Page 2334 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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The Committee recommends that the ACT Government review land release in the ACT to ensure that greater housing affordability is achieved and a reasonable return to the Government from the sale of this asset, and report to the Assembly by the last sitting day of March 2015.
I believe this is a prudent recommendation and, if accepted, will provide a time at which the government will be forced to look objectively at their monopoly land supply arrangements.
I also commend to the Assembly recommendation 25, which states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government review the application of the Lease Variation Charge with a view to achieving the development target of 50% greenfields and 50% urban renewal development.
This is a recommendation I will come back to in a later line item of this budget.
Recommendation 26 of the estimates committee report reads as follows:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government address extension of time issues by waiving fees for all pre‐2010 commercial land purchases.
This, too, is something that I intend to come back to in a later line item in this budget debate. However, it certainly does have some relevance here in discussing the LDA as well, given, of course, that so many affected businesses bought land off the LDA with every intention of developing that land as quickly as possible. However, due to circumstances beyond their control they have been unable to develop that land and they are paying very high rates and very high land tax with no yield whatsoever on that land, due to the fact that they have not been in a position to start construction. What does this government do? Rather than provide incentives to actually get construction going, it puts another barrier, another hurdle, in the way to stop construction starting.
In conclusion, we need the property and construction sectors to be performing well if Canberra is to prosper. However, this is unlikely if the ACT government continue to totally control the supply of land. We call on the government to rethink their approach to land release and to trust the property and construction sectors to build our future.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.07): This is a budget that should concern all Canberrans because of its lack of direction, its huge hike in debt and the belief of the Treasurer that everything will eventually return to normal. This is a treasurer who has got his fingers crossed and lives in hope. The Treasurer’s own document, page 42 of budget paper 3, says:
The temporary deficits over the next three years reflect the Government’s investments in jobs and services.
I am not aware that deficits are temporary. There is a deficit or there is not a deficit, but it is a deficit. We have seen this Treasurer slowly push out the return to surplus year after year because he cannot achieve it because there is not a budget plan to make
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