Page 5917 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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One of the things that came out of this report was that if you are going to lease land to people for farming purposes you have to give them tenure and, if the land is taken back at some time, they then would need to be reimbursed a reasonable amount because you cannot expect people to take up farming land and look after it as it should be done if they know that at any time they could find themselves with a week's notice to get out on the road, as the saying goes, or if they cannot be reimbursed for the amount of work they put into it.
We are very fortunate to have this sort of land around Canberra. There will come a time - I am quite sure my grandchildren will see it - when a lot of this land will have to be built on if Canberra keeps growing at the rate it is at the moment. Being a country girl, I know what a lovely life it is to be able to live on more land than just a small acreage or small block in town with neighbours virtually at your front and back doors.
Some evidence has shown that there are people who are not doing well, but there are also people who are doing extremely well. A person to whom I spoke had rented a house on a block that the Government leased out; it also had two other houses on it. When she leased the house, it was in very bad repair. The rent was rather reasonable, so she was prepared to put quite a bit into doing up the house. Immediately this had been done, not only did her rent go up but also the rent on the other houses went up. When she added up the amount of money that was coming in from the rent on the houses, she found that the person leasing the property was making quite a bit of profit without doing anything to the land. This was a point that needed to be looked into because I felt that this was not the way to go about it.
I feel that the land should be in use. If there are cattle or sheep on the land, it prevents bushfires from starting in long grass. Also all the farmers to whom we spoke, who farm this land or who look after it, do not stop people from bushwalking on their land. They do not mind this, as long as people close gates and take the care that they take of it. So, the people of Canberra are not locked out of this land; they are still able to use it for bushwalks or picnics or things like this.
Most of the people to whom we spoke were very helpful in coming forward with their remarks. I felt that the majority of them were genuinely keen to do the right thing but the fact that they have little or no tenure and that, if they were to leave, they would not get reimbursed for quite a bit of the amount of money that they have put into the land is of great concern. As a girl from the land and a farming area, I saw their point. If you feel that you are not going to get anything back from it, why should you sink an enormous amount of money into it? I think we should look after these people. Until we need the land,
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