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I think the more fundamental question was whether the variation of this lease should proceed. The committee recommended:

That the Minister defer consideration of varying the lease for Watson Section 61 Block 8 until such time as the Inquiry into the Leasehold System is completed, or until such time as that Inquiry has advised the Minister on this specific lease, in order for the Minister to properly determine:

- what is the appropriate level of betterment to be paid to the Territory -

and after the number of variations that have applied to this lease and proposed changes to it, I do not think that is going to be a particularly easy matter to assess -

- what is the appropriate process to be followed by the Department

- what is the method of ensuring that the lessee will not continue his former practice of breaching lease contracts.

Mr Speaker, as our report indicates, that is the way the committee perceived what had happened on a number of occasions. This lessee simply did not continue with what is, effectively, when he signs a lease, a contract. He had not continued with his part of that contract on a number of occasions over a number of issues. The committee considered that to be serious enough to warrant a delay in the variation to this lease until such time as those issues are sorted out. Mr Speaker, I believe that the committee, in this unanimous report, has thought very carefully about the situation with leasehold. We believe it appropriate that this issue be dealt with very carefully by government. We hope that it will form part of the inquiry that the Government has announced. I believe that there will be further information on that later this week.

MR KAINE (5.23): Mr Speaker, I have to agree with Mr Moore that the committee's review of the administration of this lease raises a number of interesting questions. The bottom line is: Is the administration of our leasing system being effected in the best interests of the ACT community? I think the aspect of the chronology, the details of which are at the back of the report, that struck me most forcefully was the fact that the present lessee has, over a period of about eight years, sought approval for a series of development proposals, all of which have been approved and all of which had timescales for starting and finishing the development; but not one of them has been met. One must question how the ACT Government can approve a proposal that says that you must start it within a certain time and you must finish it within a certain time, and those conditions are not met; there is another proposal put forward; it also is approved and has timescales attached to it; those timescales are not met; and so we go on, over a series of succeeding proposals.

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