments, taking up residence in the complex after separating from his wife Zita, and subsequently buying an apartment there.
His firm is a fund and investment manager, linking up capital with developers. Supalai, his Thai clients, recently made a huge play by teaming up with Stockland; in a deal valued at $1.3 billion, they bought 12 of Lendlease's residential master-planned housing projects in greenfield growth areas. That's thousands of planned homes across Australia.
'We have got the policy settings all wrong,' Gersh says. He criticises the Victorian state government for its long-term housing blueprint, which aims for 70 per cent of development in inner-urban areas and 30 per cent of development in the outer-growth areas.
'Except the demand for housing is exactly the opposite,' Gersh says. 'It's 70 per cent in the growth areas and 30 per cent in the city. And you can't, by planning regulation, shift the preferences and desires of people as to how they want to live.
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'New South Wales is doing better than Victoria,' he continues. He relates his 'tale of two cities' anecdote, how NSW Premier Chris Minns met with Supalai readily, but Gersh has had no luck getting them in front of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan.
'There is a can-do attitude in New South Wales, they're ahead of their transport infrastructure needs. They're not fearful of developers. It's a different attitude, a different mindset, and the consequence is we're lagging behind.'
State and federal government impositions and costs, some of which he accepts are necessary, make up about half of what it costs to build a new home.
'Will government solve the housing crisis? My answer is, to the maximum extent that they can keep out and allow private industry to do it, the crisis will be solved a lot quicker.'
The smoothies and food arrive. Hydration C Elixir ($9), a sweet tangy bomb of lime mixed with Australian lake salt and Kakadu plum, is no match for the special smoothie of the day, the Inner Vitality Marieke Smoothie ($20), billed as a 'nutrient-rich smoothie developed by Marieke Rodenstein, head of research in biohacking and longevity, supports gut health, cognition, energy and cellular longevity'.
Gersh is delighted with it. The food is modern Australian healthful. My muscle bowl ($34) is both high-protein and nutrient-dense, with Milawa chicken, two poached eggs, roasted vegies, black rice, steamed broccoli and anti-inflammatory kraut thrown together with a studied casualness. The meal is surprisingly filling, and thankfully, the chicken is done just right. Gersh has the closely related clean and lean bowl ($32), which substitutes the eggs for roasted oyster mushrooms and half an avocado.
There is no alcohol on the menu. Noting my look of mock horror, Gersh hastily offers a drink after lunch if I really need it.
We move on to more controversial topics. As an ABC board member from 2018 to 2023, Gersh was a strong defender of the ABC, but now has very sharp criticism of the national broadcaster. 'The one that hurts, actually hurts me personally the most, is that the ABC has been missing in action on the problem of antisemitism in Australia.'
To his mind, the coverage betrays 'a serious lack of empathy or understanding of the problem' and in the 'mainstream Jewish community as I know it, there are grave, grave misgivings about the ABC'.
Rising to anger, he is also highly critical of the broadcaster's Middle East coverage.
He wants the ABC to adhere more scrupulously to 'its raison d'etre, its superpower' of objectivity and impartiality. 'When it lets that go, it loses the credibility which is crucial to its future.'
He says he has been in contact with ABC chair Kim Williams, who is 'clearly aware what the challenge is'.
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'I call for impartiality, but I don't expect them to be reflecting my views. My fear is that the ABC will simply become less relevant or irrelevant.'
We could go on debating the ABC and the horror in Gaza, but I realise we are running out of time and have not raised the fourth topic – coming out as gay in his mid-60s. And Gersh is now fired up.
I need a circuit breaker. So I ask about his modernist slip-on leather sneakers. Zegna, he says, adding dryly they are all the rage among people with more money than sense. I am not sure if he is referring to himself, but I look them up online later. A pair costs $2535.
Gersh has never lived anywhere other than Melbourne. The first thing he nominates about why he loves the place is family.
Was it hard moving away from the family home and coming out?
'Well I often say to people, that if you think it's hard coming out to your parents, just imagine what it's like coming out to your children,' he jokes.
He has four children and seven grandchildren. His parents were both Holocaust survivors, who arrived in Melbourne in 1948, his mother Tosia from the small town of Turek in Poland. She died when Gersh was 23, his father Heniek died aged 90. 'That's my plan.'
His father ran a knitwear factory at 450-460 Chapel Street. Redeveloping it was Gersh's first foray into property. Now his office is a couple of hundred metres up the road.
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Several times during lunch, Gersh makes passing reference to Cale, which is not a Saint Haven super food smoothie ingredient but Gersh's much younger partner, Cale Johnstone, a psychiatric registrar.
'Am I happy? Yes. I am fortunate to be in a very happy, stable, long-term relationship, and long may it continue.
'We were introduced by a mutual friend, as it happens. It came at the right time for both of us, for various reasons, and it's wonderful.'
I am sure I am not alone in wondering what the age gap is.
'He's pretty much exactly half my age when I turn 70. So that's the age gap. A lot of people observe it. We don't think anything of it. What's important to me is that I've been warmly accepted by Cale's family.
'I don't know what people say when I'm not in the room, but in terms of friendship groups and business connections, it's gone fairly much unremarked. We are just Joe and Cale. They invite us or they don't. There's not much to be said.'
Gersh continues the theme of family. Johnstone's will attend the forthcoming 70th, as will Gersh's own children, and maybe some of his older grandchildren.
He was in Israel for the bombings in April, his grandchildren there for the Iranian bombings in October.
He gets emotional talking about how his grandchildren were in a bomb shelter caught up in an Iranian missile attack within 36 hours of their visit to Israel last October.
He hopes for a ceasefire by the time of the next visit.
'Everybody hopes, I guess. It's quite a moment to be bringing children and grandchildren into the world. What would my parents have made of it?' he asks.
'What would my parents have made of it?' he asks again.