GOVERNMENT MEDIA MONITORING UNIT

DATE: JULY 13TH, 2006

TIME: 9.05AM

STATION: 720 MORNINGS (HUTCHISON)

SUBJECT: GROLLO – PERTH BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY.

This transcript is produced for information purposes only. Although all care is taken, no warranty as to its accuracy or completeness is given. It is your responsibility to ensure by independent verification that all information is correct before placing any reliance on it.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

It’s part of building site folklore that the Grollo brothers managed to get the Rialto Tower in… , built on time because they provided beer and strippers on Fridays. Well now the biggest privately owned construction company in is turning its gaze west.

Daniel Grollo joins us from Melbourne. (greetings not transcribed)

Daniel can you tell me is that Rialto story true?

DANIEL GROLLO

No, it’s not true there’s lots of myths around Rialto. It was a great iconic project that we done… back in the early ‘80s here in Melbourne, but that one’s not true.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

That wasn’t true.

Now your family has always been seen as a… very colourful one, and I… it’s was begun by your grandfather, wasn’t it, some sixty years ago?

DANIEL GROLLO

Yes, my grandfather was an immigrant from Italy and… in the ‘50s he started a small pavement company and my father joined that company in the… sort of… ‘60s and really took it from there up into one of the biggest builders and developers in the country.

GEOFF HUTCHISON – 2 –

Now does your father adhere to the idea that the first generation makes it, the second grows it and third one loses it?

DANIEL GROLLO

Absolutely, it’s something he reminds us of… just about every week now… to make sure that we’re not that third generation. Puts an awful amount of pressure of the… the… my… children if… we don’t in fact lose it all.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Now Daniel, for those who don’t know… your company has been involved in the MCG redevelopment and the building of the Eureka Tower, the tallest residential building… is it the tallest in the country or is it the southern hemisphere?

DANIEL GROLLO

It’s the tallest in the southern hemisphere, it has a rival in…

GEOFF HUTCHISON

…In Queensland, isn’t it…

DANIEL GROLLO

…Surfers Paradise, called , but they have a big mast on their building and the actual building’s about 30 metres shorter than ours and they have a mast that goes 30 metres beyond ours if you like… (inaudible) we’re still reserving the right to put a mast on ours…

GEOFF HUTCHISON

…And yours is… (laughs)… about… is it 92-storeys?

DANIEL GROLLO

Ours is 92-storeys or 300 metres high, as high as the Eiffel Tower.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Okay… are you going to come to Perth to build stuff like that?

DANIEL GROLLO

I guess we’re looking at Perth… and we see an exciting economy in Western Australia and Perth. And we’re not sure… what we’re there to build or develop just yet, but we’re certainly there having a look at opportunities… (inaudible) I guess it’s a question of what opportunities… that come up that we think we can add value to. – 3 –

GEOFF HUTCHISON

…Now you’ve had meetings in Perth this week, did you… you met Alannah MacTiernan, the Planning and Infrastructure Minister?

DANIEL GROLLO

Oh look, we were certainly in Perth on meetings this week, but we have been for the last 12 months. I wouldn’t want to… suggest who we’ve… have or haven’t been…

GEOFF HUTCHISON

…Okay… okay, well I guess… demand for office space is at a premium here, so what kind of areas are you look into? What appeals to you about Perth?

DANIEL GROLLO

Oh look, obviously there’s a… in every way Perth’s economy seems to be very strong, there’s a strong demand for commercial office space, residential property seems to be very strong and… you know… for your listeners, they may know that Melbourne and Sydney’s quite in a lull, but Brisbane and Perth are very strong so, the residential market looks good in Perth and for that matter the retail market looks good. So it’s all signs… going very strongly for Perth.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Now I have read that you might want to make a bid, or enquire about the possibility of building the new indoor stadium and would even consider the facility that might replace Subiaco Oval. Can you tell us least that you have some interest in those projects?

