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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2529 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

ACT Government still paid for the public works by forgoing full market value of the land, and Tokich did not have to spend an extra cent on public works because they got the land at a discount price.

As an aside, it appears that the price paid by Tokich for the Fisher land, $284,000, as listed in the schedule provided by the Minister for Urban Services, is full market value. Perhaps Mr Humphries could enlighten us on whether this is also an error or whether this amount actually includes public works at the Fisher shops.

On Tuesday Mr Humphries also said that if the Government had gone to tender on the McKellar land the bidders would minimise the amount of money that they would set aside for public works. This is not true and it is rubbish. The Government has already set up a competitive tender process for land where the amount of money to be spent on public works is set in the conditions of the sale. For example, Mr Humphries would remember the sale of section 41 in Manuka where bidders were required to put aside some $1.5m for associated works on Palmerston Lane.

I regret that the Assembly did not pick up the problems with this disallowable instrument at the time. It is, however, of great concern to me that the questions on notice I asked about this direct grant proved to contain incorrect information. We can thank the Chief Minister for drawing our attention to this whole mess again by launching the building work recently.

Let me move on to one of the key issues in this affair, the issue of how Tokich Homes ended up with the lease on the land. In late 1998 and early 1999 Brendan Smyth tabled schedules of leases directly granted by the Government which indicated that Tokich Homes had been granted leases over vacant blocks next to McKellar and Fisher shops. In three questions on notice I asked about the reason for this grant, I got the response that the land had been sold to Tokich Homes, who used the trading name of Eco-Land, in accordance with the earlier determination. It is interesting that all the documents now refer to Tokich Homes rather than Eco-Land. However, in a briefing given to the Greens in 1996 by the five people in Eco-Land, we were told that Eco-Land was independent of the other construction businesses of the Tokich family, even though two of the partners in the Eco-Land group were members of the Tokich family. We have since received information from Ms Lenihan that the Eco-Land group ceased to meet during 1997 but that the Tokich brothers continued independent negotiations with the Government over the land.

On Tuesday, Mr Humphries confirmed that at some point in 1997 and 1998 it became unclear who were the exact organisations and people that the Government was dealing with, and that they relied on the information on the application form for the grant of land that Tokich Homes Pty Ltd was trading as Eco-Land Developments and was authorised to act on behalf of the Eco-Land group. It has since become clear that Tokich Homes has never traded as Eco-Land Developments.

I am amazed and concerned that the bureaucrats did not check the details in the application. In fact, they should have been alerted to a problem by the letter from St George Bank, which we saw after getting these copies of these documents from Mr Humphries, attached to the application which referred to Tokich Homes trading as

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