The ACT estimates committee has blasted the evidence of public servants on the buy-up of farmland as "either strikingly ill-informed or deliberately misleading".
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The committee highlighted what it said was inaccurate information about the farms that the Land Development Agency had been buying since mid 2015.
The agency spent $20 million in the 2015-16 financial year alone, with more since, including $4.5 million for the Corkhill property that is now being developed as Ginninderry.
The estimates inquiry's report, tabled on Tuesday, said officials told the committee that the farm purchases were in line with the 2004 spatial plan which identified areas for urban growth. They were also consistent with the 2012 planning strategy.
In fact, three of the properties - Milapuru, Fairvale and Huntly - were clearly marked as "rural setting" in the spatial plan, not for future growth area. In any case, the 2004 plan was not current, the inquiry found.
"The committee is concerned that this is not the first time that assembly committees have been provided with inaccurate information about the planning status of the rural land purchases," it said, pointing to separate evidence to the planning committee in March.
In March, officials had told the committee that the land was zoned as broadacre.
This was clearly incorrect, the estimates report said. In fact, the land was zoned rural and hills, ridges and buffers.
The planning inquiry had also been told in a written answer that four of the properties were identified in the 2012 planning strategy as future urban areas.
"On reviewing the ACT planning strategy 2012, it is apparent that these areas are not identified as future urban areas," Tuesday's report found.
"Viewed together, this chain of evidence to committees could be seen as either strikingly ill-informed or deliberately misleading. Given witnesses to both committees acknowledged that they had read and understood the relevant privilege statement, this committee can only assume that there has been no attempt to mislead."
"The committee reminds all witnesses that all evidence given must be accurate, well-informed, relevant and complete."
The estimates committee, made up of two Labor, two Liberal and one Green parliamentarian, called on the government to explain the reasons for the purchases to parliament.
It also questioned why the government had granted 99-year leases over the properties if they were intended for future suburban development.
The 99-year leases were granted to Lands End, Fairvale and Huntly in 2001, and for Milapuru (96 years) in 2005.
"The committee... is concerned about the amount of money the ACT government is incurring to pay out long-terms leases on land it is acquiring and the heightened risk of speculators taking advantage of long term leases in areas they believe the government will one day acquire.
"The committee recommends that the ACT government apply only short term leases on rural land that has been identified for possible future urban expansion and/or for purchase.
In May, Auditor-General Maxine Cooper launched an audit of the purchases, and last week she hinted at concerns, suggesting the farm purchases, like others in the city, betrayed "a loose governance arrangement and loose management that poses risk for the territory".
It is not the first time an Assembly has criticised evidence of officials over land purchases, with the Greens' Caroline Le Couteur describing contradictory evidence to a planning committee inquiry into the Glebe Park and West Basin purchases as "confusing and disturbing at the very least".
