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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (14 February) . . Page.. 106 ..

MR RUGENDYKE (continuing):

It will come as no surprise that I will not support Mr Corbell's bill. The minister has some amendments to bring the charge back to a fair compromise of 75 per cent. I will be supporting that.

MR BERRY (11.34): Mr Speaker, when I was first preselected to come into this Assembly in 1988, a line of people started to come and see me to talk about why they should get the people's asset for less than its value, and it has not stopped since. This is not necessarily a criticism of developers. Developers do what they are good at-making money. They have always wanted to be able to get the people's asset for less than it is worth. They have always put the pressure on to do that.

To fold in front of that pressure is something that future generations will not be thanking us very much for. The assets we in this place have charge of are the people's assets. They are not something we can fritter away and forget about. Let us forget the percentage. If it was 100 per cent, developers would want 75 per cent. If it was 75 per cent, developers would want 50 per cent. If it was 50 per cent, they would want 40 per cent. If it was nothing, they would want a subsidy. So let us stop kidding ourselves.

I have listened to all of the debates about this issue from the day I arrived in this place-and before. I have listened to people coming to my office telling me how "we'll all be rooned" if the change of use charge is not reduced. There has not been a scintilla of evidence to support this argument. People will come here because they like it as a place to do their developments, and they will continue to come here if the change of use charge is 100 per cent. If it is set at 100 per cent, the people of the ACT, through this Assembly, will get the added benefit of it.

The argument that the territory will collapse because of a 75 per cent or 50 per cent change of use charge has never been substantiated, in my view. There has never been any firm evidence. In the end developers will do the best they can from a particular development and the change of use charge which applies, and the market will determine the value of the product they sell in due course.

There is no evidence I have ever seen that a reduction in change of use charge leads to a lower cost product. It has never been suggested that a reduction in the change of use charge would be passed on to the consumer. I bet it would not, because the market would still prevail in relation to the cost the developer eventually succeeded in procuring.

We have to make a judgment here about whether we want to give away the people's asset for less than it is worth. Would you give your own block of land away for less than it is worth? Would you give your mother's block of land away for less than it is worth? No, you would not. You should not be giving away the asset of the people you represent for less than it is worth. That is what this boils down to. It is a very simple argument. The charge had all sorts of names which confused people in the community-betterment charge, change of use charge. However, the argument can be distilled down the basics-whether you get full value for the people's asset or whether you give it away for less than it is worth.

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