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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (18 November) . . Page.. 4241 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

agreement promptly. It is in return for my commitment to support this instrument that the government has committed itself to extradite the process.

MRS DUNNE (5.22), in reply: As they say, a week is a long time in politics. Well, a month is a very long time indeed when it comes to rural leasing in the ACT. I commend Ms Tucker for her ability and her willingness to be flexible on this issue. When we came into the debate on this in the last sitting period, we had a lot of ground to make up between the Greens and the Liberal Party. But in the course of that debate and since then there has been a lot of ground made up and there has also been some ground made up with the government. There has been some recognition by the government-or at least by officials within the government-that they have had a less than perfect understanding of the nature of the rural leasehold system, and in particular how it relates to leases offered that have been in existence since 1956.

But before I get on to those issues, there are things that need to be rebutted in what the minister, in particular, said in this place when we last discussed this on the last sitting Thursday, and some of those things are very important. One of the most important things that he said was that the period of offer to take up a 99-year lease for rural lessees in the ACT had lapsed and that by doing anything to extend that was in fact providing a windfall profit to members of the rural community.

This is not true. Mr Corbell suggested that an offer of a 99-year lease had expired. A market value 99-year lease was still available to any member of the rural community and was still available to the lessees of these two properties until 12 March this year. What had expired was an offer to take a 99-year lease at a concessional value. Many of the people who have been characterised as holdouts in this debate had declined to take up a 99-year lease at a concessional value because of the payback arrangements. How it worked was that, if you bought a 99-year lease at a concessional value based on your dry sheep equivalent and you sold it within 10 or 15 years-I cannot remember whether it is 10 or 15 years; I stand to be corrected on that-any undue profit that you made had to be shared with the territory.

That was a perfectly sensible arrangement. But some of the people who hold these leases are in their late 70s and their 80s and did not want to have that sort of onerous 10 or 15- year buyback arrangement hanging over them. They wanted free and clear title so that, if someone got ill, they could dispense with the property and not lose money by handing some of it back to the territory. That was an understandable point of view.

What Ms Tucker said in her speech is, I think, a misunderstanding of the situation. She said something along the lines of, "I believe the lessees are still of the view that they would be disadvantaged by a 99-year lease."Yes, they are. They do believe that, because they think that the 1956 lease is more advantageous, and from my reports of the meetings that were held yesterday the officials now recognise that the 1956 lease is more advantageous. But it is not the case that they are not interested in purchasing the lease. They do see that their entitlement to apply for a 99-year lease is an asset, and many of those people would apply for a 99-year lease if that was the only option available to them. But, in the case of these two lessees, that is not an option available to them, and many of the other lessees, although they would prefer to roll over their 1956 lease, have recognised that that is not to be the case and have made approaches to the government to buy a 99-year lease at full market value, not at any concessional rate.

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