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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4807 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: No, Mr Speaker; he quoted words that I had used - "We will not move to change the system to perpetual leasehold" - and I am making the point that "we" means the ACT Government, not the Federal Government. Mr Speaker, the Federal Government has announced its intention to allow the ACT Legislative Assembly to change the system of land tenure through legislation enacted in this place; not to do it by itself; not to have the Federal Parliament create that tenure by an enactment that imposes on the ACT, a la the Andrews Bill, but rather to allow the ACT Assembly to enact that if it so chooses. When I made the commitment that Mr Berry refers to there was a Labor government in power federally, and I certainly could not speak for a Federal Labor government, much less than I could speak for a Federal Liberal government.

Mrs Carnell: I do not know. It is about even, I reckon.

MR HUMPHRIES: We will not go into that debate, Mr Speaker. I must say I welcome the move by the Federal Government. I think that has changed the complexion of this debate very considerably and I welcome that. I hope that it does allow us to have a debate in this place, perhaps even in this term of the Assembly, on the provisions for changing the nature of the tenure of land in the ACT.

My party's position has long been that we support a longer sense of tenure for those who hold land in the ACT, both residential and commercial land, and possibly also rural land. We take the view that citizens in the ACT who invest in land should not obtain a significantly lesser estate in that land than do citizens making a similarly sized investment in, say, New South Wales or Victoria or anywhere else in the country, and that is why we support these sorts of measures. The measures which appear in the debate today concerning automatic renewal, Mr Speaker, do not amount to perpetual leasehold. They are something that approaches that in terms of security, but are not perpetual leasehold and should not be mistaken for that, although we feel it is certainly a step in the right direction.

MR SPEAKER: Do you have a supplementary question, Mr Berry?

MR BERRY: Minister, were you aware of the letter from Mrs Carnell to the Federal Minister requesting this outcome?

Mr Humphries: What outcome?

MR BERRY: Were you aware of the letter from Chief Minister Carnell to the Federal Minister for Territories requesting this result?

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, Mr Speaker, I was aware of that letter - - -

Mr Moore: After you guaranteed no action.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, it was long afterwards. That letter was written, as I recall, a couple of months ago. The statement you referred to I made in the Assembly last year. Mr Speaker, I can hardly be responsible for having made an assumption about what the Commonwealth Government was going to do last year, which has now changed in the course of this year.

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