Page 501 - Week 02 - Thursday, 22 February 1990
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suggest that such allegations must be investigated. Often where there is smoke there is fire. It is appropriate that they be investigated.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Jensen, your time has expired.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (4.04): I am very pleased indeed that Mr Moore has raised this matter of public importance today. It deserves very close scrutiny by this Assembly. I am very pleased to hear the support throughout the Assembly for the ACT leasehold system. I am aware that prior to forming the Alliance Government the Liberal Party had a policy of perpetual leasehold. I am very pleased that it has backed away from that very silly proposition.
The reasons that the ACT's leasehold system is such an asset to our community and is so deserving of our support have often been stated. Briefly put, they include the orderly development of the ACT and place conditions on the granting of leases, thus ensuring that development of the ACT is conducted in an orderly way. They also ensure that the city and the Territory can develop in a predictable fashion. I think it is very important that in a planned city we are able to predict the method of development and what form that development might take. This is important in order to prevent speculation. I believe that the main reason why we have the legacy of the leasehold system in the ACT was that at the time the ACT was formed there had been prodigious and scandalous speculation in land in both Sydney and Melbourne. The founding people in the ACT wanted to avoid undue speculation in land, and the leasehold system was seen as an effective method of doing that. I am very pleased indeed that everybody still upholds that system.
Nevertheless, there have been difficulties, as Mr Moore has pointed out, in the administration of the system. I do not think we need to go back over the kinds of examples that have been public for many years now, but I would like to quote a comment made by the Chamber of Commerce as long ago as 1966 which sums up the difficulty that has been faced all along. It said:
We again sound a warning that the advantages of a planned city, and incidentally the cost of a planned city, will be dissipated and wasted if policies for development and conduct of business are not clearly established and clearly defined and unequivocally supported by effective enforceable legislation.
That is a problem that we still face. I know that Mr Moore and Mr Whalan have pointed to the tedious and repetitious allegations of corruption, fraud, some kind of criminality in the administration of the leasehold system in the ACT. Mr Collaery based his career upon it.
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