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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2424 ..

MS McRAE: The Minister is responsible for his own standing in the Assembly. If the Minister, with his words in the paragraph that I have quoted and the words that he says it turns on, has led me to believe that he could not care less what the Assembly thinks and has led me to believe that from everything that he has done, one letter tabled in December notwithstanding, then that is further proof that I am not just off on some solitary planet.

Mr Service, who is the head of the Property Council, is no idle player; he is one who is quite ready to come and kick us all in the knees when he is not happy. In an extensive interview he said:

Our response is a very positive one, Alex. It's part of the work that we've been doing - the Property Council have been doing for a number of years - to say to government that the ACT's land tenure system needs to be on as equal a footing as it can without competitive neighbours - that being New South Wales, Victoria and other states - and to say to the government that there is an option here to protect the land tenure system in terms of the community's position, but also an opportunity to continue to attract new investment opportunities to Canberra.

I have given you a copy of this. Not once in this whole lengthy debate does he say anything about the Assembly. The compere said:

So, is this a freehold, the freehold system you have when you can't have a freehold system?

Mr Service said:

Oh, I'm not sure that it's a freehold system when you can't have a freehold system. It still retains, as we understand it, all the protections necessary in a leasehold system from the government's perspective, but it offers investors a security of tenure which is as equal to freehold as you can get.

In response to a comment about constitutional reasons, he said:

That's our understanding, yes. That's certainly what the Minister has said. What we've been pushing for is a recognition that we need a more competitive system and that commercial and residential ought to be treated on an equal footing.

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