Page 1134 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 1991
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1. The recurrent use of Section 11A of the City Area Leases Ordinance to change the purpose of leases, conferring vastly enhanced development rights allowing radical redevelopment, has raised the question of what the legislature had in mind when the 11A amendment was inserted in September 1936 only two months after the ordinance came into effect. The short answer is that the legislature had nothing much in mind at all and was almost certainly oblivious of the amendment.
2. Section 11A was instigated by Charles Daley, Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior. Charles Daley was a careful and competent custodian of the public interest in the Canberra leasehold system from its beginnings in 1924, and indeed, of all matters concerning the planning and development of the city, and remained so to the time of his retirement in 1951.
Remember that I am quoting from a paper by Peter Harrison:
3. As Chief Town Planner with the NCDC in the 1960s I -
Peter Harrison -
regarded 11A as an ever-present peril to orderly land use planning in the ACT.
And, for that reason, he considered it appropriate to ask Charles Daley how it came to be in what at that stage was an ordinance. He noted his response, and he quotes now from Mr Daley:
That was for Mrs Breckenreg ... a decent sort of woman. She had the lease on the corner of the Sydney Building, where Kennards are now.
Remember that this is referring back to 1961:
The lease allowed two shops and she wanted to subdivide the ground floor into four shops, but the other lessees along there complained. It was hard enough keeping tenants - it was the Depression you know - without having two extra shops competing. I couldn't recommend that the lease be changed like that when the other lessees were complaining so we made it a matter for the Court to decide ...
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