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David Higgins has his mind in the gutter. The sewers of Victorian London, to be exact. He is reading the biography of their creator, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who solved the "Great Stink of London" by stopping untreated sewage flowing into the Thames in 1858. This may seem quite an odd interest for a 49-year-old Australian, but for the new chief executive of government regeneration quango English Partnerships, Bazalgette is perhaps the perfect role model.

Like Higgins, who has been handed the task of boosting housebuilding in the south and balancing housing markets in the north, Bazalgette, then chief engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, was charged with a seemingly impossible mission: to clean up a rotting London. Like Higgins, Bazalgette was involved in regeneration – he razed acres of slum housing in central London to clear the way for famous streets like Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue – and, also like Higgins, any failure on his part would have meant a heavy cost for his political masters. Bazalgette delivered for Benjamin Disraeli, the premier of his day. The whole housing sector is eager to see whether Higgins will manage a similar job for deputy prime minister John Prescott.

The former chief executive and managing director of Australian property company Lend Lease has worked in the private sector for his whole career, including 18 years at Lend Lease. As such, Higgins is an unknown entity in the public sector and is being eyed by many people in the housing world with a degree of suspicion. Who, they ask, is this man who's been handed a £300m budget to help him realise Prescott's vision?

Now ensconced in a spacious office at English Partnership's headquarters in central London, he says: "I wanted to make a career move that was done purely for my own interest and was going to challenge me. The things I was looking at in the private sector would have left me in my comfort zone. I wanted something in a sector that I strongly believed in where I could add something back. Regeneration is the most complex form of property development and asset management – miles more complicated than anything else I could think of."

On paper, Higgins sounds as Aussie as they come: born and bred on Queensland's Gold Coast, he's a farmer's son who loves cricket and keeps a fishing boat in Sydney Harbour. In person, though, he is a serious, bespectacled man, earnest of manner and with an accountant's passion for figures and financial detail. His first six weeks in the job, he says, have been "everything I've expected and much more"; the public/private sector stigma might be an issue for other people, but it doesn't bother him. Indeed, he has already rolled up his sleeves and mucked in, setting up a far-reaching restructuring programme to ensure EP is able to achieve the deputy prime minister's goals. But he is conscious that he has much to learn and is taking every opportunity to get out of the office and see where his policies will hit home: in the past few weeks, he has been to Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Gateshead, Newcastle again, Warrington and the Thames Gateway.

He still has a soft Antipodean drawl, but is quite serious when he says he now considers himself to be English. He even went to the last cricket Test in Sydney earlier this year and cheered England to their pyrrhic victory. The reason for this switch of allegiance is that when he moved to London with his wife and two teenage children four years ago, he felt hanging onto ties in Australia would have made the transition more difficult, so he sold pretty much everything.

Regeneration is the most complex form of property development and asset management – miles more complicated than anything else I could think of

The move was a business decision, part of his attempt to ensure the survival of Lend Lease by refocusing the sprawling empire on property. During Higgins' eight years as managing director and chief executive, he sold about half of the company's assets – it was the biggest risk of his career, he says now, but it paid off: Lend Lease's share price rose from A$15 (£5.88) to A$43 (£16.98)in the late 1990s and the company returned more than A$2bn (£784m) to its shareholders in November 2000.

By 2002, though, Lend Lease had been hit by the global economic slowdown and last May Higgins and the board agreed that he should step aside. He dispels suggestions that he departed under a cloud, despite the howls of protest from Australian newspapers when he received a golden goodbye of £2.6m. He calls it "fair reward for eight years of almost uninterrupted growth".

Stand and deliver
Higgins' experience in overseeing seismic change at Lend Lease will stand him in good stead as he attempts to continue the work begun by his chairman, the fiery Scot Margaret Ford, in preparing the good ship EP for a trip into the unknown waters of housing.

It's an unenviable job, according to Professor Michael Parkinson, director of European and urban studies at Liverpool John Moores University. EP must "change its spots" from an economic regeneration agency to more physical work after the Communities Plan gave it the role of ensuring the supply of housing was boosted in the South and balanced in the North. And politically, there's a lot at stake. "Prescott's reputation is riding on EP's ability to deliver across England's housing markets," says Parkinson. "If Higgins doesn't succeed, the government will be in a lot of trouble."

Luckily for Prescott, Higgins has been playing what he calls the regeneration game for much of his working life. He was involved in construction of the Sydney Olympic Village on the site of a former meat market, the massive Bluewater shopping mall in Kent and the deal to take the Millennium Dome off the government's hands. His contract prevents him from talking about the dome but, for the record, the Olympic scheme was delivered on time and on budget.

The government is a major player but, in 10 years’ time, the major private companies will have major capabilities in regeneration

Chris Brown, chief executive of the Igloo Regeneration Partnership, believes Higgins has the right stuff: "The top team at EP is now absolutely superb – a great double-act. Margaret is socially motivated and very intelligent; David is one of the top property and finance operators."

Higgins himself says he doesn't feel any more pressure than in any other job and reels off his priorities as though he has been in the sector for years: "The National Land Use Database; the mapping of all brownfield land in the country; the registering of surplus government land; the brownfield strategy being developed – these are all areas we will invest in."

He has big ideas – gleaned from his years in property – about how to mould the process of renewal. "I'm particularly interested in bringing the private sector into regeneration. Unless we bring regeneration into the wider field, we will have failed. I've got the background in this area and, sitting on the other side of the fence, I can still see the private sector concerns but also know what the government is keen to deliver on.

"At the moment, the government is a major player but, in 10 years' time, the major private companies will have major capabilities in regeneration because there are only so many more office buildings that can be built. There's going to be a lot more value created here. The UK is at the forefront of addressing these issues: the programme of capital investment in infrastructure, hospitals, schools, the Communities Plan. Nowhere else in the world is there a realisation at a national level that you need to do something about it."

Credit to the nation
Higgins is keen to use tax credits to entice private sector outfits. In the USA, Lenlease is the third-biggest user of the tax credits that subsidise the delivery of affordable housing. Since he took over at EP, the quango has announced that it is sponsoring research into the possible use of tax credits, initially in pathfinder and growth areas, but potentially across the whole of England and Wales.

Higgins will also be using his private sector know-how to encourage housing associations to streamline their procurement process – helping the government cash go further and allowing suppliers to invest more in becoming more efficient. He says associations will also be called on to get involved with Housing Partnerships, the EP/Housing Corporation joint venture that has been quietly working up strategies for 80 key strategic sites in the growth areas and pathfinders. Ultimately, Higgins wants to see a series of consortia of housing associations and private developers set up that can bid for work , but will not comment on when these bodies would be required.