Let's inspire the next generation

Dear ,

One of the great successes of our McIlwraith Lectures has been the student scholarships where many of you have paid the $120 cost of a student attending the lecture so we could offer a spot to as many students as possible and expose them to our values.

This year I’m looking for people to do this again. If you can help, please email me on graham.young@aip.asn.au.

If you aren’t in a position to help a student, but want to come yourself, and haven’t booked, then please click here.

The reason we instituted the lectures is because our side is not very good at telling the stories of those who exemplify our values. They are great and heroic stories and should be told so they can inspire others.

With housing affordability being a critical issue, particularly for younger people, I would hope that many students would be interested in getting a tutorial in how you create housing supply (otherwise known as cities), and also how difficult it is to do, from a master.

And I hope they will get inspired by the bravery, intelligence, imagination, innovation and entrepreneurialism involved and incorporate some of those values into their own lives.

What Maha Sinnathamby has done at Springfield is amazing. He wasn’t a large developer to start with, and he’s overcome many difficulties along the way.

Springfield has many unique features, like its own act of parliament, and infrastructure agreements, which show the way to how we might create more land and houses. That’s technically interesting.

But I think the magic will be in the story of how someone from a small village on a British rubber plantation in Malaysia came to Australia and conjured the city out of raw earth.

When it is built out in 2030 Springfield will have taken 40 years to complete and will be home to 105,000 people.

At the current rate of net migration Australia needs to fully build out 2 Springfields every year just to handle the migration, without taking account of natural increase, and we don’t have 40 years to do it.

If you haven’t booked yet, please do. The date is October 16 at 7:00 for 7:30 pm, and the event will be held at the Victoria Park Golf Course. AIP members are $165 for a two-course dinner, including drinks. Non-members are $185, but tables of 10 are $1,650. Students are $120.

To book, please click here.

Regards,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR