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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2318 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

I talk to people in Gungahlin on the concerns they have about planning and what they say to me is that the only place where there is public open space now is where houses can't be built. Often that land is too steep, it is on a floodway, or something like that. That is not good planning.

I am sure the minister will stand up and respond to me by saying, "Well, Labor started it all in Gungahlin." Well, minister, this government and the previous Carnell government have now been in office for just over five long years. Have we seen any serious attempt to change residential subdivision design and construction from this government? No. Have we ever seen anything from this minister since he has been in office? No. Instead we see this government maintaining its insistence that the practice of joint ventures delivers the best results. I can find plenty of residents in Gungahlin who believe that is patently false, to use the minister for health's favourite term.

It is patently false because it fails to deliver, and that is why this party, this opposition, is prepared to recognise the folly of entering into joint ventures when it comes to land development. Again, I can see the minister making his note. He is going to stand up here and say that Labor has a bad record on joint ventures too. I am quite prepared to say that our record wasn't that good. I am prepared to acknowledge that. But has this government done anything to deal with the market failure resulting from joint venture development and residential subdivisions since it has been in office? No. You only have to go to places like Gungahlin, like Ngunnawal and Nicholls and Amaroo, to see those problems, but it has not addressed those problems.

The Labor Party has a policy of returning responsibility for the development of new sections of subdivision to the public sector, and the reason for this is that we recognise the market failure inherent in the design of new subdivisions constructed under this government, as well as under previous administrations. Has this government addressed that problem? No, they have not. Have they sought to address it in this budget? No, they have not.

The only other issue that I would like to raise is the issue of leasehold administration. Leasehold administration is a fundamentally important core function for government in this town. Land in the ACT is held under leasehold, not freehold. Land in the ACT is the territory's most valuable fixed asset. It is not ACTEW, as is often said, but land. Our land is the most valuable asset and it must be managed responsibly.

But how does this government respond to managing this most valuable of all of the territory's assets? It does that by removing almost all of the expertise for administering the leasehold. And where is the proof of this? The proof of this is in an advertisement that appeared in the Canberra Times a couple of weeks ago, where the government sought expressions of interest from people in the private sector who could prepare lease and development conditions for land the government was proposing to release. Now you would have thought that the administration of leasehold land was a fairly important task that the government would retain expertise on. But have we seen that? No, we have not. Again, this government doesn't see providing that service as its primary function. That is something that we can just contract out.

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