Page 1743 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2017
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Amendment agreed to.
Clause 55, as amended, agreed to.
Proposed new part 3A.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (5.44): I move amendment No 36 circulated in my name, which inserts a new part 3A [see schedule 4 at page 1778]. I have a feeling I am going to reaffirm that by speaking I am not going to win the support of those opposite. But I do believe that amendment No 36 is particularly important. Amendment No 36, in effect, enshrines the policy framework for the land acquisition that was put in place in 2014. In particular, the thresholds of below $5 million, between $5 million and $20 million and above $20 million are a significant issue with regard to how the board of the Land Development Agency conducted itself.
Rather than just leave it up to the minister or to the government to determine such thresholds, I think this sort of guidance should be legislated. In actual fact, it is because we gave too much slack to the LDA and to the government that we had problems in the past. Therefore, I believe we should be enshrining these thresholds in legislation; therefore, we are not going to be trusting the government as we have in the past, because, clearly, that trust was not returned.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Tourism and Major Events) (5.45): Pursuant to standing order 182A(b), I seek leave to move an amendment to this bill that is minor or technical in nature and that has not been circulated pursuant to standing order 178A.
Leave granted.
MR BARR: I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name on the yellow paper, to Mr Coe’s amendment 36 [see schedule 6 at page 1793]. I certainly appreciate the issues that have been raised here. We have some concerns about legislating dollar amounts that will clearly become out of date over time. So the proposal I have put forward is to amend amendment No 36, proposed new part 3A. It requires the minister to make directions for land acquisition without limit. This would need the minister to make a direction in relation to the following: approval needed by the authority or agency to acquire land and requirements for acquiring land of a particular value, and that this direction would be a disallowable instrument that would give the Assembly the oversight that the Leader of the Opposition is seeking but at the same time give flexibility for directions to change from time to time, reflecting market circumstances.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.47): I thank both Mr Coe and Mr Barr for these amendments. Mr Coe is clearly abundantly correct in saying that these issues have been a problem with the LDA in the past. The Auditor-General’s report made that abundantly clear. I think the other thing the Auditor-General’s report made clear was that possibly the issue was not so much the dollar amounts as whether or not the LDA adhered to the policies and directions that it was meant to adhere to. I do take
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