The bickering between the Territory and the Commonwealth over the sale of a parcel of Commonwealth land in Tuggeranong is not helpful to orderly planning in the ACT. Nor is it helpful to ACT businesses, particularly those in Tuggeranong who had no warning that such a large parcel – 53,500 square metres or the size of 80 suburban housing blocks – would come on the market. The land comes on the market outside the ordinary planning context of the city. Buyers lining up at the auction will have no idea as to what use might ultimately be permitted by the Territory Government.
The Commonwealth is technically and legally correct in asserting the power to sell. The land was national land at the time of self-government, but the Commonwealth has no long-term use for it. The ordinary meaning of the self-government legislation should mean that the land would revert to Territory control, because national land is land that the Commonwealth is using or intends to use. But the legal meaning “”use” also means to sell.
The land has been put into the hands of an agent to sell.
It gets worse. The Commonwealth has other land that it no longer need which can also go on the market. Territory planners are now subject to a great deal of uncertainty, as are businesses near these lands.
The Commonwealth and the Territory should put acrimony aside and sit down and work out an orderly transfer of unneeded Commonwealth land to the Territory to plan and administer.
Obviously, the Commonwealth will always have the upper hand. It has the finances and the constitutional power over the federal territory. Given that, however, it should act in good faith and in the best interests of the people of Canberra and the Australian people to have orderly development in the national capital.
The spirit of the self-government compact as outlined in the Australian Capital Territory Planning and Land Management Act passed by the Federal Parliament in 1988 was that land not needed for Commonwealth purposes should go to the territory. The Commonwealth now wants instead to apply a legalistic view of the Act which would allow for the Commonwealth to “”use” the land by selling it. If the Commonwealth wants its money, surely it can find a better way than putting the land unexpectedly on the market disrupting commerce and planning in the city. It should give the land to the Territory to plan, develop and release in the context of land management in the territory overall. It can then gets it monetary value for the land in other ways – most easily through the Commonwealth Grants Commission through which Commonwealth grants to the territory could be reduced by the value of the land. That way all interests could be satisfied.
There is a dispute as to whether the Commonwealth offered the land to the Territory. The fact there is a dispute over a simple fact indicates some sloppy procedures and recording keeping somewhere.
Given the Commonwealth is being parsimonious, rigid and utterly uncaring of Canberra small business in its dealings, perhaps the territory should get a bit Machiavellian if the Commonwealth cannot be persuaded to be more reasonable in the future.
The Commonwealth is out to get a maximum price, but as so as the land is sold, under federal and territory law it becomes territory land and subject to whatever the territory authorities impose on it. Perhaps the territory should announce that it will severely limit the land use, thereby depressing the potential price and perhaps bring the Commonwealth to the table to prevent further haphazard sales of Commonwealth land in the ACT.