Page 4192 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 October 1991
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How can anyone considering putting additional personal resources into improving Canberra through the processes of their business have any confidence in the system when these two subclauses of the Bill introduce so many qualifications and uncertainties into what otherwise is a certain and unqualified process? I make the point that nowhere else in the Bill can I find any such ambiguities, or any such qualification on what a person can do with their lease.
The fourth point, Mr Speaker, I think is obvious. In subclause 171(g) the Bill says:
Where ...
(g) the lessee pays the determined fee;
This was the major difference between the Liberals and others when we first drafted this Bill, because we said that the wording should be "Where the lessee pays the determined administrative fee". So, quite clearly, the Liberals cannot agree with that particular point because it again remains open. What fee is going to be payable? Is it going to be 100 per cent of the unimproved capital value, or 200 per cent, or 300 per cent? How can a businessman know with any degree of certainty whether he should make an investment, or whether he should not?
So, that particular clause seems to me to introduce an uncertainty, an almost ideological content. In fairness to the Labor Party, at no place else in the Bill can I find where it has done that. If we are not careful, that clause alone will lead to an exodus of capital and private sector entrepreneurs from the ACT.
The uncertainty, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, is exacerbated when one refers to the accompanying paper called "Draft Proposals for Regulations and Disallowable Instruments". In paragraph 13 of what are, I presume, intended to be explanatory and amplifying remarks, it states:
Paragraph 171(c) -
that is paragraph 171(c) of the Bill -
provides for the identification of additional requirements through regulation. However, it is not proposed at this stage to specify by regulation additional requirements for the grant of a further lease.
In other words, we are putting constraints on commercial lessees, and we are not even going to tell them what they are. We are not going to put out any regulation on the matter. The question is: How is the Government going to tell the commercial world what they mean by that paragraph;
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