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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2400 ..

MS HORODNY: The Greens do not have a particular ideological commitment to the leasehold system by itself, but we would want to make sure that whatever land tenure system we have contributes to ecological sustainability and social justice. We would want to make sure that any change from the leasehold system is made with the agreement of the Canberra community as a whole, with a full knowledge of the pros and cons of such a change. We, therefore, do not support the way Mr Humphries has gone behind the back of the Assembly by going directly to the Federal Government to get changes to the Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act to allow the issuing of 999-year leases without the Assembly's support and without a full debate within the Canberra community. Mr Humphries had previously assured the Assembly that it would have the power to determine this issue and that the Government would not seek to change the current system of tenure to perpetual leasehold during the term of this Assembly.

While it may be strictly true that the ACT Government will not introduce the necessary legislation in this term, Mr Humphries's moves to have the Federal Government pass legislation opening the way for 999-year leases go way beyond the wishes of the Assembly at this stage. For this he does deserve censure. However, the ALP wants a vote of no confidence in Mr Humphries, which would require him to stand down as Planning Minister. There are lots of things about Mr Humphries's actions as Planning Minister that we do not support and have actively campaigned against. But we do respect the democratic right of the Liberal Government to have its own set of policies which it seeks to promote. (Extension of time granted) The electors of Canberra are also free to make their own vote of no confidence in the Government at the next ACT election, and we hope that they do.

However, we do not have any confidence that Labor would act much differently. Labor is being hypocritical in pushing this vote of no confidence, when they supported the Liberals in amending the Land Act at the end of last year, which further weakened the leasehold system which the ALP say they are trying to protect. The ALP supported the Government in allowing commercial leases to be extended to 99 years; in allowing the automatic renewal of leases at any time; in a reduction in the change of use charge from 100 per cent to 75 per cent; in the abolition of the Land and Planning Appeals Board and the transfer of its functions to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal; in the restriction on third-party appeal rights against development applications; and in the abolition of the ACT Planning Authority.

The ALP has also allowed the Government to pursue redevelopment of the Manuka car park, the John Dedman Parkway and the town centre shopping mall expansions. In each of these cases, the Greens put motions opposing these developments, but the ALP voted with the Liberal Government. This motion of no confidence is really just empty politicking, which we are not going to be party to. We really cannot take the ALP seriously on any planning issue until they move decisively to change their own policies on planning away from the Liberal Party's.

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