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entitled to under the existing definition of betterment tax. Sooner or later, the Government must address again whether or not a concessional lessee should be allowed to develop that land and take the profit; or whether, if they no longer need the land for the purpose for which their concessional lease was granted, the Government should resume it. There are some very real issues involved in that, and that is why I think it is a matter for a review of Government policy. It certainly was not appropriate that our committee use this case study as a test case, reject it and then see what happened. That would have been unfair to the lessees, who have a reasonable expectation of the courses of action open to them under the current law. It is an issue that the Government perhaps needs to revisit. It has been some time since the Government looked at that question of commercial development of concessional leases.

The other broad issue is this question of traffic management. The proponents argued, rightly, that the couple of hundred residential units that they are going to put in there represent only a very minimal increment to the amount of traffic flow in that area - a reasonable proposition. Existing residents in the area, however, argued that the traffic along Ellenborough Street is already a nuisance; it makes it difficult for them to get out of their development in North Lyneham; and that, having traffic coming in from the opposite side of the road, from this development, would create a traffic situation that would be intolerable and could be hazardous to people’s health. The fact is that, if it were not for the through traffic coming from West Belconnen, coming down Ginninderra Drive, and traffic coming down Ellenborough Street from suburbs like Kaleen and Giralang, there would be no problem there.

But there is a problem generated by the existing road arrangement, and the traffic coming out of this new development will be an increment to the traffic problem that exists there already. That led us to suggest that it is time that the Government looked at the traffic problem generated by Ginninderra Drive coming to a dead end a mile short of Northbourne Avenue, on the south side of this development, and at the traffic coming in from some of those western suburbs, which should perhaps be diverted onto the Barton Highway, instead of coming down Ellenborough Street. We have asked the Government to institute a review of those traffic arrangements, so that the people who already live in North Lyneham and old Lyneham and the people who are likely to be moving into this development have reasonable access to their places of work, places of recreation and places of shopping. But it indicates, as I said before, that the impact is on not only the people who live in the immediate vicinity but also those who live in those western suburbs; because, if those traffic arrangements are corrected, it will have a beneficial effect for people living 10 or 20 kilometres away.

The other matter that I want to refer to briefly is what has been described as the strategic issues. There is the question of the gradual erosion of the amenity of people living in an area. I raised the question during the inquiry: “If you continue to approve the change of land use purpose from what is currently green space in an area, and you approve this one, the next one and the one after, at what point, incrementally, do you reduce the total available green space for the people living in those suburbs to an unacceptable level, and even perhaps to a level that is not in accordance with the Territory Plan?”.

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