Page 1751 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 13 May 2015
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circumstances, but all of which indicate that Mr Barr’s time in planning was a disaster and prove that his time as the economic development minister is an ongoing disaster, because to get things going we have to cut special deals or change the law for special groups.
Why should not all of those small business people in the ACT—and, where we can, in the region that Bruce Billson and Tony Abbott supported last night by giving them a fair go and urging them to get on—be given the same fair go by this minister? He fails to answer that question. His planning regime and his business support regime are a disaster, and that is why you have to have special zones.
Are we in support of UC? Absolutely we are in support of UC. But, in effect, what the changes to the UC act do is to give them the equivalent of almost two suburbs. UC has plans for 3,300 units on its site. Call it two suburbs. This is two suburbs worth of development in Belconnen at a time when the government has sold blocks to other potential developers who do not have the same set of rules. We are yet to be told the tax arrangements and how that will occur. We are yet to be told what the variation to the territory plan will be and what that will mean.
The Labor Party say that they are here for everybody—equality for all!—except where they play favourites. They are playing favourites here. Why not give every business in the ACT that opportunity? It is a question the minister ignores and the minister never answers. I do not know why. I do not know why he would not do that. Your own legislative amendments prove your planning system is failing. You only have to look at some of the case studies. The business community has talked about commence and complete. In one quick breath at a Property Council luncheon, the minister got rid of that. He said that all the fees were going—until he could not get it through cabinet.
Of course, then we have the lease variation charge, which is an absolute disaster. You only have to look at some of the examples. For instance, the Manhattan apartments would not have gone ahead under the lease variation arrangements. They would have cost the territory some $27 million on the loss of stamp duty, on the change-of-use charge, on the GST payable, the increase in rating revenue and on the stamp duty. It is $27 million they would have lost because it could not possibly happen under LVC. That was before approximately $80 million went into the cost of refurbishment. That is before you add in removalists, furniture sales, curtain packages et cetera that come with that sort of development. Why should not everybody have the opportunity to do that?
Look at property, for instance, on Northbourne Avenue. The government are touting that they are going to get all this return from capital metro coming down Northbourne Avenue. We are told that all that return is coming. But that could happen now. In respect of Northbourne Avenue, we did the planning, the rezoning for that, in, I think, 2000 or 2001. But it is the government’s regimes in place that stop this happening.
Take the example of a block on Northbourne Avenue. Let us call it a reasonably large three-storey block of some 5,705 square metres. If it was ripe for redevelopment, would it go ahead under the current scheme? No, it cannot. The lease variation charge
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