Page 4085 - Week 13 - Thursday, 6 December 2007
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release of land in the ACT are set out in the government’s land release strategy. In November 2006, the Chief Minister’s Department released the government’s 2006-07 to 2010-11 land supply strategy, which detailed the extent of residential, commercial and industrial land the government intended to release over five years. The government is currently finalising the 2008-09 to 2012-13 land supply strategy. These strategies are designed not only to support the government’s policy objectives but to guide property developers, builders, home owners, investors, community organisations, and the business and industry sectors.
Anyone who thinks that tackling demand is simply a matter of dumping new land on the market, out of sequence and with no consideration for those listed above, is dangerously naive. Of course, any strategy needs to be flexible enough to ensure that land releases can reflect changes in a cyclical market. But to imagine that pent-up demand can be satisfied in a matter of months is fanciful. So is imagining that the ACT government ought to have somehow been able to intuit that the commonwealth was about to massively boost the size of the public service and be able to respond overnight to the spike in demand.
The key principles guiding the strategy are that land supply should promote economic and social development; achieve optimal benefits for the community from the government’s land holdings; provide an appropriate choice of land and housing options and assist in the provision of affordable housing; allow a private land development market to operate competitively; balance new land releases with medium-term demand growth while ensuring sufficient flexibility to absorb short-term fluctuations, and avoid rapid land price changes; ensure that future investment can be made with relative certainty about the land supply and prices; and contribute to the vision, set out in the Canberra plan, of a city that represents the best in Australian creativity, community living and sustainable development.
The government is aware of the strong levels of growth being experienced in the ACT and region and the subsequent increased demand for new homes, office space and retail and service industries. In addition to this increasing demand, the government is conscious of an existing unmet demand for new premises. The government’s objective is to ensure that sufficient residential, commercial and industrial land is available on the shelf, able to be released in a relatively short time frame because the appropriate planning is in place to allow a quick response to changes in the demand for land.
But this is never going to happen overnight. Even if it could, the consequent impacts on past investments made by both developers and individual housholders would need to be considered. I doubt that Mr Seselja would care to cop a massive reduction in the value of his own home, or any other properties he may have an interest in, if the government tomorrow released around the corner from him a tract of cheap land that would utterly eliminate pent-up demand for housing blocks.
The current strategy calls for the release of 105,000 square metres to 180,000 square metres of commercial office space and 25,000 square metres to 40,000 square metres of industrial land over the next five years. In 2007-08, the commercial and industrial program proposes the release of over 133,000 square metres of land to meet current
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