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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1197 ..
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR CORBELL (6.10): Mr Speaker, the Labor Party will be supporting this piece of legislation today. We will do so not because we support the Government's intention to reduce the level of the change of use charge to 50 per cent, which would amount to a complete rip-off of the Canberra community and a giving away of public assets at no charge, but because we do accept the need for this Assembly properly to consider the issue.
Mr Speaker, there has been a series of extensions to the sunset clause which was put in place back in 1997. The original sunset clause, as we are all aware, set the level of the change of use charge at 75 per cent of the value added to a lease by a variation of the lease, but set in place also the fact that the 75 per cent would revert to 100 per cent at the conclusion of the set period, which has been a number of things but was most recently set at 31 March, which is, of course, tomorrow.
The Government's action in relation to the development of the response to the original resolution which required a report to be prepared by Professor Des Nicholls has been tardy, to say the least. It took the Government over a year - in fact, closer to two - to initiate that report; so I do not expect the Government to stand up here now and say that this is an issue that should be hurried along, considering the considerable period it took to move on it. Nevertheless, it is important, now that the Nicholls report is a widely available public document, that the Government's intentions are clearly stated and the Standing Committee on Planning and Urban Services has reported to this place on the Nicholls report, that this Assembly have the full amount of time available properly to debate a very important issue of public policy.
For that reason, Mr Speaker, we will be supporting this extension. However, I should indicate that we do not see any need to extend the sunset clause past the date proposed in the legislation. There does not seem to me to be any reason immediately apparent why we should continue to allow the extension of the sunset clause. The issue should be resolved within the sunset clause which is set out in this amendment Bill. I believe that we should pass the amendment Bill today and have the issue resolved by the end of September. I see no reason why we should continue to allow the extension of the sunset clause.
The sunset clause effectively acknowledges that any level of betterment below 100 per cent is purely an interim measure and it has been the intention of the Assembly to date to allow it to revert at the end of that period. Mr Speaker, the Labor Party will be supporting this legislation today; but, as I have indicated, this extension is really the last one.
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