The collapse of Bathla Group, a multi-billion-dollar property developer, illustrates how broken housing is in Australia.
Bathla entered voluntary administration in late August after it could no longer repay almost $3.4 billion in debt. Its collapse has left hundreds of workers unpaid and unemployed, and hundreds of buyers in limbo. The company owes millions to subcontractors and suppliers.
Bathla made immense profits from building dodgy houses and apartments in western Sydney. Harris Mazoudier, who purchased an apartment from Bathla in Schofields, spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald about the defects that littered his unit. Like many other property developers, Bathla has struggled to admit responsibility for these problems.
Profits also came from unsafe work practices. In 2015, a surveyor on a Bathla site fell nearly four metres and was impaled on concrete bars. SafeWork fined the company just $135,000 despite the surveyor’s long-term injuries. Industrial accidents are never treated with the same severity as criminal cases of the same magnitude.
Bathla’s founder, Bhart Bhushan, was once nicknamed “the Baron of Blacktown”. This appropriately sums up the power that property developers have over housing and urban planning. They wield this power to ensure the highest short-term profits, regardless of the social, economic and environmental consequences.
Baron Bhushan had a track record of using lawsuits to bully councils into approving his development applications. According to former Blacktown Mayor Stephen Bali, the council racked up $1 million a year in legal fees after slightly reducing the number of units in Bathla’s development proposals.
Before you weep for the baron’s downfall, know that construction continues on the family’s $5.5 million Dural mansion. “Sierra Morena”, named after a Spanish mountain range, features several swimming pools, a four-car detached garage and a basketball court. Renovation work is still underway to expand this palatial dwelling to include another garage and a “French fan cobblestone” driveway, whatever that is. Somehow, business owners have an uncanny way of never letting a corporate collapse get in the way of their own luxury lifestyle.
The ideologues of the system tell us that the free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources in our society. The profit-seeking of individual enterprises allegedly results in the best outcomes for consumers and society more broadly. Housing in Australia shows the exact opposite.
Defective apartments and injured workers are inevitable consequences of developers and construction companies seeking to cut costs and maximise profits. The pressure to build the houses as quickly as possible with as little delay, in order to cash in on Sydney’s inflated housing market, produces example after example of this. A 2021 survey found that four in ten new apartment buildings have serious defects. According to SafeWork, 44 construction workers died in Australia in 2024.
The anarchic housing market system does not ensure the best outcome for renters, homebuyers or society as a whole. The private housing market has delivered immense profits to developers, banks and landlords. But it has given most workers rental stress and burdensome mortgages: average unit rents have increased 65 percent in the last six years; average house prices have grown by 60 percent.
Property developers have reshaped how our city looks and works—for the worse. Developers build with an eye only to profit, not to holistic urban planning. The amenities people need—schools, parks, public transport, community spaces—are never their concern. Bathla currently owes an unspecified amount to Blacktown City Council for public infrastructure improvements it had committed to building. The worst-hit spots of Sydney are precisely those in the west, where existing urban infrastructure is not designed for increasingly dense populations.
The housing market is propped up by government policies, contrary to claims from free-market apologists. Tax policies such as negative gearing and capital gains tax discount incentivise investment and speculation. The hue and cry from the establishment about the Albanese government’s minor tax changes shows how well the property market has operated as a wealth generator for a minority. The policies remain government interference in the market—interference in favour of the rich.
Every scheme announced by the government to build more homes simply puts money into the hands of developers in the hope that that will magically fix the crisis. Labor’s flagship Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) provides concessional loans and subsidies to property developers that partner with “community housing” providers. All this means is that public money is used to prop up the profits of property developers in exchange for them building housing that fits the dubious definition of “affordable”.
Fixing the housing crisis in Australia will require policies that don’t aim to sustain the profits of property developers and the banks. Radical, sure, but simple, too. The government should take over building new homes and rent them out as public housing to working-class people priced out of the market. Rent-controlled public housing would be a much more appealing option to many people than decades of mortgage debt to a bank.
The government could start by compulsorily acquiring Bathla’s undeveloped land and unfinished properties. The Baron of Bankstown has clearly proven himself unable to manage them. But as long as the wealth of the other property developers remains intact, the housing nightmare will continue.
