Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

It is extraordinary that in this week of all weeks we find before us a piece of legislation that is quite squarely dealing with the legacy of the Whitlam government. The concept of regionalism and to build significant regional centres was part of the legacy and vision of the Whitlam government from the beginning.

It was always intended that the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation would get to a point where it would be abolished. It was set up for the purpose of providing the investment, providing the injection, with the intention that over time assets would be sold down and, eventually, we would get to this moment—for that to have arrived in this particular week is extraordinary.

At the beginning of the week, I acknowledged the member for Indi was asking a question about acknowledging the boundaries of the previous Medicare Local that stretched across state boundaries to cover both Albury and Wodonga. The concept of these two great cities, either side of a state border, being able to work in a way that state cooperation instinctively has not gone to, has been one of the great parts of the story of Albury-Wodonga.

The concept that was originally put that we would end up with a centre of 300,000 people was not realised, but we did see a centre that started at 38,000 people go to something in the order of 100,000 people. While the project may not have reached the full level of ambition of the Whitlam government, there is no doubt whatsoever that today we can celebrate Albury-Wodonga as being a great success.

Gough Whitlam first raised the idea for the regional development projects in Albury in a speech he gave in Sydney in 1969. He then visited Albury in 1970 for a Rotary conference. I understand he stayed at the Travelodge that night and later boasted that that speech took him from the Travelodge to the Lodge. It then formed part of his Blacktown campaign speech in 1972, in which he said:

A national government which cuts itself off from responsibility for the nation's real life, a national government which has nothing to say about cities, has nothing relevant or enduring to say about the nation or the nation's Future. Labor is not a city-based party. It is a people-based party, and the overwhelming majority of our people live in cities and towns across our nation.

He went on to say:

A Labor Government will have two over-riding objectives: to give Australian families access to land housing at fair prices, and to preserve and enhance the quality of the national estate—the environment.

And then said:

We will set up a Commonwealth-State Land Development Commission in each state to buy substantial tracts of land in new areas being opened up for housing and to lease or sell at cost fully serviced housing blocks.

Today, the parliament is still dealing with the legacy of that 1972 campaign speech.

Upon taking government, a new department and a new function for the Commonwealth was established. We had a Department of Urban and Regional Development, with the great Tom Uren as the minister. This started the Albury-Wodonga National Growth Centre project in 1973, which ultimately became the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation on 21 May 1974, with the hope for it to be a model for similar schemes elsewhere.

The reform program for regional development produced results through direct grants to local government bodies around Australia. Grant programs included flood mitigation, urban renewal, leisure and tourist facilities, and building sewerage systems in unserviced urban areas. Under the Department of Urban and Regional Development, the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation was established on 21 May 1974. Out of this we not only found a vision for Albury-Wodonga; we found the Commonwealth government taking responsibility for entirely new areas of policy that the Commonwealth had previously not touched.

Today, we not only put down a marker for the great growth that occurred in Albury Wodonga; we also acknowledge today that the principles of regionalism and the principles of obligations to people who live in cities and suburbs are something that would be a function of the government of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The technical issues that we deal with today in terms of the technicality of the bill are a bit less exciting than the principles and policy objectives that we celebrate. Effectively, we are at the end of a process which has been happening ever since the 1970s.    The government announced in the 2014-15 budget that it intends to abolish the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation, and this bill will cause that abolition, with the remaining functions to be performed by the Department of Finance.

The Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation is responsible for selling a range of residential, industrial and commercial land in the Albury-Wodonga region. While we were in government we were proceeding with the orderly sell-down of much of that land, and the government has been continuing with that. I think we all understand the common-sense of good public policy as to why you need to sell that in a staged fashion, and the government has been doing that. We are now at the point where the land parcels are now few enough that we are able to abolish the corporation itself and allow the Department of Finance to conclude the remaining parts of the work.

The Howard government announced in 2005 that the corporation would exit its land development activities and sell its remaining property assets over what would be approximately a 10-year period, and both sides of politics have made sure that we have kept to that time line pretty much to the day. In February 2013, the previous government extended this period to sell the remaining assets through to June 2021—which is part of the orderly process I referred to. This was to ensure that land sales did not negatively impact the region's land market through dumping blocks of land on the market to meet a particular time line. One of the worst things that could have happened for the people of Albury-Wodonga would have been for this to have been rushed and, as a result, for people to have lost value in their land, for there to have been a long-term impact on their ultimate sale of land and potentially an immediate impact on the equity they held over their assets. We continued to facilitate the eventual abolition of the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation through continued land sales, such that the amount of land held by the corporation reduced from 6,387 hectares in June 2005 down to 1,086 hectares in June 2014.

The bill before the parliament today abolishes the act itself, which facilitates the abolition of the corporation. The bill also makes consequential amendments to the Freedom of Information Act and a number of other acts to take into account the abolition of the corporation. The bill also includes provisions to ensure the effective transfer of activities from the corporation to the Department of Finance. This is an appropriate measure for the government to have put in place.

As I said, the corporation was always intended to wind up. We should not view today as being somehow the end of the Albury-Wodonga project. Rather, today is the end of a particular phase of that, which was the phase of direct and intense Commonwealth engagement as part of a vision which was not fully realised. Many of the hopes for Commonwealth departments to find themselves relocated did not get realised in the way that the Whitlam government had hoped and, sadly, the great dream of a university that would straddle both state borders resulted in New South Wales establishing one university and Victoria establishing the other on either side. So there were some opportunities which we did not get to, but no doubt what we have seen an extent of regionalism and very much a benefit to the nation and to the people of Albury-Wodonga which should see the parliament stand proud.

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