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Evidence-based housing reform and modular construction results needed to influence government.
Giving Shape to a Dysfunctional Voice
In conversation with Built Offsite publisher Michael Dolphin, former NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler OAM reflects on the growing number of advocacy groups entering Australia’s housing debate—and why, in his view, many of them contribute more noise than solutions. And, some questionable objectives.
For Chandler, the rise of organisations that speak loudly but bring little in the way of research or evidence is a worrying distraction. While he is quick to stress that advocacy has a role in shaping policy, he questions the value of groups whose platforms are thinly built and whose claims are untested.
“It’s very easy to put a platform together,” he said. “But if you don’t build it on evidence, you’re just amplifying a conversation without adding much value. What the sector needs right now is more discipline and more accountability, not more slogans.”
He is also concerned about instances where claimed research has not undergone any peer review or independent supervision. While interviews and opinions have their place, they should not be presented as research.
The rise of Amplify
The highest-profile of these new voices is Amplify, a community organisation founded in 2024 by Paul Bassat, the co-founder of SEEK and venture capital firm Square Peg. Amplify has attracted attention not only for its ambitious claims about helping Australia tackle housing and other societal challenges, but also for the prominence of its board, which includes senior figures from politics, business, and media.
Amplify describes itself as a platform for Australians to come together and generate solutions. To shape its initial agenda, the organisation surveyed 100 individuals from diverse backgrounds. The results were presented as insights into the nation’s “biggest challenges”, housing among them.
For Chandler, this approach illustrates the problem. “A hundred people in a room isn’t research,” he said. “If you want to be taken seriously on housing, you’ve got to show evidence, you’ve got to show where the numbers come from, and you’ve got to be transparent about the trade-offs. You have to do the hard yards over time.”
He views the Amplify model as reflective of a wider trend in which advocacy is elevated by branding and profile rather than by substance. “We’ve got some very high-profile names weighing in,” he said. “But the risk is that people mistake prominence for expertise. Having a board of important people doesn’t mean you’ve solved the problem.”
Chandler does not suggest that Amplify should not exist, but he is firm that such organisations must be judged by the quality of their contribution rather than the reach of their networks. “If you’re going to step into this space, you’ve got to bring more than aspiration,” he said. “Housing is too important for ideas that haven’t been tested against the realities of planning, skills, cost, and financing.”
Building a framework for progress
Against this backdrop, Chandler has continued to argue for a more disciplined approach to reform. He has proposed a research project called Project 100, a framework he developed after stepping down as Building Commissioner in August 2024. It draws on his experience in assessing the performance of the Building the Education Revolution programme more than 15 years ago.
“I’ve put it out there as—well, here it is on the table,” he said of P100. “I’m prepared to have it criticised, but at least it’s some thought about what the problem looks like and how you’d measure progress towards a better outcome.”
At its core, P100 seeks to bring clarity to a sector that Chandler argues has too often been shaped by fragmented debates. It aims to assemble reference data to support productivity gains across planning, procurement and delivery. The project is directed at first-mover clients, developers and builders seeking a practical roadmap for shifting from unsustainable Business-as-Usual practices towards smarter approaches to modernising the construction landscape. These must be demonstrably faster, better, more cost-effective and less wasteful.
“The danger,” he explained, “is that everyone talks about the symptoms they see, but they don’t connect them back to the bigger picture. If you only look from your angle, you don’t solve the problem—you just describe it.”
Chandler is clear that the aim is not to have the final word but to provoke better discussion. “It’s not perfect,” he admitted. “But it’s an attempt to say: if this is the scale of the challenge, then these are the sorts of things you’d have to do, and this is how you’d know if you were making headway.”
What counts as evidence
Throughout the conversation, Chandler returned to a consistent theme: that evidence, not aspiration, is what will convince decision-makers. He is sceptical of organisations that launch platforms without grounding them in data or delivery.
“If you want government to listen,” he said, “you’ve got to be able to show how your idea measurably improves outcomes. That could be reducing time to site, improving quality, or making financing work. Without that, it’s just another opinion or noise.”
For him, credibility rests on the discipline to present verifiable results. “The people who get my attention,” he said, “are the ones who can show me how their projects and the factories they engage are producing better outcomes, or how their data proves faster delivery without compromising quality. That’s the kind of evidence government and financiers will respond to.” This, however, must not come at the expense of maintaining strong public confidence in the ethics of those involved.
In Chandler’s assessment, Australia’s housing system cannot afford more ungrounded debate. “We’ve had plenty of noise,” he said. “What we need is people prepared to take responsibility for the consequences of what they’re putting forward. That means research, transparency, and ethics.”
A sector at a crossroads
Chandler’s critique of advocacy without substance is not rooted in cynicism but in urgency. He sees the current moment as one where Australia’s housing problems demand evidence-based solutions that can be scaled.
“Right now, the sector is at a crossroads,” he said. “We either keep letting the conversation be shaped by who shouts loudest, or we start insisting on real data and real outcomes. I know which one will actually make a difference.”
His call is for a housing debate that is less about branding and more about delivery. In this sense, his challenge to Amplify and similar organisations is not to retreat but to do the work of substantiating their claims.
“If you want to change housing in this country, you can’t just curate aspirations from polling,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to stand up and say: here’s the evidence, here’s what it costs, here’s what it delivers, and here’s how we’ll be accountable for it.”
Towards accountability
As Chandler sees it, Australia’s housing crisis will not be resolved by rhetoric. It will be resolved when stakeholders—government, industry, financiers, and advocates alike—commit to measurable outcomes.
“The conversation needs to change,” he said. “We need fewer glossy brochures and more hard evidence. We need less noise and more accountability. Until we get that, housing will stay stuck where it is.”
In a landscape crowded with new voices, Chandler’s intervention is not to silence them but to demand more of them. His insistence on ethics, research, and responsibility is, in his view, the difference between advocacy that adds to the problem and advocacy that helps solve it.
“It’s time to lift the standard,” he concluded. “Because housing is too important to be left to slogans.”
