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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2322 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Assembly, we will be able to see how the independent arbiter views the state of lease and land management in the ACT. He will give us a check that is independent of us all and he will be able to be held up to the public. He can say, "See, all this does work. Here is the proof of it". I may stand to be corrected in a year's time and we may go through this entire debate about forming new statutory authorities; but, for the time being, I think this is going to work.

Stein also recommended legislative changes to improve administration. Recommendations 4 and 22 call for the basic principles to be included in the Land Act. The Government did not accept them as they were but has given a clear promise that they will come back for further discussion. At that point we can have a debate about the essence of what land and lease management should be within the Land Act; as a preamble or as an addition, I do not really care. We can have that debate. In recommendation 21, Stein called for all details relating to land and lease management to be in one piece of legislation. Again, while not taking the full requirement on board, the Government has clearly indicated sympathy with clarifying intent and objectives as much as possible, which I think can only help us all.

The second of Stein's major terms of reference was the question of betterment. I think these chapters - there were quite a few; 10, 11 and 15, from memory - were not as thorough or as useful as perhaps those on the overview of administration were. Even though I disagree with the outcomes that Stein came to, the fact that we have a Commissioner for Land and Planning and a new Planning and Land Management Division is more or less in sympathy with what Stein recommended. With betterment, I thought the conclusions were less satisfying. The board could not assess the impact of betterment remission in the ACT and called for the Government to view all claims for the removal of betterment sceptically. It basically said, "Well, we do not know what the impact of 100 betterments has been. Governments should do more work on it. However, if any developer comes to you and says, `Remit betterment', we will view that very sceptically". Maybe that is right, and probably that is exactly how I would view it were I the Minister. However, I think that is getting away with it a bit lightly.

I think it is very important that we have a thorough look back and have government do the work that was suggested in recommendation 15.15 where Stein basically said, "Well, find out; just go back and have a look at what the claims were; what the outcomes were; what the reality was". We saw how difficult that was in the most contentious of the leases that were discussed in Stein, but I still think the answers were not terribly satisfactory. There was lots of speculation around it all. I think we cannot come to a total policy on betterment until we understand the Government's remission policy; until we understand the strategic plan; until we have an accepted pattern of how we are going with urban renewal; and until we understand how we manage our commercial and industrial leases. On all those questions I think we could benefit collectively from a lot more work being done by the Government now, on the basis of the issues that were raised by Stein and by the committee.

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