Page 1610 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 May 1990
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MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, that question is a topical one because members will recall that that property had been advertised for auction next Saturday, I think. There was a great deal of public concern about the fact that the Commonwealth was advertising for public sale a property that it had retained presumably on the basis that it required it for its own needs and, having decided that it did not need it, then intended to proceed to sell the property on the commercial market.
There were some very significant questions about that, Mr Speaker, that had to do not only with the question of whether the Commonwealth ought to be offering that property for sale publicly but with what were the consequential effects of it. For example, if that were sold by the Commonwealth and remained a piece of national land, as it has currently been classified, would the ACT Government ever have been able to collect rates in connection with any commercial operation carried on on that site? Just what was the status of the ACT Government in relation to that property? Would the National Capital Planning Authority continue to exercise the sole planning rights over what the land could be used for?
There were many, many issues that went way beyond the question of whether the Commonwealth really should be selling the property off. So the ACT Government recognised that there was not only an immediate problem, a problem of definition of whether the ACT (Planning and Land Management) Act of 1988 really permitted the Commonwealth to retain and then sell that property - that was the immediate question - but there were some much longer-term questions that needed to be addressed.
With those questions in mind and working specifically in the interests of this community which this Government represents, we sought to have the Government change its view. I wrote to Mr West, the Minister for Administrative Services, and I wrote to Ros Kelly in her capacity not only as a Minister in the Commonwealth Parliament but also as the member for Canberra, and sought their intervention to have the Commonwealth change its approach on this property and at least enter into some discussions with this Government before it went ahead. All of those requests were either rejected or ignored, and I should note that my request to Ros Kelly simply has not been answered.
Since it is a hostel for generally accommodating young people and at relatively low cost, it is a matter of some concern that, if it is sold by the Commonwealth, we lose the facility to house the young people who can be accommodated there, and it has accommodation for something like 500 people. So we resolved that, in order to clarify the issue, we would take steps to take out an interim injunction to prevent the Commonwealth selling that property. We went to the court with a request for such an injunction, and on 27 April the Commonwealth consented to
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