Page 2033 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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Amendment 104 revises clause 292 to preserve the anti-speculative objective of the former section 291 in a more flexible way. Provision is made to clarify what is meant by “personal reasons” which will be prescribed by regulation and to specify what comprises “financial reasons”. These matters are key considerations for the authority when deciding whether to give consent to the transfer of undeveloped land. This amendment is one of a set of amendments that will make it possible to consolidate debt where borrowings are secured against an undeveloped lease. However, lessees must be more accountable and take responsibility to ensure such borrowings are appropriately used to comply with the building and development provisions of their lease.
An application for consent to transfer an undeveloped lease in circumstances where this does not occur will only receive favourable consideration where the reason given is to meet the requirements of revised section 292. Where consent to transfer is refused, the lessee will be required to surrender their lease and may be entitled to receive a refund.
Amendment 104 also revises clause 292 by providing the authority with the ability, when deciding whether to consent to transfer on an undeveloped lease, to consider any major unforeseen event that occurs after the purchase of the lease and that has a demonstrated effect on the lessee’s ability to comply with the building and development provisions. One example of such an event would be a major bushfire.
Amendment 105, which is a companion amendment, provides examples of unforeseen major events, as detailed in amendment 104. It is one of a set of amendments to clause 292 intended to preserve the anti-speculative objective of the former section 291 in a more flexible way.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (9.30): We will be opposing this amendment. I would flag that the entirety of clause 292 is something that the opposition may well come back to. We are not convinced that this is necessarily needed in order to achieve the anti-speculative aims. My concern with this, once we had our briefing, was in relation particularly to some of the notes and some of the descriptions we were given. It seems that the authority is being called upon to make some sort of moral judgement as to whether the person, through their own actions or otherwise, came to have financial hardship. So that is certainly of concern to us. We do not see that the authority should be making those kinds of judgements in relation to the transfer of land, and that is why we are opposing the amendments.
Amendments agreed to.
Clause 292, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 293 to 298, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Clause 299.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (9.32): I move amendment No 18 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 2099].
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