Page 2516 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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than capable of delivering land to market. Many of Canberra’s best regarded suburbs were done by the private sector, and we should be trusting them, once again, to deliver a better product at a lower price.
Madam Speaker, as I have already flagged in the debate on a prior line item, I commend to the Assembly recommendation 25, which states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government review the application of the Lease Variation Charge with a view to achieving the development target of 50% greenfields and 50% urban renewal development.
At present the government say that they want to see high development in the city and town centres to support sustainable and active living. However, their taxation arrangements are counterintuitive and do not support this policy objective. Recommendation No 25 of the estimates committee report is all about ensuring the lease variation charge does not actively work against the government’s published densification objectives. If anything, you would think the government would be providing incentives to redevelop land, not the opposite.
Madam Speaker, the final recommendation I would like to touch on as part of my remarks on the government’s land release strategy within planning is No 26 of the estimates committee report, which reads as follows:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government address extension of time issues by waiving fees for all pre‐2010 commercial land purchases.
We all know of stories, Madam Speaker, about Canberrans, honest Canberra business people, being caught by ridiculously high extension of time fees. Just in the last day or two I liaised with a person in my electorate who has a $21,000 bill on his project in Gungahlin. However, I am aware of some bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. These people are already paying very high rates with embedded land tax if it is a commercial decision. Yet that is not enough for this government; they want to sting them again and again, but this time for failing to commence construction.
The premise of the government’s case is that these people must have been land banking. That could not be further from the truth for the vast majority of those people. Those people bought land, often off the LDA, with the intention of constructing a property and harnessing enterprise and entrepreneurialism. However, with a downturn in the Canberra economy, there simply is not the demand for office or commercial space, so the projects have not been commenced. So, at present, there are people across Canberra with land, paying rates, paying embedded land tax and a mortgage but not deriving an income, and the government thinks these people are doing it deliberately. I doubt that anybody is doing this by choice. The people I have spoken with are desperate to develop their blocks or sell on their land, but there simply is not a market to do so. These people are not land banking; in fact, they are struggling. These people, as I have said, are not land banking; in fact, they are probably holding a liability. This is not an asset which is increasing in value; it is perhaps a block of land that is going backwards in value.
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