Page 5645 - Week 17 - Thursday, 5 December 1991
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I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect people to follow the normal procedures instead of using this basic, almost automatic residential renewal - which I accept and I agree with, but not as a means of changing the nature of the lease, because it seems to me that we will wind up without the betterment tax. Whether you think the betterment tax should be 50 per cent or 100 per cent is another debate. Nevertheless, the community is entitled to its share of the change in the purpose of a lease.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (12.43): Mr Deputy Speaker, I oppose both Mr Jensen's amendment and Mr Moore's amendment of the amendment. People are seeing phantoms behind every bush and thinking that we have to close off every possibility of anybody ever doing anything with a residential block. For instance, I am sure Mr Moore has not thought his amendment through, because, as I understand it, that would prevent dual occupancy on a block, and that is already a law and it is already something that people are entitled to. This would preclude that, as I see it.
Mr Moore: No, it would not.
MR KAINE: Well, you say that you cannot increase the number of dwellings on the block. It is a case of trying to prevent people from doing anything with their piece of ground. I read this clause of the Bill as being very specific - to virtually grant lessees of residential property leases in perpetuity. That is what it does, whether you call it that or not. Now you want to go back on that. You want to say, "Well, you can have a lease in perpetuity, but you cannot actually do much with it after you have got it". I think that is a backhanded way of control. There are other ways of controlling what people can do with a lease. To try to build it into here, in amendments that have not been thought through as to what the consequences are, I submit is inappropriate. I do not support either of them.
MR JENSEN (12.45): Mr Deputy Speaker, could I very quickly give an example of the problem that I see at the moment. Out there in the marketplace at the moment we have, from a residential point of view, two types of leases. One just says "residential"; the other lease, such as my lease, says, "single residential". If you are allowed to have multi-density residential, your lease will say that. But there is a considerable number of leases out there that just say "residential".
The point that I am making is that, if I have a single residential lease and I want to convert it into more than one residence, I am required to surrender, obtain a regrant and pay the appropriate betterment accordingly. In fact, you could argue that because I have a single residential lease I am being discriminated against, because if I want to put more than one house on my block I am required to pay betterment. But if Mr Wood has a lease that says "residential only" - nothing else - and he wants to put
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