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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2528 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Just to explain the policy background to this issue, the usual process by which government land is sold is by auction or tender, but under the Land Act the Government can sell land by direct grant, without any auction process, provided that the criteria for making such a direct grant are previously tabled in the Assembly by disallowable instrument. However, there has been a longstanding policy that the public interest is better served by releasing land through a competitive process rather than through direct grant, unless the land is to be used for some community purpose or the project is of a unique and exceptional nature. This was recently confirmed by the Government in the report "Appropriateness of dealing with developers outside a competitive process", released by the ACT Government's Property Advisory Council in June 1999.

What happened with McKellar goes right back to 1996 when the Chief Minister announced investigation of the feasibility of a joint venture with a group of five people called Eco-Land to develop vacant land around local centres with environmentally sensitive housing to help revitalise the centres. Much stress was placed on the fact that these five people were young local people who had good ideas that deserve support. Two of these people were the Tokich brothers. The Chief Minister even said that ACTEW was interested in the proposal and was advising the group on energy efficiency and water reuse issues.

In September 1997 Gary Humphries, as the then Planning Minister, tabled a number of disallowable instruments in the Assembly. Contrary to what Mr Humphries said on Tuesday, he did not speak to them. One of these was Determination 200 of 1997 which established the criteria for direct grants of land in or adjacent to local centres. The Minister's statement that was issued with the determination stated that this was to allow grants of land to be made to a local company, "Eco-Land", to develop innovative ecologically sustainable housing near local shops as a way of revitalising them. However, the statement later says that, unfortunately, Eco-Land had hoped to include environmental initiatives as part of the development, but because they were small projects this was not possible.

This statement obviously begs the question of why the Government was proceeding with this direct grant at all when there was nothing particularly innovative about it. Sure, there would be community benefit from an improvement to the local centres, but the Government could have got any number of builders to do this work.

This statement also included the incorrect statement that Eco-Land was a local company. There has never been a company registered in the name of Eco-Land. Eco-Land was registered as a business name by one of the five people, Ms Kylie Lenihan, but there was never a formal business relationship between the five.

The idea that this was going to be a joint venture with government also became a lot vaguer. The statement said that, apart from paying for the land, as part of the agreement Eco-Land will enter into various public works at the centre. However, only yesterday did we find out that Tokich Homes, who were eventually given the land, did not actually pay the full market value of the land. They only paid some $90,000 instead of $190,000. Contrary to what Mr Humphries said on Tuesday, that Tokich were paying full value for the land plus putting in more money for the public works, we have since been told that the market value was reduced by the $100,000 to cover the extra costs. In effect, the

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