24 November 2005

Water Wars with Queanbeyan and surrounding NSW

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times has a story (bylined to someone called Email Service) on the fights over water in the region.

On the one hand it’s easy to say “It’s our water Queanbeyan and Yass can go root themselves”. On the other hand the developer makes an interesting argument:

Chief executive of the Village Building Company Bob Winnel, who is behind the controversial Tralee development, also said the ACT Government was using its monopoly over water to inflate ACT land prices.

“It is not a proper thing for a government to misuse monopoly powers over water to restrict competition in the housing market by preventing land development across the border and forcing land prices to pretty much unprecedented levels to protect your revenue base,” Mr Winnel said.

He said the ACT Government wanted a lazy Budget. “A very important part of their Budget is land revenue with the second dearest housing in Australia,” Mr Winnel said.

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