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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2316 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

to the AAT. This would get rid of the negotiation which seems to be the subject of quite a number of accusations of inappropriate use of lease in the leasehold system. As a series of precedents was set, it would become clear how the valuation system should go. We also strongly support improved land accounting, reporting and monitoring. We hope that the introduction of accrual accounting will do that. The first of the major areas of disagreement was whether we should have a statutory land planning authority and a statutory land management authority.

Those of us who had a dissenting view from that of the Government and the Opposition, that is, Ms Horodny and I - and I am sure that she will address this matter later - believe that the recommendations of Stein needed to be followed rather than the reports which the Government's own bureaucracy had commissioned to look after themselves. There was a rather inexpensive report, by comparison, done by Mant/Collins which seems to have taken the fancy of the Government and certainly the bureaucracy because it allows them to protect their own interest, taking both land management and the Planning Authority into Chief Minister's Department and burying the other things away in Urban Services. We consider that entirely inappropriate and would encourage the Government to review their view. However, we also note that, in this case, a combination of the members of the committee from the Labor and Liberal parties support the Government's position, for different reasons.

The other issue was the issue of appeal. Once again, we split on whether or not the appeal should go to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, with Ms Horodny and me believing that we should have the cheapest and most accessible appeals body. Whilst we believe there are still a few warts with the Land and Planning Appeals Board, we believe it actually is the appropriate way of dealing with appeals, rather than using the method of putting it to the AAT, as I recognise was suggested by Justice Stein; but then you would expect somebody from the legal profession, like the Minister, to look for a way to include lawyers. The second part of that appeals process was that the appeals be as wide as possible. Firstly, there is not enough evidence of vexatious appeals for us to restrict the appeals process. Secondly, even if there are vexatious appeals, the planning appeals body and the AAT, for that matter, both have the power to eliminate appeals on the grounds that they are vexatious. To the best of my knowledge, that actually has not had to be done because it causes too much trouble.

To demonstrate the need for a separate statutory planning authority and a separate land management authority, I thought I would give an example of what I consider to be yet another problem with a lease in Canberra which, to my understanding, is due for approval today. It may well not be too late in this case; it may well be that the Minister can stop an inappropriate approval of a change of lease purpose for the Oasis swimming pool site at Deakin. I have in front of me a number of applications and different planning papers on this particular issue. There was an application for a variation to the lease in the initial instance which asked for an increase from 1,000 square metres to 1,500 square metres in order to allow a health facility. That was lodged on 14 March 1996 by a quite well-known lobbyist in this area who was once an employee of the Government. Another lease purpose change dated 24 May 1996 was lodged.

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