Page 2385 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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This is one way that they seek to minimise the true costs of redevelopment and seek to have those costs paid by the taxpayer. This government will not support that.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (12.25): The Greens will not be supporting the Liberals’ amendment. On the question of improvements, the Greens also have an amendment to clarify the issue of improvements which is almost exactly the opposite of what the Liberals are seeking to do.
The lease variation charge is premised on the idea that proponents are paying for the value of the development right that is being assigned to them by the community. As I said in the in-principle debate, this is a gain that does not come about because of their enterprise or ingenuity; rather, it is a recognised value that accrues to the lease because of new development rights granted by the lease, and that value belongs to the community. The gain that belongs to the developers is the one that comes about from building a product that people want to buy. The fundamental basis for the charge is very sound and made abundantly clear in the Macroeconomics report.
What the Liberals are seeking to do blurs the line and takes us away from an objective assessment of the value of the right to an indeterminate moving feast of what is and what is not included, to distort the value and, ultimately, the amount of charge payable. This is of course exactly what this amendment is seeking to do. This is a mechanism that is trying to artificially inflate the V2 value to reduce the proponent’s liability. This is not in the public interest. It is certainly not in the interest of transparency and a robust and easily determinable charge.
I would also suggest that perhaps one unintended consequence of the amendment is that it does not just inflate the V2 value but it may also arguably inflate the V1 value, as the prospective development improvements might also be considered under this proposal. This would of course mean that potentially proponents might be paying the charge on their enterprise as well as the development rights, which of course would be most inappropriate.
I hope that illustrates that the best course of action is to omit improvements entirely and deal with any commercial realities in a different, much more transparent manner. Therefore we will not be supporting this amendment.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.27): Meredith Hunter took about 10 seconds to contradict herself during her speech. It just shows how we are pretending the real world does not exist for the purposes of this debate. Ms Hunter’s position in opposition to this amendment is that there will be a windfall for the developer but there might not be a windfall because not only will V2 go up, but V1 will also go up, in which case there would not be a windfall because the tax is on the difference. We are being asked to support the argument from the Greens in opposing this amendment that the reason we should not oppose it is that there is a windfall or that there is not a windfall but V1 and V2 both go up. It is absurd.
If this is going to be the level of debate, I can understand why the government and the Greens do not want to debate these amendments separately, because the last thing
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