Page 2350 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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The land market is an incredibly difficult market to judge. That is the first thing that needs to be said. The second thing that needs to be said is that, in contrast to the very fickle nature of the land market and the very quick way in which it can turn, the lead times in supplying land are quite significant. You can announce sales of land tomorrow but the product will not be physically available for potentially 12 to 18 months simply because of the civil works that are required to be undertaken, the detailed planning that needs to be undertaken and so on. Those are some of the factors which those opposite fail to recognise.
But what concerns me most is that those opposite believe there is no role for the government in land development activity and simply believe that the land should be sold englobo, in total, to the market. You only have to look at what has occurred in places such as Gungahlin to see the consequences of that sort of policy. Go to areas in Ngunnawal, parts of Palmerston, or parts of Nicholls even, and you will see the consequences of the Liberals’ laissez faire approach to land development activity. You see ill-defined and poorly coordinated development, narrow, crowded estates and a lack of public open space. Indeed, I can point to one street in Ngunnawal where the roads do not join up properly; they are the meeting point between two different privately developed estates. You have got this absurd dogleg in the middle of what is otherwise a straight street because of the way the two estates meet. That is the consequence of private sector land development in its purest form.
There is a role for the market, and the government recognises that that is a role for the market. The government has taken the decision that a level of englobo sale is appropriate to encourage and foster diversity of activity in the market. But let us not forget that, at the end of the day, the territory is a monopoly land supplier. Whether or not you have a public sector land development agency, the territory will remain a monopoly land supplier for as long as there is unleased land in this place; it is the nature of the leasehold system. People look at the role of the LDA and make assertions that it is time to break the monopoly land supplier. It is not the LDA that is the monopoly land supplier; it is the territory. And the territory will remain the monopoly land supplier for as long as there is unleased territory land in this place. It is important to keep those matters in mind.
The other issue that is of real importance is the territory’s return on its land asset. It is important that land is sold at an affordable price. Land should be sold in a way that recovers the costs of the territory developing that land—unless, of course, the territory believes that there are other mechanisms to recover that cost and can sell land at less than cost value. The issue that needs to be addressed by those opposite is that that land is a public asset; it is owned by the community. Land assets contribute a significant level of revenue to the territory.
We have taken steps as a government to address this in our budgeting to reflect where that land return is reflected in the budget papers; nevertheless, it is still a significant asset sale. For that reason the question has to be asked: why would the Liberals deprive the territory of a return on the land asset, an asset which the community owns, by completely abrogating the field, withdrawing from the field and saying that this is not a matter for us in any way?
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