Bureaucracy is killing innovation in Australia: Joost Bakker

“Over the last 10 years dozens of projects haven’t been realised,” he writes. “I don’t blame any individual person for any of my projects not getting up, because what I’ve discovered is that it’s not individuals that kill projects but it’s the system. Australia has never employed more people in so many layers and institutions. And anyone that I know who’s innovative is saying exactly the same thing.”

He detailed numerous commercial projects he has designed and coached close to completion, only to be derailed at the last moment by overly stringent regulations. “I feel people need to know how hard it is,” he writes.

The interior of Brothl Cafe in the Melbourne CBD in 2014, before it was closed down. Photo: Paul Jeffers

In 2015, Mr Bakker’s cafe, Brothl, a zero-waste cafe, was evicted by the City of Melbourne over an argument over the cafe’s composter.

Another curbed project was an urban rooftop farm in Collins Street, Melbourne. Designed to be able to “grow 10+ tonnes of tomatoes, 14+ tonnes of cucumbers, five different species of fish, insects, greens, natives” and had a collaboration with Cool Australia enabling kids to engage with it, was quashed at a council vote. Why? “It was just 2.4 metres above the 40-metre height rule.”

The most recent blow for Mr Bakker was the cancellation of LAB, his project at Eastland as part of a multimillion dollar redevelopment. Mr Bakker claims that the shopping centre’s owners, QIC, asked Bakker to design a “a game changing building”.

LAB was to be, again, a zero-waste commercial development, with 18 shops and 30 retailers – including a bakery, food stores, fashion, furniture and a completely zero-waste restaurant with celebrity chef, Matt Stone, on board.

A spokesperson from QIC would not confirm whether it was regulations that killed the project as they “don’t consider it appropriate to reveal specific detail about our arrangements with our partners”.

FAB9 chief executive, innovator Hans Chang, agrees with Bakker that regulations are killing innovation. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “For a nation with a small population, the rules and legislations are simply over-kill.”

Mr Chang has spent the last few years establishing FAB9, a Makerspace – a membership-based workspace that houses high-end prototyping and manufacturing equipment – in the heritage-listed former Lonely Planet building in Footscray.

Mr Chang believes that barely anyone understands all the regulations – even architects – which leads to a whole industry of people employed to simply get people to understand the regulations.

Governments should “get out of the way” of innovation, says Joost Bakker. Photo: Simon Schluter

“Everything needs a permit,” he said. “There are different kinds of permits – planning permit, building permit, heritage permit – and they are all governed by different bodies of governments.”

Mr Chang believes that this bureaucracy is in part due to Australia’s inherent conservatism, and that our focus on mitigating “the downside” instead of “improving the upside”, means that we will fail, as a nation, to prosper in innovation. “Technologies have advanced significantly, there are better ways to mitigate the risks than lengthy paperwork submissions.”

Mr Bakker, whose posts sparked a flurry of support, couldn’t be reached for comment. Commercial Real Estate understands that he has become so disillusioned that he has withdrawn from his work. “I’ve decided to leave the solving of the world’s problems to the countless consultants, advisers and bureaucrats,” he writes.

“Malcolm Turnbull asked me ‘how can we help people like you innovate?’ Well, to me, the answer’s simple: get out of the way.”