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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2152 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

a crying need within Canberra to ensure that office space goes to Gungahlin rather than to the areas around the inner city. There is a series of different forces that tend to encourage redevelopment in areas like Northbourne Avenue rather than in Gungahlin. To this extent Mr Humphries is right; a thoughtful response is required to ensure that that occurs at the right time. No doubt there will be an appropriate time when further office development, particularly office development for the private sector, does wind up on Northbourne Avenue. I believe there will be an appropriate time for further residential development within what is currently the B1 zone. Unfortunately, setting the B1 zone out as it is without these other restrictions in place, without an identification of how much and when, has led to a whole series of other problems.

One of the most obvious ones that come to my mind is the issue highlighted yesterday over rates. Because there is speculation on the potential for land for redevelopment, the land is considered to have a higher value, and people, particularly elderly people living in the area who have no intention of redeveloping, wind up paying much higher rates because the unimproved capital value of their land has taken into account the potential for redevelopment. Mr Speaker, a whole series of issues comes into play there, and they really have been set in motion by the identification of this area as a B1 zone. If Mr Humphries stood up and said, "We now have in place this whole series of restrictions and controls, we have the strategy for that area", or even if we had divided the area into B1A, B1B, B1C, I think he would have a stronger argument. Until those things are in place, Mr Speaker, there is, as far as I am concerned, a damaging element of speculation occurring. A message goes out to developers that yes, they will be able to develop in this area, and they will be able to do so and so. They then prepare a development consistent with the guidelines, consistent with the B1 zone, and it goes to the LAPAC and local people say, "No, that is not what we want. Yes, we accept some development, but we certainly do not want it on the scale that you are talking about. We certainly do not want it at this place, and why is it occurring now?". There is a random increase in development.

There is also the issue of betterment and the influence that has on how much development occurs within this area as opposed to how much development occurs in other places. Until now we have not been particularly good at targeting our betterment and targeting that kind of support for development where it happens to suit the strategy as far as our plans go. I know that that is a matter that the Government are readdressing as part of their response to the Stein report. Indeed, when my committee brings down its comments on those responses tomorrow, that will give us another opportunity to debate such issues. Mr Speaker, out of sheer frustration, I think, comes a motion like the one that Ms Tucker has put. Things are really going wrong; you do not have the rest in place and there is time for us to look and say, "Do we put the whole thing on hold and have a proper relook at it instead of just letting it roll on and cause the sorts of problems that we see being caused within this B1 area?".

I was particularly interested to hear Ms Tucker talking about the redevelopment of inner Canberra and the redevelopment of this area. She said that she does not oppose the redevelopment of the area provided it is done appropriately. What she does oppose is effectively using a Kingston-style redevelopment, a redevelopment of the system of some 20 years ago, within the B1 zone. That makes good sense, Mr Speaker. If we are going to look at redevelopment in any area of Canberra we should be ensuring that we retain the

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