Rebuilding Bob Day: From building to politics to bankruptcy to charity

He once commanded a multimillion-dollar housing business and mixed with Australia’s most powerful people but bankrupt builder Bob Day is now selling handbags and soap for charity.

Former home builder and politician Bob Day volunteers each Thursday at the Better Futures charity shop in Da Costa arcade. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

He once commanded a multimillion-dollar housing business and mixed with Australia’s most powerful people – but bankrupt builder Bob Day is now selling bags and soap for charity.

“I don’t know what the future holds but I know who holds the future. As the old cliche goes, we’ll just wait and see but I’m happy doing what I’m doing,” the 66-year-old says from behind the counter of the Bright Futures charity shop in the city’s CBD.

“A lot of friends my age have got serious illnesses, they’ve got problems with kids, they’ve got relationship problems; I wouldn’t trade places with them.”

Each Thursday for the past two years, he has been volunteering in the charity’s Grenfell St store, wedged between an engravers shop and vacant hair salon in the ageing Da Costa Arcade.

The charity work is a far cry from the 16-hour days juggling five businesses in five states and a parliamentary career.

He has learned how to operate a cash register and point-of-sale machine, and sells handmade goods, raising funds for the Christian aid and development agency started by Paul Madden.

Gone are the days of jetsetting across the country to Canberra, instead the former Family First senator catches the bus, via the O-Bahn, from his Houghton house to open the store at 9am.

This April marks two years since Day was made bankrupt, and two-and-a-half years since the collapse of his 35-year-old building company, which precipitated his exit from federal parliament.

The father of three, now sporting a beard, says the past two years have been “gap years” spent with family, friends and his music.

Former home builder and politician Bob Day volunteers at the Bright Futures charity shop in Da Costa arcade. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

He credits family and faith for carrying him through the “cyclone” of his dumping from parliament and the demise of his Home Australia conglomerate, which crashed in October 2016 with $40 million debts.

He has written an autobiography with the working title of There’s mortar life: business, politics and other misadventures, which he says enabled him to reflect on his career.

“Being in business for all those years, and politics, you see and hear and come across a lot of anecdotes the characters you meet, makes for some very good entertaining reading … we’ll see what happens next as to whether I publish it or not – the book’s not over yet,” he says. “Perhaps both of those (politics and business) were misadventures, well they turned out to be, well that’s what life’s about, you have a go at things.

“If nothing happens next, it (the book) is a good account of things for my family, and kids and grandkids.”

The devout Christian does not resile from his ownership of Home Australia’s failure, saying going into politics meant he had “taken his eye off the ball”.

He compares the rise and fall to the end of a hot-hand in a casino. “Well I had a win with Homestead and then Collier Homes in Perth came up and that was really successful and I had a win there and then the one in Queensland (Newstart Homes) came up and I had a win there,” he says of his company’s growth.

“You get on a roll and you think you’re invincible, and I had an awful lot of money, things were going sweetly – everything you touch turns to gold. Then you get complacent and you think this is easy you go around the country buying up building companies, but of course I came crashing down and made a big mistake.”

Bob Day, pictured in 1981, on an Adelaide buildings site, became one of SA’s biggest home builders..

He says business colleagues had warned him against buying NSW builder Huxley Homes in 2003, the company’s weak link that sent Mr Day to the wall and left more than 200 people nationwide with unfinished homes.

Home Australia pumped $30 million to keep Huxley Homes operating, he says.

In the ensuing chaos he says he offered liquidators a failed deal to keep Homestead Homes – the profitable Adelaide arm of his empire – so he could pay back creditors.

“Homestead was making $5 million a year not long before … they wouldn’t let me just have that and pay the others off,” he says, adding that he estimated he would have been able to pay off debts within six years.

The latest creditors’ report, lodged by liquidators McGrathNicol last October, listed Homestead Homes as still owing $5.5 million to 172 unsecured creditors. Mr Day says liquidators are still probing transactions between Homestead Homes and Family First but he maintains the company never paid a cent to his former political party, which later merged with Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives.

