The scale of the job Chief Minister Katy Gallagher has taken on in deciding to buy back and demolish the 1021 Mr Fluffy asbestos homes is astonishing and shows enormous political bravery on her part.
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With no help from the federal government, other than an agreement to source a loan on the territory's behalf, saving the ACT just $32 million in cheaper interest payments, Ms Gallagher has committed the ACT Government - and Canberra's residents - to a $1 billion program. It's a number so big, especially in the context of an entire territory budget of only $5 billion, that federal Senator Eric Abetz acknowledged Canberra couldn't borrow the money itself without compromising other loans and its credit rating. The ACT is going into debt with the help of the Commonwealth to a level it couldn't risk if borrowing directly.
Best-case scenario, Ms Gallagher will recoup $700 million through land sales, implying a sale price for each block averaging $700,000. It's not yet clear how she will realise these prices, but subdivision and the rezoning of blocks wherepossible will help.
This is why the budget pain of paying back the 10-year loan might well prove the lesser of the challenges the Chief Minister confronts.
This morning, 1021 Canberra families face losing their homes. Yes, they will be paid out and they will get market value, as though the homes were not contaminated and calculated by averaging two valuations. But they are also being thrown out of long-time family homes in some cases, and will lose their gardens, their neighbourhoods, and even their possessions to an as-yet-unannounced extent.
Ms Gallagher described her scheme as voluntary and has made much of her hope to accommodate people's desire to stay in their homes or return to their cleaned blocks. But at its heart, the scheme is hard-headed and is certain to cause enormous dislocation and stress to families.
She herself acknowledged the practical stumbling blocks in the way of people returning to their land. She points out that the demolition is a five-year program and will be timetabled in the most cost-effective way, so suburbs might, for example, be done in job lots. As she says, this means you won't be able to sell your land to the Government, rent for six months, then buy it back. You could be out for years.
And if you do try to buy your land back, not only will it be scraped bare - no garden, no trees, no pool, as Ms Gallagher said - it might also be half the size. The Government will rezone where it can and subdivide where planning rules allow to maximise the amount it can make from sales. This news will be among the most devastating of this week's announcements for many families.
Nor can families put any real stock in Ms Gallagher's insistence the scheme is voluntary. She wants people to give up their land voluntarily because she is worried a compulsory scheme would dent confidence in Canberra's leasehold system of land tenure. But if families don't comply (with six months to opt in), they look highly likely to have the land compulsorily acquired. These are the terms with which federal Senator Eric Abetz described the scheme on Tuesday; Ms Gallagher said he had been mistaken to call it compulsory, but that looks to be the reality.
As for the people who want to live out their final years in their homes, Ms Gallagher's preparedness to allow that looks only to apply to those whose years are very limited. She suggests these houses might be bought now, with an arrangement for the elderly to continue living in them in the meantime.
But she is also clear that five years is about the limit, with all homes demolished by then, other, perhaps, than a few "outliers". Add disagreements about house values, and the scene is set for many years of anguish.
You'd have to conclude that Ms Gallagher's crazy-brave willingness to tackle a problem of this scale, and do the right thing in the face of a scary-sized loan and 1000 terrible personal stories, shows a formidable steadfastness of character.