Page 3337 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 October 2022
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We are getting very weary of this conversation. We do hope that the government is listening. It has an Integrity Commission report to look at that is related to its processes. It has a standing committee report—again, made up of representatives of all the parties—that has made strong recommendations on its land release program. It has an Auditor-General’s report to reflect on. I trust that the government will start to listen and will implement real solutions that improve the affordability and variety of land available to Territorians.
MS CLAY (Ginninderra) (3.54): We have spoken a lot in the chamber this year about land release. It is usually done in the context of individual sites—CSIRO Ginninderra or areas south of Tuggeranong. We have had less conversation about general land release. I would like to thank Ms Lee, and Mr Parton in her absence, for moving this motion, but I question the timing of the motion.
The Standing Committee on Public Accounts released a report: Inquiry into the Auditor-General’s report No 4 of 2020: residential land supply and release. A number of the calls in the original motion are contained in the recommendations in the standing committee’s report. We have a really careful committee process. Committees look at the subject matter, they get expert evidence, they talk to members of the community, they come up with careful recommendations and the government responds. I, for one, would like to see how the government is going to respond. We have not yet seen that response, so it is difficult to leap immediately into action on these recommendations.
I am particularly interested in a few of the recommendations, and the government response to those recommendations. We have calls for more publicly available information; measures to support housing affordability, such as further advocating for tax reform to the commonwealth government; measures on reporting social and affordable housing dwellings and plots purchased by community housing providers; and the recommendation that the ACT government release more land, particularly in the context of the government’s commitment to 70 per cent infill development.
I would like to reiterate the importance of the careful future development of Canberra. Again, it is important that we do this carefully. We are in the middle of a planning review at the moment. We have a new Territory Plan coming on. We know that there are a lot of moving pieces to this. We also understand that we need to limit greenfield development on the outskirts of Canberra. There are so many reasons that we do not want to keep sprawling. Greenfield land costs a lot of money to develop. That is because it does not have all of the necessary infrastructure. It does not have roads, sewerage and electricity; we have to build that. So it will not be cheap housing when we have to spend a lot of money developing it first.
Greenfield land is likely to have important environmental, Ngunnawal and First Nations cultural values. That land has not been developed. We have to look at it really carefully. We have to study it and see what is there, and we have to make a conscious choice about whether we should protect it or whether we should develop it. It is a choice that we can only make once. If we make the wrong choice, our children cannot come back and restore it. The choice has been made; it is gone forever.
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