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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4460 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

government supports but which was put in place under her colleague the now Leader of the Opposition and aspiring Chief Minister of this territory, Mr Smyth.

Mr Speaker, she then went on to talk about how government land development, which is really community land development, has delivered unaffordable housing for the Canberra community. She said that this is a result of land management. Let us take the territory out of the equation for the moment and go just over the border to Queanbeyan. Let us go and have a look at Jerrabomberra, which is the key greenfields development estate in New South Wales. I challenge Mrs Dunne to find me a land parcel, a house and land package, in Jerrabomberra that delivers to potential purchasers a house and land for under a quarter of a million dollars. The reality is that you cannot find one. Indeed, there are only a handful of blocks under $300,000 in Jerrabomberra.

So I think Mrs Dunne needs to go and have a look at the broader conditions that exist in the land market in the region before she starts to seek to blame this government and our land release program for price escalation. Quite frankly, she is wrong. The reality is that land prices are high across the region, and indeed right around the country. It has nothing to do with the government's land release program: it has everything to do with Mrs Dunne's rabid ideological attempt to undermine this very important initiative which is in the interests of the broader Canberra community.

Mrs Dunne talked about Harcourt Hill as an example of government land development gone wrong. If she is going to apportion blame then she has to appreciate that the private sector is a 50 per cent partner in Harcourt Hill and therefore, according to her argument, the private sector demonstrated market failure, too.

So, Mr Speaker, let us make it clear: unlike the Liberal Party, the government is not about engaging in some rabid ideological debate when it comes to community land development. The government is about delivering good returns for the people of Canberra and better-quality estates for the people of Canberra to live in, and that is what community land development will deliver.

The budget figures identify an additional $17 million per annum to be returned to the community because of the government's involvement in community land development. These figures are rigorous and have been tested extensively. Of course, if Mrs Dunne were ever to be appointed Minister for Planning and she opposed or abolished community land development, she would face a challenge. How would she plug the $17 million per annum hole in the territory's revenues that she would create? How would she find the additional $17 million per annum already factored into the budget as government revenues? We are talking about $17 million per annum or over $50 million over a three-year period. How would she plug that fall? Quite frankly, it would be the first of Vicki Dunne's planning budget blow-outs.

The government's key fundamental objective is about making sure that the asset our community owns delivers value to our community, so that money can be spent on services in our community and so that the suburbs people live in are high-quality, liveable neighbourhoods.

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