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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1188 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

the redevelopment stage. I know people who have lived in Deakin for 40 years or more. They are now paying astronomical rates. They are pensioners. They just happen to have been around for a long time. Their choice under the current system, which catches up with them, is sooner or later to get out and leave the support structures, the people and the area they know.

This is not a money grab. It does not confer upon government any more opportunity-probably less-to jack up the overall rates take than does the current system (please read it). It is not a money grab. It is about trying to protect people who bought houses in fairly average suburbs. Let us take another example: Curtin. Curtin is on the cusp of redevelopment. Curtin has been around since the early 1960s.

Mr Smyth: Since 1967 or 1968.

MR QUINLAN: A bit earlier than that. There are people who have been in Curtin for all of that time. I know some of them as well. I used to be president of the Curtin sub-branch of the Labor Party. Land values in Curtin will escalate dramatically, it is close to the city and it is convenient. There is a snowball effect. A desirable area becomes a desirable area because it is a desirable area. Where do we "upwardly mobile"to or where do we want to buy again and redevelop or rebuild something that really suits our needs and confers upon us greater utility? I think it is eminently fair that people who buy into that suburb because it has grown in desirability and utility, and are buying today's desirability and utility, should pay rates based on a reasonably steep unimproved value.

People who bought into Yarraluma and bowled over houses and built bigger and better ones as they tried to overshadow one another should pay the higher rates. They bought in Yarraluma because it is convenient, has access to the lake, has access to the Royal Canberra Golf Club and has ease of access to the city. A lot of amenity is conferred on that suburb.

At the same time, why should the longstanding residents of Yarralumla have their rates go through the roof because of the redevelopment process? That is unfair. That is inequitable. So we offer a system that takes care of both. It charges higher rates for people who have moved in latterly, but it protects long-term residents. The people who bought cottages in Deakin many years ago did not do so because it was going to be a desirable area and a good address. It was just a suburb. To them, in large part it is still just a suburb.

However, there is ever-increasing pressure. A pensioner I know had to sell up and move out of Deakin because they could not afford a $5,500 rates bill on a three-bedroom cottage now that Deakin is deep inner south and very desirable. That is unfair. It is fair that when the next mob come along and want to bowl that house over and build something bigger and better because the site has the advantage of being near Grammar and has greater amenity they should pay the higher rates.

Everybody who moves will make that decision consciously. They will know what the rates are. The rates will be levied at full unimproved value for everybody, but there will be a term residency reduction, depending on how long people have been in their home. That is an eminently fair system to protect long-term residents. At the same time it

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