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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 639 ..

Tuggeranong, block 12 and 13 of section 56 Monash, a new development, a mixed development including 50 units.

I know, and most of the members of this place know, that still today, nine or 10 months after this press release was put out, the church that is attempting to get that grant of land to build those units is still grinding through the inexorable processes of ACTPLA and the Land Development Agency. So it is all very well to say that there are 50 units in the pipeline, but we are not even any closer to putting pen to a blueprint, let alone turning a sod on those 50 beds.

The one that I think is most instructive is eight units at Aranda. The people of St Vincent’s parish in Aranda have been working for, to my knowledge, five years to get supported accommodation attached to their church. They have a large space of land that cannot be used for anything except community facilities, so what did they think they would do? In a parish with ageing people in big houses with big gardens that are unsuitable for them but they would like to stay in their parish, they decided they would build supported accommodation so they could live close to the community facilities they have always known and loved. As they get older, HACC packages could be arranged for them so that they could stay in the houses longer and in their parish longer. If they wanted to go to morning mass, they could do so. They could do all of those things.

But what has happened? They came to the previous government and it began the process of changing the land use policy so they could have supported housing without a hostel. What these people want to build is independent living and the way the territory plan used to be was that, if you wanted to have independent living, you had to have a hostel. We did all that work. It spilt over into this government. The planning and environment committee changed the lease purpose clause. The people in Aranda were so grateful to have that obstacle taken away. And what happened? This government came in and said, “I know what we’ll do; we’ll charge these people betterment—$20,000 a unit.” Suddenly, that was $200,000 they had to come up with. The government was going to charge them betterment on a piece of land that had a 999-year lease on it for church purposes only. They cannot sell it; they can never make any money on it. The idea of betterment is risible.

Here we have this government putting another obstacle in the way of people who need to make arrangements for their old age; communities who want to make arrangements for the people who are ageing in their community. What is happening is that nothing is being progressed. When you try and pin this minister and this government down, it is the old jelly on the wall thing. In the course of the conversation with Chris Uhlmann on ABC on Monday, the minister moved from saying that there were six formal applications before the government for land and development applications to that there were six applications for land. Then he started to say, “Well, we don’t want to talk about that one because that one’s being withdrawn. We don’t need to talk about this. We don’t need to talk about that.”

So really what this motion is about is finding out what is happening. We want to have it all in one place at one time so that we are all agreed as to what the needs are, what people are saying their needs are and how they can address those needs, so that all of us can be vigilant, all of us can ensure that proposals to genuinely meet the needs of an ageing population in Canberra are not being needlessly held up in ACTPLA, or

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