Page 206 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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Further, in respect of land rent blocks sold by the Land Development Agency after 1 October, lessees whose household income exceeds the threshold for two consecutive years will be required to either convert to a standard crown lease—that is, to pay out the lease—or sell the property to an eligible purchaser within another two years.
Lessees under the old land rent scheme are able to continue to benefit from the scheme for as long as they wish, regardless of changes in their income or changes in the income of other household members. Their land rent lease is also transferrable, which means if they wish to sell their property they are able to offer it on the open market as a land rent lease.
Lessees in the new scheme are only able to sell their property under the land rent scheme to others who meet the household income eligibility requirements. So there are significant and different obligations for people entering the new scheme. As a basic principle, it is not desirable for the government to allow entrants to a particular regulatory or legal regime to access the advantages of a new scheme but presumably under Mr Smyth’s model suffer none of the disadvantages of the new scheme.
Doing so would be extremely difficult to administer and it would be prohibitively expensive. I will also point out this afternoon that the creation of the new land rent scheme has not made any participant worse off. Their benefits and their obligations remain entirely unchanged. All people in the land rent scheme prior to 1 October last year will continue under the previous regime. No person who entered the previous land rent scheme is paying any extra charges.
There is no need for this change. The principle is wrong. I have provided the analogy with the first homeowner grant. If Mr Smyth were serious about this as a public policy proposition he would come in and suggest that anyone who ever received a first homeowner grant over the history of that program should be entitled to receive the best possible outcome that they could. At one point in history, that was a $21,000 grant. I do not think Mr Smyth is suggesting that the principle he is advocating this afternoon should be extended across all government programs.
There will from time to time be changes in government incentives and government programs reflecting changing circumstances in the economy, changing budgetary circumstances, changing priorities of the community and the government. That is part and parcel of public policy decision making, and part and parcel of governments changing arising from elections and different economic circumstances.
There are of course always opportunities for schemes to be changed, enhanced, amended, retracted or altered. That will always be the case in public policy. But I think the important principle here to reiterate is that no-one should be retrospectively disadvantaged, and no-one is here. So the government will not be supporting Mr Smyth’s motion.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.34): The land rent scheme which was introduced in 2008 allows new homebuyers to pay rent for a block of land rather than paying for the land up-front. The scheme is one of the initiatives of the government’s affordable
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