Page 4507 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 20 November 1991
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Alliance Government. On the information before me, and on my recollection of the schedule that was put out at the time - there were three tables in the schedule - betterment was charged in three categories.
The first was a full charge grant, that is, the grant of a lease based on full fees - in other words, no concessions whatsoever. The betterment charge ranged from 100 to 50 per cent, depending on the period since the grant of the lease. For less than five years, it was 100 per cent. For 20 years and over, it was 50 per cent. That was the proposal.
The second table talks about concessionary grants. These are grants where the betterment charge ranged from 100 per cent to 80 per cent - that is, for a period since the last grant of less than 10 years, 100 per cent; for 20 years and over, up to 80 per cent. The third category is grants free of charge. The initial grant of the lease to the bowling club, as I understand it from evidence given to us, was effectively a grant free of charge. The betterment fee in this category ranged from 100 per cent to 90 per cent.
I would like the Minister to provide to the Assembly an assessment as to what formula is proposed to be used. I accept that at this stage the Government or the department is not in a position to determine the actual amount of money, because there is a valuation to be done and that can be done only when a proposal is put forward and a lease change is actually proposed. I do not expect a statement on betterment. What I do expect, however, is a clear statement on what formula is expected to be used once the lease variation is being prepared. On that basis I will await with interest the comments by the Minister.
Let me now turn to some of the reasons why we believe this development-driven planning proposal - and that is all it is - is not considered to be acceptable in this part of Forrest. We will talk firstly about the scheme itself. By its very nature, the draft variation put before the people and the Assembly was deficient in a number of areas. If we examine the sparse document that is the first draft proposal, we see that it has a heritage statement in it. That is very interesting. That heritage statement says, and I quote part of it:
The ACT Heritage Committee was consulted however, and noted that while the proposal would alter the heritage significance of the place in terms of the relational qualities of the place with surrounding residential areas the proposal would not diminish the associated values of the site.
That is interesting, because in fact the Heritage Committee, when it made its submission to the Planning Authority, had a completely different view. It recommended that what was proposed - that is, the demolition of the building - was not appropriate at this stage. On transport, we have the simple statement:
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