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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2373 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

The confirmation of this comes in the announcement that we are moving back to in-house land development. That is a reopening of a very unhappy saga in the history of the ACT.

Government land development under previous Labor governments has been a disaster. As we heard in question time yesterday-highlighted by the Leader of the Opposition-when we last had government land development, it cost us $26 million over two financial years. That was a decade ago. Labor is Labor is Labor-it never changes its spots. Nothing there suggests they will do anything but the same.

They say, "No, no-it is not going to be all in-house-there are going to be some joint ventures." Well, let us look at joint ventures. All we need to do is mention Harcourt Hill. What do we know? A litany of disaster and loss, and a great deal of investment by the previous government to pull the fat out of the fire. Even in this budget, when land revenues are going up gangbusters all over the ACT, what do we find? $2.1 million less revenue from the Harcourt Hill joint venture than was predicted. Harcourt Hill is the banner of what this minister wants to do in land servicing, and it is a sorry, tattered banner.

The building industry is feeling the pinch from a massive 50 per cent drop in new building starts, compared to a national average of 7 per cent. That is 50 per cent in the ACT and 7 per cent across the rest of the nation. The last thing it needs is the shadow of the heavy hand of government intervention hovering above it, making sure they lose more money hand over fist.

I am concerned, as I have said in this place on a number of occasions, that, through this minister, this government is engineering a hiatus in planning, with its policy of uncertainty, which is leading to job losses and the flight of capital, employers and builders out of this town. We will eventually find that there will be no-one to build our houses. That will mark a definite downturn in the prosperity of this town.

We have seen introduced today another plank of the Labor Party's policy. Well, it is half a policy really-it is half a plank-the Planning and Land Bill 2000. It was introduced in haste, as always, with Minister Corbell, as he always does, making it up as he goes along. Then we find, at the end, that many of the consequential amendments-all the things that will make it work-have not yet been done, and we will see those some time in the future.

There is nothing to indicate that the new Independent Planning Authority will work any better than what we currently have. There is no commitment to increasing the resources available to PALM to make it work. PALM is already struggling under the workload imposed upon it by this minister, who is besotted with change and innovation. There is so much coming out of PALM that not even PALM knows what is going on, and no-one in the community knows what is going on.

Then we have the land release program, Mr Speaker. What a corker that is! Mr Corbell sat here smugly, in the last sitting week, saying that his government would release 1,000 more blocks than we ever had the courage to do-he was going to be audacious. But let us see where they come from. There are 400 blocks in Lawson, which we all know the

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