Page 1487 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2017
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The question has to be asked as to why the government feels it has to be so involved in this area. Most people who have worked out in the real world know that the best way to get development is for the government to step back and allow the private sector to plan, invest and deliver. Two of our best activated precincts here in Canberra, Braddon and New Acton, are exactly examples of that. They are two of the liveliest parts of inner Canberra. They have been developed not upstairs in the Chief Minister’s office or across the road in the department building, but through the hands of the private sector. We have all been the beneficiary of those lively activated precincts here in the ACT. What it needs is for the best policy levers to be in place, leaving the actual work up to the private sector to deliver in the best way possible.
I also have questions around the boundaries for the precinct put forward by the Chief Minister in this bill. They are well up north, well past Haig Park, which may well be a better boundary, and well down to the lake, past the city, around West Basin. What is the government’s intent? It is a bit of an overreach. It changes nothing that the LDA could not already do. They are taking over these policy functions beyond their mandate—I think I am quoting Ms Le Couteur from her earlier speech—and inserting themselves into areas which may be better serviced by the private sector. There are many areas that are already slated for sale along the Northbourne Avenue corridor; I do not understand why the government feels the need to reinsert itself into that particular area.
With regard to the Suburban Land Agency, this agency will be responsible for delivering new greenfield residential estates and non-precinct urban renewal. It will be responsible for conducting all government land sales and strategic acquisitions, undertaking civil works for government estate developments, serving as the vehicle through which the government will enter into joint venture or other commercial arrangements to deliver land development projects, providing community information for operational elements of government development projects, and conducting place-making activities and establishment of new communities.
In theory, people working in the area say to me that a lean agency about one-third of the size of the current LDA could deliver the land release program. The government have not released the size of these organisations, except that the Chief Minister has publicly stated that no-one currently in the LDA will lose their positions. There is no clarity here about the size of the organisations and, of course, there will be a subsequent cost to ACT ratepayers with respect to that.
In summary, I feel that the Chief Minister announced this planned split well ahead of the Auditor-General’s report. Post election, the discussion about the bill has been a bit of a sham designed to deliver the outcome that the Chief Minister had already announced and predetermined. It does not address the matters raised in the Auditor-General’s report and therefore it begs the question as to why it is necessary at all.
I am not sure that anyone involved in previous work with and around the LDA believes that this proposal is the right outcome. It in no way addresses those
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