Page 2832 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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energy efficient hot-water services and that it is doing its bit to drive best practice. However, now that installing an energy efficient hot-water service is mandatory, I do suggest this rebate should probably be adapted, maybe to some other part of sustainability.
On the LDA, one of the biggest changes in the land release program in Molonglo so far has been the fact that the LDA seem to have decided to go it alone on delivering land to the market directly, rather than being part of a joint venture, as in Forde, or selling off sections englobo to developers, as in west Macgregor. We understand that one of the reasons for doing this is to increase the revenue to government, as well as, they believe, speeding up the land release process, due to only needing one estate development plan. However, I do understand that some parts of the development industry have been very disappointed with the move, which has precluded developers who have been waiting for some time for this opportunity. Some of these developers may well have been prepared to develop Molonglo more sustainably—something closer to the Greens’ proposal for Molonglo, something closer to excellence in sustainable design, which is what the government committed to for Molonglo and what the Greens really want to see delivered.
Also I can say that over the last couple of weeks releasing this amount of residential land directly clearly has been a learning process for the LDA, judging from the issues with the sales process so far. Hopefully, they will be able to do it better. I think it is quite an interesting, exciting concept, selling land in Wright and Coombs this financial year, despite the fact the estate development plan has not yet been approved. The debacle over the last couple of weeks where people flocked to be part of the land ballot only to find the government has not got an actual list of blocks and does not know exactly how much each block will be, but is still trying to sell them, is making life very difficult for the unfortunate people who are simply trying to purchase a block of land to build a home on.
I guess I am concerned that there must have been pressure to balance this year’s financial budget, or possibly someone had a key performance indicator which said “has to sell land in Molonglo this year”, because it does seem that there was a big pressure to get the land sold this year. If the LDA had waited a few more weeks, I suspect that the land release and sales could have been a lot more smooth.
One thing I had to laugh about at the estimates hearing was that Mr Stanhope claimed that the increase in revenue from selling land directly through the LDA would give the government more funds for public housing. Yet we have been unable to get an assurance from the government that they will provide 10 per cent public housing in Wright and Coombs, or in fact any indication of how much public housing there will be in Molonglo.
The Greens will continue to pursue higher sustainability goals than those currently being offered for these new suburbs in Molonglo. As I mentioned earlier, we will be pursuing a seven star energy efficiency rating for buildings. Another thing we will be pursuing is solar access for the buildings and good solar orientation for the blocks. This again was something that was part of the Green-Labor agreement. We are pleased to see that the draft territory plan variation has come out on this. It is nearly
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