DANIEL GROLLO

Well we had a great outcome here in with the MCG… redevelopment. There was quite some pressure to ensure that that was completed on time for the staging of the Commonwealth Games and we were very successful in… on that project and our team did some great… did a great outcome really for the state there. And from that experience, yeah… we’ve had some very good experiences with stadiums, so we would be very interested… in further stadium development anywhere in Australia, including Perth.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Okay, and there is the potential of an indoor stadium and then a larger… stadium to replace Subiaco so you’d… be an interested… is it fair to say you’d be an interested bidder?

DANIEL GROLLO

– 4 –

Absolutely.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Now… you’re… family background is… I remember reading stuff about days when Bruno was… your father was running the business. Was there any chance you were going to do anything other than… inherit it… that… meals around the dinner table often turned into board meetings?

DANIEL GROLLO

Well I guess it… most small family businesses probably have there board meetings around the… dinner table, and in the early days was certainly no different to that. Dad’s children, I’m one of three, we all grew up very close to the business and… I think it’s typical of family organisations and today that next generation is running the business.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Now I know you’ve debunked the strippers and beer idea from the Rialto Tower, but is there not also a story of your dad… and I’m assuming it’s… I assume it’s Rialto and not Eureka, that people had expressed some concern… in the skyscraper of… you know, how safe is it to be this high up, and is there a story that your dad said, I’ll show you how safe it is and he went and threw himself against the glass?

DANIEL GROLLO

That is a very strong story and… another one of the legends coming out of the Rialto… the Rialto project.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Is it true? Because your father was a big man too, so the sight of him throwing himself at… some… strengthened glass would have been quite an extraordinary one I’d imagine.

DANIEL GROLLO

I really can’t destroy a great story with the truth, Geoff!

GEOFF HUTCHISON

(laughs)

DANIEL GROLLO

There’s certainly… one of our employees who was working with dad at the time did do that, and it was quite a courageous thing, and it was to prove just how safe it was.

GEOFF HUTCHISON – 5 –

Okay, so we’re do you go from here, and am I right in suggesting that you are very keen to be one of the big players in this town?

DANIEL GROLLO

Oh look, we think we’ve got a lot to add. We’ve left our mark on both Melbourne and Sydney and we’re currently looking at projects in Brisbane. And Perth, for that matter, sort of comes into that equation as… a very important part of Australia, and one where the economy is performing better than most in Australia. So it’s of great interest to us. Just how successful we’ll be I think is a question of time. If the right opportunity comes up we’ll focus on that opportunity and ensure that, you know, in Perth as we’ve done in the other parts of Australia, we… we keep our fine track record and reputation intact.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Your father often dreamed, and I certainly know when I was living in Melbourne, that he often dreamed of building… at that stage, the tallest building in the world. And that idea was very dear to his heart, do you share any of those kind of aspirations or are you much more… pragmatic?

DANIEL GROLLO

Oh no look, we love building tall buildings, in fact that’s probably where we specialise and we’re best, I think, better than anyone else in Australia quite frankly and… we field sort of… three of the tallest buildings in Australia now and we love tall buildings.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

And…

DANIEL GROLLO

…in Dubai as well, playing with tall buildings… So we’ve got some particular expertise that’s very good when it comes to tall buildings, so…(inaudible) if Perth needed a tall building, we’d be more than happy to have a look at it.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

…So… I was going to say, you come to Perth and have meetings and they say ‘what can you do for us?’ and go, ‘I can build you a really, really tall building’. Is that… what you’re offering?

DANIEL GROLLO

(inaudible) We build them and develop them and we enjoy doing them.

GEOFF HUTCHISON – 6 –

Very interesting, Daniel thanks very much for your time this morning.

DANIEL GROLLO

No problem Geoff, thank you.

GEOFF HUTCHISON

Thank you. Daniel Grollo from Grocon in Melbourne, the countries largest private production… private building/construction company. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Would you like to see something giant in Perth? Do you want to see the skyline change in that dramatic fashion? (gives talkback number)

Or is it just a good thing that there’s another player interested in bidding for some big Perth projects?

Ends… jt