Next time you go out for a meal at Dickson, take a look at the head office of the ACT Planning and Land Authority.
It's around the corner, in Challis Street. The sign at the front reads ''Dame Pattie Menzies House'', but it should read ''Houses''. The ''House'' is actually two buildings linked by a glassed-in foyer and a thin walkway.
Why was what is now the head office of the ACT planning authority designed that way? To comply with the letter but not the spirit of the ACT's planning rules.
The developer wanted a big building, the planning authority wouldn't allow it, so the developer instead built two smaller ''separate'' buildings and then happened to end up with the authority as a tenant.
The ACT Planning and Land Authority works in a building that is a monument to its impotence.
It is also a monument to the way things are done more generally in the ACT.
A few years back the ACT Government agreed to give the Australian National University the first right to use the parcels of Government land bounded by Barry Drive, Marcus Clarke Street and Childers Street.
The university is hemmed in by the lake to the south, Black Mountain to the west and Turner to the north. It can only grow east. The arrangement made sense.
At first it worked well. The ANU and a private partner used some parcels to build accommodation for students. Then the university developed bigger plans that happened to have very little to do with the business of being a university.
It asked for a new parcel, agreed to pay an (undisclosed) price, and then sublet its 99-year lease for 99 years minus one day to the Motor Traders Association of Australia Superannuation Fund.
The super fund is busily seeking office tenants for what will be an office block over which the university will have no rights. The prospective tenants include IBM, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and the Government Solicitor's office.
The ACT Government which probably meant well has been out-foxed again. It has missed out on the revenue that it could have got in an open auction and also lost its ability to properly plan Civic. The ANU and the Motor Traders Association of Australia must be laughing.
Putting one over the ACT Government is easy. It has been for years. Ever since self-government.
The biggest heist took place 10 years ago.
These days the ACT has, in the words of the Chief Minister, the ''narrowest revenue stream'' of any state or territory.
It didn't then.
The Constitution required that all of the land on which the national capital was built be ''vested in and belong to'' the Commonwealth.
Speaking in the House of Representatives in 1903, Sir Edmund Barton made the intention of Canberra's founding fathers absolutely clear, declaring that ''within the area that is chosen the Commonwealth should be the landlord or the proprietor of every square inch of private land''.
Rather than selling blocks of land, the Commonwealth sold leases permitting the use of that land for specified periods of time. Householders were sold 99-year leases (later converted to 999 years) but businesses were given much shorter terms most of them 50 years.
These leases were set up to be a source of continuing revenue. After the first 50 or so years of Canberra's life, business leases began coming up for renewal virtually every year. Because the leases were sold and valued in the knowledge that they had an expiry date, businesses planned in the knowledge that they would have to shell out fresh money to buy new ones when they expired.
Canberra economist Terry Dwyer says the Commonwealth was ''like Lend Lease or any other developer collecting the profits and rents of its enterprise''.
But after self-government it became easier and potentially far more lucrative for the tenants to lobby the landlord to let them keep the land for free.
They told the baby ACT government it was ''important for the economy of the ACT that conditions be as similar as possible to the conditions elsewhere in Australia'' apparently oblivious to the conditions in leasehold cities including London and Hong Kong which seemed to suit business interests quite well.
They spoke of attracting new businesses to Canberra, but the reality was that extending the leases without charge would push up the price of land for new businesses while handing existing lease owners a windfall.
The ACT government, led at the time by Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries, were prevailed upon to gave away a windfall estimated at the time as worth up to $1.2billion.
ANU economist Julie Smith wrote, ''present and future ACT citizens will pick up the tab with either a 13 per cent addition to residential rates, or further cuts to health, education and community services''.
She turned out to be right.
Dwyer told the Senate inquiry that the fledgling ACT government was ''giving away its only long-term financial asset''.
He begged it to ''put a stop to this nonsense''.
''If a trustee of a private trust disposed of trust land on the terms and conditions set out he would be dragged into court to be charged with a criminal breach of trust,'' he said.
He asked the Senate committee to ''inquire into who made representations and what are market valuations of the value of commercial lease renewals''.
The Senate committee might have also inquired into who made representations to the ACT Labor party. It voted with the governing Liberal Party to give away the ACT's only unique revenue-raising asset.
Smith described the resulting Coalition as the ''Liberal and Labor branches of the ACT Property Party''.
Few people respect the way planning takes place in the ACT these days. And few people who know what happened have sympathy when the ACT government cries poor.
Many of us aren't looking forward to voting. Things aren't run well, but its hard to see them being run better.
Peter Martin is economics editor.
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