Page 4611 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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Mr Berry: How about Wollongong? Tell us about Wollongong.
MR COLLAERY: I would not like to start on Wollongong. All over the country we have seen the sorts of things that Mr Moore adverted to when he gave his definition of the developer's concept. He described it as the ability to erect a building and sell it for an appropriate profit that took into account all of their inputs; otherwise developers sought to make a profit out of land speculation by rezoning it. I know that Mr Moore simplified the argument, but what he was saying again and was raising again was the injunction or enjoiner that all governments in this Territory live with, and that is that when land was ceded to us under the Seat of Government Act of 1910 there was not to be land speculation.
I do not think I have ever seen any evidence of land speculation in the ACT in the context in which the early federation debates placed land speculation in terms of the Seat of Government Act. Really, the ACT has been pretty clean. If along the way people came from other parts of Australia, and perhaps other parts of the world - odd islands in the Mediterranean - and made a good killing out of the leasehold system, then they are issues that we are historically interested in and they are issues that deserve attention.
This Government, the Alliance Government, inherited a discussion white paper - Mr Connolly did not advert to it in that page of the debates that he mentioned - which was a cobbling together of the great debates of 1986 and 1987 with Jill Lang and the others that Mr Moore adverted to. None of those debates had any substantial contribution to them and they were contentious debates in the Labor Party. I recall John Mant, officers of the lands administration of the then Territory government, and miscellaneous community groups, and Barry Reid - yes, to do justice to Barry Reid - and the odd individual member of the Labor Party. But certainly none of the local parliamentary aspirants were involved and now they purport to have standing in this debate.
I think even Mr Moore will concede that, though he finds himself on the other side of the house at the moment. That is not necessarily an invitation, Mr Moore. I doubt that he would credibilise - I got that American word this week - the Labor Opposition.
I would just like to do an overview and to assure Mr Moore that from where I stand, and from where the Chief Minister and his Executive Deputy, Mr Jensen, stand, no hokey-pokey will be going on with land in this Territory while we are in government. We take a very strong interest in the matter. As Mrs Grassby well knows, the Government has responded assertively to the Phillip pool issue and will in a short time finally clarify its situation on the issue. I do need to remind the house that it was a Labor Minister, Gordon Scholes, who granted such a long lease over the pool
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