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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (18 November) . . Page.. 4242 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

There were other things said by Mr Corbell. He talked about what was actually being offered to these people in a 20-year lease was exactly the same as what they had. He said, "We are offering them a 20-year lease on the same basis that currently exists for their existing 50-year leases."This is not the case. A 20-year lease does not contain the same compensation rights as the current 50-year lease, as was claimed by Mr Corbell. Any lease of less than 21 years under the Lands Acquisition Act does not have the same rights of compensation. These people's leases were for terms of 50 years and the limitations for leases of less than 21 years do not apply to them. A lease of less than 21 years has considerable limitations, which a 50-year lease does not have. Similarly, the leases provided for all improvements, except for very few boundary fences, owned by the lessees, and all of these improvements would have to be compensated for, whereas under a 20-year lease there is only compensation for limited approved structures and reasonable rural improvements.

Mr Corbell said one of the purposes of the leasehold system was essentially to create a land bank. But the notion of a land bank died a long time ago. When the rural task force met during 1997-98, this was one of the things that was comprehensively debunked. This is not about providing a land bank. The area in the Molonglo Valley was fairly much ruled out by the National Capital Authority for more urban development, and there are a whole lot of reasons for that. It has to do with the urban landscape, the rural backdrop of the ACT and also the fact that the topography and the constraints on the land, as the spatial plan will show, very much constrain development in this area and it is probably not worth the effort. But that is probably a debate for another day.

What was also said was that, if we gave these people a 99-year lease and they did not use it all, we would have to pay people for the unused potential, the unused property right. This is not the case. It does not matter how long the lease is; so long as it is more than 21 years, you have to pay them for the whole of the lease and also for the prospect, according to the Lands Acquisition Act, that it would be renewed. So, by taking away the sort of lease that they have and replacing it with a 21-year lease, this government chose to circumvent the property rights of these people.

In the discussion last sitting Thursday, Ms Dundas made some very salient points about how this was planning in a piecemeal fashion. She really got to the nub of the arguments by saying, "Well, we're taking away a couple of leases here and a couple of leases here on the offchance that one day we might build houses on it."The spatial plan still has a long way to go to be approved-there are a lot of hurdles to jump-but at this stage we are going to take away these people's rights on the offchance that we might need them somewhere in the future. This is not prudence, as the government has said; this is piecemeal. There are other leases in the area that could be constrained by development in the Molonglo rural zone and they are still out there as 99-year rural leases. Some of them are occupied, and some of them are not. But what we have seen in the approach of the government until yesterday was a piecemeal approach, which-I did not ever say this, although the minister said that I did-was victimisation of these families. I never used the word "victimisation". But there is a case for at least a suspicion that this is an opportunity for people in the bureaucracy to get even with a couple of people who are considered to be difficult and recalcitrant. I have dealt with the bureaucracy. I have been in meetings where I have been told, "Some of these people are difficult and we do not

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