Page 4777 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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good financial outcomes for the vendors in spite of the fact that in one case the vendor did not, in fact, hold a valid lease over the land in question.
A key element which affected all these transactions was the failure of the LDA to comply with a key piece of legislation: the land acquisition policy framework created in 2015. The framework gave the LDA a measurable autonomy in acquiring land for government purposes. In return, the LDA was obliged to satisfy a series of tests in relation to each acquisition and to seek the approval of the minister or cabinet where acquisition amounted to more than a certain value. In practice the LDA exercised the autonomy granted under the framework but did not ensure that the tests were satisfied for the acquisition.
Officers appearing before the committee argued in seeking to defend this practice that they had misconstrued the framework because they were relying on an interpretation document generated from within the LDA. But the committee was not able to discover by whom and when this interpretation document was generated.
This highlights the list of irregularities almost too long to mention, but I will give it a try: the absence of proper records; the absence of current valuations where a lease was purchased; poor advice on an understanding of the Lands Acquisition Act; clear evidence of significant miscommunication and even secrecy within the agency; potential conflicts of interest; insufficiently formal relationships between people in the public and private sector; rehiring of former officers as contractors to avoid staff caps; and provision of altered documents in response to a freedom of information request.
There really was a lot to consider in this report and in the time available I cannot speak in detail about all of the issues. But there is one overarching thing I will talk about. There may be a perception that these are all things of the past. The government has said that the LDA has gone, it has ceased to exist and we have a brave new world. Some of the functions have been taken up by a new agency, the Suburban Land Authority. It is easy to think that the issues which affected the LDA are no longer with us and that there is a new broom to sweep through. However, there are still problems because the LDA’s actions were as much a symptom as they were a cause.
There is no doubt that land has a unique importance to the government in the ACT. It is one of the most significant sources of revenue outside GST revenue distributed by the commonwealth. At the same time, government in the ACT is responsible for leasing and selling land and setting the zoning and approving development. In this situation conflicts of interest are likely to arise.
The SLA is required to return a profit to government, as was its predecessor, the LDA. These agencies are in an ambiguous position where they are part of the public service but are required to act commercially. We know from other instances elsewhere that this can put government officials in dangerous territory and it involves risks to integrity.
We have canvassed many recommendations in this report and I will summarise them as briefly as I can. Two recommendations in the report relate to valuations and that
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