Page 3444 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 September 2019
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Against this context, it is good to see that this bill is focusing on the process for land release for concessional leases. I hope that this is a sign that attitudes are changing and that concessional leases—real concessional leases—are back in the government’s mind.
The new process proposed for release of these sites has promise. Currently, a very small number of sites are released irregularly on a site-by-site basis through a direct sale to a particular group. That is really not transparent, and it hides the true demand for land. The new process will be a competitive tender, but not on market value. Rather, the criteria will include things like the ability of the organisation to use the site effectively.
I suspect that one of the effects of this new process will be to highlight the level of unmet need. There will be a lot of organisations tendering, and I believe that a lot of them will be able to show a very high level of social value. Making this level of unmet demand visible will be a very useful outcome.
There is one potential downside to the proposed process, and it is one that Mr Parton touched upon as well. Organisations with paid staff, like churches and large charities, will have a much better ability to deliver high quality tender documents than groups without paid staff like scouts, guides, multicultural groups and smaller community groups. Organisations with strong finances will be able to better demonstrate that they can build on the land, whereas smaller groups will have difficulty demonstrating that they can raise funds for that. The government will need to manage the process very carefully and very fairly to make sure that the less well funded groups still have a chance of actually getting land.
I will briefly touch on two other things the bill does, both of which I support. First, it allows the planning and land authority to develop a statement of priorities for community land in each district and to legally set aside areas of government land for future community purposes. I hope that these processes are made use of so that the land is not diverted to other things.
Second, there are a number of changes that are intended to help make sure that existing concessional leases are well utilised for their intended purpose. These include a small change in the process for deconcessionalising land as well as reporting and auditing processes for existing concessional leases. These are worth while. As a package, they may have some success in getting under-utilised concessional leases better used if backed by staff in the directorate. However, I have no doubt that they will be controversial with land holders when they are put into action.
I share some of Mr Parton’s concern about the possible impact on small groups, but unfortunately we have a number of under-utilised concessional leases. On balance, I think that this is a worthwhile innovation. We need to have some better process for ensuring that we do not have deconcessionalisation by stealth, as has happened in the past, by existing groups running their lease down and then demonstrating that it has to be sold and deconcessionalised. That is not the way to manage the deconcessionalisation process.
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