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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 1966 ..

    1. MR CORBELL
      2. (continuing):

    3. implications for the future metropolitan development of Canberra;

    4. impact on the Territory's "land bank";

    5. environmental and land management issues;

    6. financial costs and benefits;

    7. provision of Territory services and facilities;

    8. consistency with Territory and National Capital Plans, and the ACT and Sub Region Strategy; and

    9. any other related matter;

(2) the Government not proceed with the further development of proposals for rural residential development in the Territory until the Standing Committee on Urban Services has reported to the Assembly and the Government has presented its response.

Mr Speaker, today I am proposing to the Assembly that the Assembly refer the matter of rural residential development in the ACT to the Standing Committee on Urban Services for inquiry and report. Members will see the motion I have outlined in the notice paper this morning. Members will have to agree that this issue is one of significant concern for the future use of the Territory's land asset.

Over the past 18 months we have seen this Government embark on a series of failed and flawed attempts to justify the introduction of rural residential development into the Territory. This form of land use does occur in many areas around Australia, but, unlike other areas around Australia, the ACT has a limited land bank. Our land resource is a scarce one. It is finite and it is not able to be used in ways which will prove to be unwise or inefficient. That is one of the fundamental reasons, Mr Speaker, why I am proposing this morning to refer the issue of rural residential development to the Urban Services Committee.

It is probably important that I outline some of the issues that have led the Labor Opposition to propose this course of action. The first of those, Mr Speaker, relates to an event that occurred right at the beginning of this Assembly with the failed Hall/Kinlyside land deal. The Government embarked on an exclusive arrangement with one developer in this city to develop rural residential development at the area known as Hall/Kinlyside, between Hall and the new town centre of Gungahlin. That land deal was revealed to be fatally flawed. It was an exclusive arrangement for a large parcel of land which included areas which are part of the national capital spaces - the hills, ridges and buffer zone of the Territory. That deal was exposed and the Government had to back out. It knew that its actions were unjustifiable.

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