Cassy O'Connor MP | Greens' Leader
In the middle of a private developer feeding frenzy over public Crown Land assets, including treasured coastal areas, the Liberals have released a laughably desperate list of properties sold under the previous government.
Every government, to some extent, will make available for sale or lease public property that is either surplus to requirements, no longer in use or could be put to a substantially better use.
Many properties on the list provided by the Liberals’ appear to relate to Housing Tasmania stock re-profiling, where houses are sold – often to the occupants, in order to allow new affordable homes to be built.
What the Liberals are doing is entirely different. It involves the secret trading in large tracts of coastal Crown Land where private developers are being offered exclusive rights to public land, at public expense.
This secretive Crown Land trading process is targeting some of the most valuable areas of public Crown Land from Swansea to Boat Harbour. Whatever spin and deflection the Liberals put on this, the affected communities are seeing straight through it and that is the only transparent thing about this Crown Land feeding frenzy.
At the heart of this secret trading is the Office of the Coordinator General and the Liberals’ Unsolicited Bids policy for private developers. There is no requirement for public consultation on unsolicited bids or a decision by the State to make available publicly owned assets.
This is what ‘open for business’ looks like under the Liberals.