Page 3199 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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fund a large part of the budget; and it is about the sort of city that we shape. As Ms Le Couteur has said, there are nine recommendations that the committee has put forward. I hope the government takes them to heart. It is particularly interesting, and it is on page 5 of the report, that the Auditor-General noted:
… direct responsibilities for land supply and development are distributed across a number of Government agencies. At the time the audit was conducted, these agencies included the Department of Land and Property Services (LAPS), the Land Development Agency (LDA), the ACT Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA) and the Department of Territory and Municipal Services (TAMS).
And of course other organisations have their finger in the pie.
What the committee has said at recommendation 1 is this:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government simplify the arrangements and the number of agencies involved in the delivery of land in the ACT.
It is important that we get it right. It is important that it is done properly. It is important that it is not overcomplicated to the stage where the government’s own processes are holding up the release of land, which of course impacts on all of us.
The committee then looked at some of the things that the audit had found in the report. For instance, at paragraph 3.5, it said:
… notwithstanding the LDA had exceeded its land release targets in 2007–08, there was a lack of clarity and transparency in land release figures.
This is a problem for a lot of people when they look at it. The government say, “We’ve released X thousand blocks,” but often it is that we have released a number of blocks with the potential for X thousand blocks. The real question is: are these blocks shovel-ready? At recommendation 3 the committee has made a recommendation about that. In the preceding paragraph it says:
The Committee notes that the Audit report highlighted that significant concerns were raised by industry stakeholders in relation to a shortage of ‘shovel-ready’ land and long lead times to access land for construction.
The committee recommendation is this:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government establish a land bank with a minimum of 2,000 ‘shovel-ready’ blocks of various sizes to be available at all times.
That is not what we draw out of each year; that is so that there is a standing stock that can be made available. So on top of what the government has in the marketplace at any time, the committee is saying that there should be 2,000 more blocks ready to go. It is of a great deal of concern in the industry that often the numbers that the government quotes really are blocks that will not be available for some time to come.
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