Page 2238 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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making housing affordable for the ordinary working family. The estimates committee heard evidence from Mr Tony Hedley of the property council—that dreadful body that the Chief Minister talks about.
Mr Mulcahy: He is president of the daytime branch of the Liberal Party!
MR STEFANIAK: It is interesting; Mr Kent used to be president of the night-time branch, so Mr Hedley is obviously president of the daytime branch!
Mr Stanhope: They are your two branches, are they?
MR STEFANIAK: According to you, they are, mate. I thought Tony Hedley just headed up the property council—one of those industry groups that you deride so much. Anyway, we heard evidence from Mr Hedley of the property council about the persistent underestimation of revenue from the LDA in developing ACT budgets. It was interesting, because this was before the government said: “Guess what; we’ve got more of a surplus than even we anticipated,” only about nine weeks after the budget. Mr Hedley said:
We believe that in the city area alone there could be an underestimate of dividends from the Land Development Agency of upwards of $100 million in revenue.
Mr Mulcahy: He was howled down.
MR STEFANIAK: He was indeed, Mr Mulcahy. This estimate includes the former QEII site, section 63 and sites on Constitution Avenue. No doubt the Chief Minister and Treasurer will tell us how clever he is when all this revenue comes through and boosts his bottom line. However, this is either incompetence or deception, and the Chief Minister should be able to provide more accurate estimates of revenue from land sales. It is not like we have not been doing this for some time. It has been happening for years, and there has been a consistent underestimation. It was interesting that the figures which Mr Hedley was citing were fairly accurate in terms of the figures the Chief Minister came up with a couple of weeks ago. Maybe the government needs to take heed of groups like this rather than just bagging them all the time.
Let us deal with skill shortages. Mr Stanhope flags skill shortages as a key issue for the ACT government—and, indeed, it is, thanks to a booming national economy which has had its flow-on effect here, and a lot of hard work from the previous ACT government to get to this stage.
Mr Hargreaves: Well done, Jon!
MR STEFANIAK: That is the previous Liberal government, Mr Hargreaves. The government is riding something of an economic boom. I understand we will finally be seeing something from the skills commission this month. The dissenting report to the estimates committee report recommends that these recommendations and the government response be tabled in the Assembly during the September sitting. I have
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