Page 5179 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 28 November 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Canberra are not. Particularly they would like to age in place. They would like to have the situation where, if the house they are living in has become too big and in particular the garden has become too big, they can move in a reasonably similar location to a smaller house with a smaller garden. This will probably happen via unit titling.
I note the housing choices discussion which the planning minister has just started. I sincerely hope that that leads to a lot more flexibility in our planning system so that we end up with more sustainable development: sustainable economically, sustainable socially and sustainable environmentally. I agree that the LVC charge does not appear to be moving in that direction. That is one of the reasons why we moved the motion, which was successful, in the Assembly to have a full review of the LVC on residential development.
Given that, this disallowance is just not the right way ahead. The review is the right way ahead. While I sympathise with Ms Lawder’s intentions, I do not think this is the right way to do it; I think the review is the right way to do it. So the Greens will not be supporting the disallowance.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Minister for Planning and Land Management and Minister for Urban Renewal) (6.22): The government will not be supporting this disallowance motion. The last time this chamber sat there was a detailed debate on the lease variation charge following an executive member’s motion, which you have just heard about from Ms Le Couteur, which was moved by my colleague Mr Rattenbury and supported by government.
The chamber has debated at length the change to LVC made in 2017 in the budget, which forms part of our efforts to make the territory’s budget fairer. Nevertheless, if those opposite want to keep raking over this ground, the chief and I are more than happy to talk about how LVC ensures that the Canberra community shares in the gains of development.
Unlike those opposite, we do not believe that the windfall gains delivered by a government decision to vary the lease on a block of land should be handed entirely to developers. There are a number of different LVC schedules dealing with the assessment of the charge for different types of development. The change announced in the 2017 budget updated the schedule 1 charges associated with varying a lease to specify a number of dwellings allowed on a block, which is necessary for unit titling in the case of townhouse and apartment developments.
The previous fees were based on the administrative cost of processing schedule 1 lease variation applications. They did not reflect the actual value uplift that results from these lease variations, as the amounts payable under the other LVC schedules do.
For example, in Kingston in 2014 a developer consolidated two blocks and built 30 units on them, resulting in an increase in land values of $1.6 million. The LVC payable was $165,000, or just 10 per cent of the actual value uplift.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video