Page 1796 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
This needs to be opposed. I am quite surprised that the planning minister, with his supposed understanding of how economics work, does not understand this. I sometimes feel sorry for this minister, because he spends his time being thrown in at the deep end being told, “We have a problem, mate, and you are here to fix it.” He has had schools and now he has this planning legislation which takes a bit of time to get your head around. The understanding of the history and practice of the planning system in the ACT is not something that one easily acquires. As a result, I think today we are witnessing a very bad decision because this minister has not had time to get his head around what is going on.
Listening to the minister read his prepared speech does not give me any confidence that he understands what is going on. As a result, we will have bad policy, and we will rue the day that we have arrangements in legislation that will take away certainty from the leasehold system. It will mean that people, especially people who are unused to the leasehold system, will be less inclined to come here and invest. Some people see the ACT leasehold system as being less certain than the freehold system. Tonight we have signalled that if you buy a lease, you may never be able to cash in—“cash in” are not the right words—
Mr Barr: Maybe it is.
MRS DUNNE: A very Freudian slip, I do apologise—but you may never be able to retrieve the rights set out in that lease. Your business decision, your decision to spend your money or your corporation’s money, will be gainsaid by the planners. This is not to say that the planners are fundamentally evil or wrong or ill-intentioned or anything like that, and the Chief Minister will be verballing me in a minute. But they are making decisions based not on whether it is viable to do it, but on the fad at the time.
The decisions about what is done on a particular lease should be constrained only by the land use and what the lease purpose clause sets out. If you want to change the lease purpose clause, by all means have this investigation, by all means charge people for a higher and better use. But my concern here is that by doing this we are artificially constraining the market in particular ways. It is a great shame that this minister cannot go the full way to just throwing this thing out. In many ways he is in quite a good position because he can just throw it out. (Second speaking period taken.)
Because the minister is not the original architect of this legislation he could throw it away. He could say that the use as development provisions are constraining and have the potential to skew the market and to create irrational activity in the market, and he could walk away from it. In many ways it is incumbent upon the government to prove to us why this is necessary. It has not proved why this is necessary. The government is saying it wants it like this and therefore it is having it. A large number of people experienced in how the system works, such as the property council, are saying strongly that they cannot support this legislation. This is a make or break issue for some groups in the community, the groups that make us a prosperous town. They can see the problems with this. I suspect the minister can see it but does not have the courage to throw it out.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .