Page 984 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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As you can understand, savings in government are difficult to achieve. They do not come without pain for one part of the community, whether it be internally or externally. It is quite right that, as we are putting together the budget for 2010-11, I do not speculate further on where those savings are coming from.
Land—Molonglo Valley
MS LE COUTEUR: My question is for the Chief Minister and relates to land release in the Molonglo Valley. Chief Minister, I understand that the LDA has decided to develop Wright and Coombs itself rather than release the land englobo to developers. On what basis was this decision made?
MR STANHOPE: I thank Ms Le Couteur for the question. The LDA does develop some land on its own behalf and as the Land Development Agency of the government, and the government does in relation to some other major greenfield sites adopt other methodologies. So there are essentially three development mechanisms currently available—perhaps four.
One is the auctioning of land directly by the LDA of estates or sites that it develops. The second is joint ventures that the LDA enters into, and we see joint ventures most notably recently at Forde, Crace and indeed at Woden east. The third major method of disposition, of course, is release of englobo sites, more essentially and preferably by auction; but there have also been some direct grants.
The government determined, I think three years ago, that it would seek to release about one-third of all greenfield estates by englobo. But at that stage we proposed to move to a situation where about, as a rough rule of thumb, one-third of land would be developed through englobo release, one-third would be through joint ventures and one-third would be developed by the LDA. In fact, over this last year or so, I think almost two-thirds of land has been released englobo.
The decision initially in relation to the next greenfields release, and indeed the first release in Molonglo, which will be Wright and Coombs, was a decision that that is an estate that the LDA, in the first tranche, which is, I believe, 400 blocks, will be developed by the LDA. Really, it is just a continuation of existing policy.
The first release in Molonglo will be 400 blocks. I am advised that that will occur in May or June and it is proposed that that will be handled by the LDA.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Le Couteur, a supplementary?
MS LE COUTEUR: What are the criteria that determine when the LDA will develop the land themselves, as distinct from one of the other methodologies?
MR STANHOPE: I think first and foremost, Ms Le Couteur, over these last two to three years—I am not entirely sure when the policy was first announced or initiated—the government made a commitment that up to one-third of all land would be released englobo. That was a major departure from earlier policy that had persisted for, I think, four or five years prior to that.
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