‘Sydney is buried’: Meriton boss Harry Triguboff turns to Queensland

Forced to shut down multiple construction sites across Sydney, Harry Triguboff is for the first time poised to focus much more of Meriton’s business on the sunshine state.

Meriton was allowed to open half of its Sydney sites on July 31, but due to Parramatta being in a Covid hotspot, three unit towers in that local government area cannot be accessed. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

Forced to shut down multiple construction sites across Sydney, multi-billionaire developer Harry Triguboff is for the first time poised to focus much more of Meriton’s business on the sunshine state.

At the same time he called for vaccination hubs to operate around the clock to speed up the rollout.

“Meriton will focus more on Queensland,” the Sydney-based Mr Triguboff said in an interview. “Sydney is buried, now we have to resurrect it”.

Even so, his comments came as Queensland was placed into a snap lockdown over the weekend as the state recorded six new locally acquired Covid-19 cases on Saturday and a further nine new local cases reported on Sunday. The cases were linked to linked to five Brisbane schools, including Brisbane Boys Grammar school.

“It’s not a matter of counting how many people have got the goddamn thing (Covid-19). The problem is people have gone broke,” Mr Triguboff said.

Mr Triguboff said that years ago builders from Queensland wanted to work in NSW because there was no work in Queensland. Now the opposite was true: Sydney’s Meriton staff wanted to move to the Sunshine State.

“I have a problem. I spent my whole life building Sydney and my company and now they are destroying the development in Sydney,” he said, in reference to the city’s ban on constriction. The two week ban was lifted over the weekend, although building projects in the worst hit local government areas remain suspended.

“I am talking to my guys. We will have to move some of us to Queensland. I will still build a lot here. I have a lot of land here in Sydney … (but) many Meriton staff want to move to Queensland. We will definitely move a lot more into Surfers Paradise …’’

Meriton boss Harry Triguboff. Picture: James Horan

On the vaccination front Mr Triguboff said he and his wife Rhonda were among the first in Australia to get the vaccine.

“They should vaccinate day and night – we have to,” said Mr Triguboff, calling for 24 hour vaccination centre. “At the moment it is rubbish.”

He said that at the current slow rate of vaccination it would be six to seven months before Australians were fully vaccinated.

“Everybody supports the vaccinations, and yes of course I encouraged them at Meriton from the first day,” he said.

The property developer, worth about $16bn, blames the high number of Covid-19 cases in Sydney on the government. “It wanted to please everyone,” he said.

“They didn’t realise the danger they were getting into … in the beginning we were the best in the world (at controlling it), since then it’s spread and spread …

“Now it’s much harder to control it as it has spread here.

“We thought we would be nice to people not force them to vaccinate. Now everybody understands … we have to do it as fast as possible.”

Given the problems in Sydney Mr Triguboff is buying more land on Queensland’s Gold Coast “and a little bit in Brisbane” to build 2000-3000 more apartments.

He is finishing the 700-unit Ocean apartment tower in Surfers Paradise and building a second tower on another site with nearly the same number of apartments.

Meriton’s Ocean, the company’s new ‘super tower’ located in Surfers Paradise.

In Sydney, all of the billionaire’s construction sites were shut but as of July 31 he was allowed to open half of them. However, due to Parramatta Council being in a Covid hotspot, three unit towers in that local government area cannot be accessed.

“I have problems with other sites as well … our production at the moment is down to about one quarter,” he said.

“When it opens it will be down to half, and we hope nothing else happens.

“All my serviced apartments are a complete hopeless case, even Surfers Paradise is hopeless as guests from Sydney can’t come.”

Mr Triguboff said it was a blessing that six of his serviced apartment towers were being used as quarantine hotels.

“That helps me – otherwise I can lease out only about 10 per cent. You can’t run a business with 10 per cent, and it’s been going on for months and months.

“We will also lose a lot of the workers in the serviced apartments as they find the industry is not stable. They have destroyed the planning department in NSW, nobody can work here or build anything.”

Originally published as ‘Sydney is buried’: Meriton boss Harry Triguboff turns to Queensland