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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 3069 ..

MR MOORE: Their leasehold and planning system is incredibly stringent, and they make no bones about it. There is no move. Mr Smyth interjected a moment ago, "Is their planning system like ours?" One of the discussions I had with the former head of the leasehold system in Hong Kong was about what happens when people breach their lease and how they clean that up. We had that problem in Fyshwick. Our approach was to say, "It has already been done. We will have to change their leases and give it to them."

In Hong Kong they did not. They gave them three years to change their lease. During that time the lessee had to pay extra rent as though they were working in an area of higher lease values. They were using residential areas for factories, effectively. The authorities in Hong Kong pursued the matter vigorously. We have never been prepared to do that. Maybe there are a lot of good reasons for that.

The fundamental point is what happens when you have 100 per cent betterment. People develop, because development is needed. They undertake development not so they can make money. They do it because they have a particular purpose in a particular area. It suits society for that to happen.

There are times when, for a specific purpose, we should give an exemption under our leasehold system. For example, we do not charge anybody for a lease for a church, because we see community benefit in having churches. We charge very little-a peppercorn rent-for scout halls and schools. We should be charging rent rather than a premium, but that is another debate. They are exemptions under our leasehold system.

When it suits society as a whole, we give exemptions for specific purposes. Exemptions were made to have development close to local shopping centres. Why do we do that? We as a society believe there is a particular reason to entice development for a particular purpose in a particular area. We did exactly that with Civic. We could see that Civic needed revitalisation. We wanted to bring people into Civic. We had a particular reason for wanting to do that. When you have a particular reason, that is quite a sensible policy and quite a good way to use your leasehold system. These are things, Mr Hird, wherever you are, that cannot be done under the sorts of freehold systems you were talking about. They can be used in a carrot-and-stick way and a very proactive way in our leasehold system. But if you minimise the betterment then you have less and less control over the system.

The ideal is to maintain the betterment at 100 per cent and use exemptions for particular community purposes. The leasehold system is designed specifically for the benefit of the community as a whole. I do not think Mr Smyth will mind me mentioning that he and I have talked about aged persons schemes. I said to him that it is quite clear that we need more aged persons homes. That is as far as the conversation has got. It is time we discussed an exemption of betterment for the development of aged persons homes and aged person units. Mr Corbell would probably be receptive to that notion. We would meet a particular need by using the leasehold system to our advantage.

I am open to talk about that; Mr Corbell is open to talk about that. We need to use the system like that. If you have a general reduction from 100 per cent to 75 per cent, who benefits? It benefits the developers who are interested in simply making money as opposed to benefiting the broad community. In other words, it benefits the individual

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