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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 3071 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Why should we do what Mr Smyth wants? I looked through Mr Smyth's speech, and I could not find much convincing about why we should change. Mr Hird said that we need certainty. I have been around this place for 10 years listening to arguments about betterment, and I have faced the line-up of developers. They have come here and told us that business will go elsewhere if we do not have betterment at X level or Y level, and so on and so forth. But I have never seen them produce any evidence that confirms what they were claiming was fact.

A great deal of mythology and legend has been created about change of use charges, betterment charges, in the ACT. On the one side of politics there has been a great deal of support for the mythology and legend that we cannot have development in the ACT while we have a change of use charge. My experience tells me that that is bunkum.

What should be happening in the territory is what was suggested by my colleague Mr Corbell. The standard should be the level playing field. If you want a piece of land in the ACT, you pay what it is worth; you do not get an automatic subsidy. That means a 100 per cent change of use charge when you change the purpose of your lease.

If it is in the community interest for a subsidy to be given in respect of a particular development proposal, then it is up to standards developed by this place to dictate the outcome. We are serving the community interest. The standard is 100 per cent. We get what the land is worth for the community. If a development is in the community interest, because of environmental or quality considerations or because development in the ACT has declined for one reason or another, subsidies can be argue for. Community interest should served rather than the individual interests of a developer.

We have an obligation to be vigilant and not endorse a system of windfall gains to developers. There is nothing wrong with developers per se. Developers perform an extremely important function in our community, but the responsibility lies with us to ensure that the community interest is served by the regulation of development in this place. We do not serve the community interest by giving away windfall gains.

I heard Mr Osborne say that he does not particularly like getting involved in the planning debate. It can be a turgid debate, no doubt, especially when a whole heap of people come to tell you that the system as we know it will collapse if we do not do something about change of use charge. However, what they say never happens, or they have no evidence to back up their claims. That is what is really turgid about the debate-all the myths that are thrown at you in relation to the change of use charge.

I have never seen evidence to support the general argument that the change of use charge is bad for development. Every development I have seen, whatever the change of use charge set, has essentially led to the change of use charge being passed on to the consumer in one way or the other. It does not matter that much in the scheme of things. I do not believe that 100 per cent change of use charge will affect development in the ACT. It will certainly mean that some developers will not get windfall gains. The fact that you have a standard change of use charge may affect the market in one way or the other. But it will stabilise things rather than cause a great many ups and downs in the market, which sharp developers can take advantage of from time to time.

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