Bob Day, sitting next to David Leyonhjelm in 2016, says his former parliamentary colleague is a “good friend”.

He has not ruled out a return to politics, and revealed firebrand senator David Leyonhjelm approached him to nominate for the Liberal Democrats at the 2018 South Australian election.

“I like David and we agree on a lot of things but I wouldn’t represent the Liberal Democrats,” Mr Day, who sat next to Mr Leyonhjelm in the Senate, says. “I couldn’t espouse Liberal Democrat policy.” There is no barrier to a bankrupt standing for election in South Australian parliament, in contrast to federal parliament.

Mr Day, who is a long-time friend of Mr Bernardi and has previously not ruled out joining his conservative team, says he has been approached by other undisclosed political figures to contact them “when ready”.

“We’ll just see what happens, I’m not pushing anything, I’m not ringing anybody, but I stay fit and health and abreast of things,” he says.

“Maybe an opportunity will come along, I’ve still got my faith and my family and my health and obviously I’ll see where life takes me.”

Mr Leyonhjelm confirmed he called Mr Day.

“Our branch down there has some good people but none of them were really keen on becoming political candidates so we were just considering our options – it wasn’t a firm offer,” Mr Leyonhjelm says. “He’s a good bloke.”

Mr Day, whose bankruptcy will be discharged in April next year, says he also turned down an offer from business identity Nick Bianco to join his fledgling modular construction company. He says his building industry days are over.

Mr Day says he sold all assets except for a guitar, banjo, stamp collection and his 2012 Holden Commodore, collectively valued at less than $20,000. He says he has come to an arrangement with NAB – involving his $600,000 superannuation fund – which has so far staved off the sale of his Houghton house. NAB holds security over the property and is owed $21 million by the Home Australia Group.

Mr Day is still apologetic for the anguish caused to his suppliers, although says that most were covered by insurance.

“It’s true some didn’t have insurance and they lost a bit, but then they’d worked for me for 30 years,” he says, adding that many suppliers had asked him when he would start business again. While he considers the “what’s next”, he and wife Bronwyn are “living frugally”. He is earning an income consulting various think-tanks on housing policy.

Bob Day outside the High Court after it rejected his challenge to new Senate voting laws.

Mr Day has started playing guitar and banjo for residents at the Lindsell Lodge nursing home at Angle Park, where he also visits a good friend each Tuesday. He also passes time “pottering around the garden” and looking after his two grandchildren – the first of whom was born five months before his business collapse.

The biggest lesson he has learned is “you’re not as smart as you think you are” and that “everything material is ephemeral – it’s here today and gone tomorrow”.

“Not everyone gets to walk through the valley of the shadow of death – most just get to walk around it,” he says.

 

■Robert (Bob) John Day AO

Born July 5, 1952 in Manchester, UK.

■ Emigrated to Australia in 1963 and attended Gilles Plains High School and University of SA.

■ Married to Bronte and has three children and two grandchildren.

■ Qualified science technician whose career started at the Materials and Research Laboratories at the former Highways Department

■ Established Night and Day Plumbing service in the 1970s.

■ Founded Homestead Homes in 1983, which at its height was SA’s largest home builder construction 1000 properties a year.

■ Founded Home Australia in 1996, which owned Homestead, Collier Homes in Western Australia, Newstart Homes in Queensland, Ashford Homes in Victoria and Huxley Homes in NSW and had up to 1000 employees at its peak.

■ He was appointed an Office of the Order of Australia in 2003 for service to the housing industry and social welfare

■ In 2013 was elected as Family First party’s SA Senate candidate and was re-elected at the 2016 election.

■ October 17, 2016 administrators were appointed to the Home Australia Group and construction was halted on more than 200 homes, pictured. Day blamed poor management decisions on the company’s $40 million debt crisis.

■ He resigned from parliament on November 1, 2016 after a failed takeover bid for this company.

■ On April 5, 2017 the High Court ruled his 2016 re-election was because of an “indirect pecuniary interest” in a rental agreement with the federal government on his Kent Town electorate office. That same month he was declared bankrupt.