Page 612 - Week 02 - Thursday, 6 March 2008
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business has in the ACT economy confirms that. Business is confident, the people of Canberra are confident. One has to say with some regret that it is the Canberra Times, to a lesser degree Access Economics, and the Liberal Party of the ACT who do not share that confidence in Canberra or the Canberra economy or its future.
Just by way of example when you apply the commonsense test to how the ACT economy is performing, in that same quarter we are talking about, the December quarter, we sold section 63 in November last year, in the December quarter. We put to market a piece of commercial land, just a few metres from here, and in November, the December quarter, the quarter which reflects a stagnant economy in the view of the Canberra Times, the very quarter the subject of this bleak outlook by Access Economics and the Canberra Times, a piece of commercial land in the ACT achieved $92 million at auction, the highest ever auction price for a piece of urban commercial land.
Here in the ACT, in the little old stagnant, hit-the-wall, basket-case ACT, we achieved in November last year, in the December quarter, the highest recorded auction price for a piece of commercial land. I wonder what Mirvac and Leighton, the successful bidders for that $92 million piece of commercial land, think of the ACT economy. Would Mirvac and Leighton come to Canberra, bid to $92 million for a piece of commercial land in an economy that had hit the wall, that was stagnant, that was a basket case?
Mr Corbell: Think about it, fellas.
MR STANHOPE: Just think about it. Just apply the commonsense test. Two of the biggest development construction companies in Australia in November last year, three months ago, in the December quarter, invested here. Interestingly and in one of those amazing coincidences—one of the great ironies—it was two days before that auction, I think, that Peter Martin and Access Economics got together and described the ACT economy as a basket case. It was two days before the auction that the last little foray into the state of the ACT economy by the Canberra Times’s Peter Martin and by Access Economics was put together, and the descriptions utilised on that occasion, before that Australian record auction, were essentially the same as were repeated today. That does raise some questions.
Investment has been strong. Confidence is strong. It is reflected in that auction price. But it is also reflected in the fact that the Treasury, on advice from the property sector, have identified somewhere in the order of $4 billion worth of work currently under construction, in the pipeline or anticipated over the next four years. They go to the $600 million worth of work which the ANU will proceed with in the university exchange; $460 million that has been provided for the construction of ASIO and the Office of National Assessments; a new Department of Defence building costed at somewhere between $300 million and $600 million; construction and redevelopment along Constitution Avenue at a cost of $250 million; $350 million anticipated at York Park; and a $200 million development on section 63. ActewAGL and Actew have foreshadowed $500 million of water and sewerage infrastructure work over the next three to four years. The ACT government has appropriated or committed $400 million to public education. The Minister for Health has given the broad outline of a new
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