12 May 2006

Brendan defends selling the caravan park to Koomarri

| johnboy
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There has been an extraordinary furore surrounding the eviction of residents from the long stay caravan park in Narrabundah.

Liberal Leader Brendan Smyth has been talking to the ABC trying to defend his role in the matter.

“It was costing the ACT government money, we were losing taxpayers’ money on it, [that is] my memory of it at the time,” he said.

“So when we gave it to Koomari what we didn’t want to do is put an albatross around their neck which said, ‘Well you know you have to keep it forever and a day’, because you didn’t want to burden a community group with that sort of clause in their lease.

“They’ve done the right thing by the conditions we set, they kept it for longer than five years and in good faith, on-sold it.”

Alternatively he could have mutualised it and given it to the residents.

UPDATED: The Greens have been rather sharp and are noting that the new owners are not yet on the title to the property. So Koomarri could give the land back to the government.

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Guess what Simon Corbell has threatened to do about this mess? Well according to the Canberra Timse he’s going to use his call-in superpowers to torpedo any plans by the new owners to redevelop the land.

While obviously not the ideal solution, it’s better than letting Koomarri get away with this bullshit.

I think Koomarri was planning to sell the Caravan Park going back to the day they decided that they were going to build a new HQ in Phillip. For them to say otherwise is BS.

We had this problem when I was in the New Zealand Army. Lots of military bases on some potentially very valuable real estate, however as it had been gifted to us in the first place we weren’t allowed to sell it.

Given that like most things in New Zealand, they just copied whatever Australia had written at the time and modified it to their purposes, I’d assume that the sale was illegal in the first place due to this clause, being that if somebody gives you some land for free, you can’t onsell it if one of those parties is the Government (receiver and/or gifter).

They may be in more shit than swimming in an effluent pond if that’s the case.

Vic Bitterman8:14 pm 12 May 06

Just proves, once again, corbell is a reactionary clown. Foot after foot disappears into his mouth, again and again.

No, I don’t have any solutions, just criticism of our illustrious ‘leaders’. If they had decent governance in place, this situation would not have occurred.

Indi title to the property doesn’t pass until the new owner is registered on the property register by the Registrar General.

Everyone comes out of this looking bad:

– Koomarri as a charity should not be harming vulnerable people for a profit.
– Simon Corbell should have paid attention when the Greens brought this up months ago. He could have varied the lease then and then whoever bought it would have paid a fair price for a working Caravan Park. Varying the lease now is unfair to the new buyers – typical Simon though.
ACT LIbs – giving it to Koomarri – a quick fix if ever there was one!

I talked to Vicki Dunne and Deb Foskey today about this (well actually I was talking to them about something else but this came up in conversation).

Mrs Dunne said her personal opinion at the time was that the park should have been kept by Housing ACT but failing that, why on earth didn’t Koomari give the land back to the government if they didn’t want it any more?

Dr Foskey (I have an audio clip I’ll stick up when I find some editing equipment) had a lot to say about the matter. She said it’s been confirmed the land was sold for $2.2 million and it seems like the deal’s been in the works definitely since February and possibly even since last November when all the residents were asked to sign new leases (not all of them did). These new leases included clauses that there could be no more than four people per residence and that they couldn’t form any kind of resident’s group. She also said she and the government are working closely together to find out exactly who is behind the company that’s just brought the land and that, once they find out who it is, they’ll publicise the names.

Super Simon strikes again?

Guess what Simon Corbell has threatened to do about this mess? Well according to the Canberra Timse he’s going to use his call-in superpowers to torpedo any plans by the new owners to redevelop the land.

*gasp!*

Maybe the Greens need to understand that if exchange of contracts has occurred (and the cooling off period could have expired) it is likely that all that remains is for the new owner to seek a change to the title, so it’s a mere formality.

The commercial transaction has concluded, and geez,why would Koomarri wish to take back posession of the site after receiving payment – would you reclaim your house after disposing by sale because the new owner appeared to be a dodgy geezer? Money in the pocket is the clincher and the residents are like any other ‘tenant’, meat in the sandwich.

See, this sort of thing makes the ACT Greens look like a pack of hypocrites.

Because their dumb-arse leader hogged a house that a low income person could have been living in, it now seems a little rich now that they are suddenly so concerned about what may or may not going to be happening to some low income people living at a caravan park.

Good work, guys!

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