Page 641 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 May 1992
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MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, one of the benefits of government returning to this area is that it will provide greater choice to home buyers and to builders. I am not going to be precise yet about how this will all be done, but we may well return to the days when you would line up at the Albert Hall and put your hand up to bid against other people in Canberra for the block of land that you had looked at. That seemed to be a very good system that people constantly tell me they would like to have back. A great number of builders have also asked for a return to that system.
I know that, in the case that Ms Ellis refers to, people who want a particular block of land are told that they can have it but that they have to have the builder who goes with it. That happens. It is no criticism of developers, because, after all, it was a Labor Federal government that developed this system. It has gone on, I believe, reasonably well, given the circumstances. When the land is sold to the developers, they are not required to specify the way in which it will be on-sold or how it may be acquired by the ordinary householder.
In most cases these days, when people buy they have to buy a house and land package. I think that is unfortunate. The question of choice that Ms Ellis raises is very important. In the days when you bought your land separately, you scouted it, you looked at it, you stood on it and you could plan the house you wanted on it. I think you got a better designed house as a result. I am not criticising in any way the quality of the homes that we get in Canberra. I think the builders build good quality homes. I do not get complaints. I have not had one complaint about quality of building.
I think we get good homes and I think they are at very competitive costs. Our builders do it very efficiently and I commend them for that. Part of the price we pay for that, the other side of the coin, is that we get a pretty stereotype sort of house in many circumstances, a house not particularly appropriate to today's demands for greater solar consciousness. If we got back to where you could put your hand up for a block of land, we would get a better design of housing.
But there are other benefits besides choice. For example, if over the next three years the Government made a capital investment in land development, then in the longer term the return on that capital, depending on the level of investment, could range up to $15m a year. That would depend on the proportion of government involvement as against private involvement.
Let me put it another way. Look at Gungahlin and take a mythical block of about $60,000. You all know that you have to take each block on its own as far as price goes. The return to government, the raw cost of that land - that is, what the Government gets back - averages about $14,000 a block. That $14,000 may cover the cost of the immediate infrastructure we put in; but it does not cover, by any means, the long-term infrastructure for Gungahlin that we have to pay for. The profit to the developer - and I very heavily emphasise the risk that the developer may take - ranges up to $10,000. I emphasise that, although the developer may get that profit, he might also lose. I do not think that has been the case - it has not happened - but he may not realise the full $10,000.
In South Tuggeranong, recent purchases of blocks of land worth, say, $45,000, have returned about $5,000 a block to the ACT, whereas the developer might have made a profit of up to $7,000 a block.
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