Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 3 Hansard (24 March) . . Page.. 801 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

protection than they would have if they were in a private park. I argue that you should not sell this park, because you will be diminishing residents' protection. You need to ensure that there is protection in place before you sell.

MR OSBORNE (5.45): Mr Speaker, I will be supporting most of Mr Wood's motion. I heard what the Government, through Mr Smyth, had to say about the lease stipulating that the site remain a caravan park if sold. I have no view one way or the other about whether it should be owned by the Government or the private sector. However, I do think that more information does need to come before the Assembly. I intend to support subparagraphs (1)(a) and (1)(b) of the motion.

Paragraph (2) is of some concern to me. If we support this, are we then saying to the Government that every time Housing wishes to sell stock they need to come before the Assembly to seek approval? By supporting paragraph (2) that is basically what the Assembly would be doing.

If we support the first paragraph of Mr Wood's motion, more information will be supplied to the Assembly. I believe there are to be meetings between the Government and the residents at the long-stay caravan park before anything is done. I think that is fair and reasonable. Supporting paragraph (2) puts the Assembly in a difficult situation in the future with any decisions Housing wish to make in relation to selling land, which they do all the time, I believe.

I appreciate many of the arguments put up by Mr Quinlan, who has harassed me about this for a while. I appreciate that there are people living there who are only on short-term leases but have been there for a long time. I think we need to look at the information in the Assembly before anything is done. We need to consider the concerns of tenants, and information on what rights they have needs to be made available to us before we progress this matter any further. As I said, I have no problem with the caravan park being owned by someone other than government if that is what the Government wishes, as long as the information in relation to the rights of the tenants is on the table.

MR RUGENDYKE (5.48): Mr Speaker, my concern is that there appears to be an unholy rush to sell this caravan park. That is implied by Mr Smyth's amendment, which at first I was quite sympathetic to. I wonder what the unholy rush is for. I do not think it has been explained. We saw an unholy rush to sell off ACTEW before last Christmas. That was a concern to the community.

Mr Berry: We soon fixed that.

MR RUGENDYKE: That is right. The crossbenchers saved ACTEW. I just wonder why there is such an unholy rush to sell. Will there be time, for example - and what guarantee will there be that there will be such time - for current residents to assess their capacity to purchase the caravan park? What guarantee will there be that site fees will not rise unfairly after the sale? Mr Smyth mentioned security of tenure. That is a positive step.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .