Public awareness of property rights issues has intensified during the past year to the point where a coalition of industry groups has pegged it as a major election issue.
Public awareness of property rights issues has intensified during the past year to the point where a coalition of industry groups has pegged it as a major election issue.
This awareness has come primarily through media coverage of issues associated with the Greater Bunbury Regional Scheme and the Swan Coastal Plains Wetlands, both of which affected regional property owners.
Early last year the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, the Property Council and the Urban Development Institute of Western Australia formed the Coalition for Private Property Rights, which has gained momentum and members over the course of a year.
The coalition’s chief executive officer, Leo Killigrew, said government agencies were pursuing what they believed to be legitimate conservation objectives by exploiting a deficiency in ‘fee simple’ titles.
“Fee simple is a contract between an individual and the crown, who is the absolute owner, but the state has never upheld itself as the absolute owner to the extent that it is now, and they have taken on a radical view of title which the average person cannot afford to challenge,” Mr Killigrew said.
“There is no provision for compensation if it is state-owned land, and the government can, over a number of years devalue land, and then as the only buyer, then offer to purchase your home at considerably less than its replacement cost in the same area.
“There are unintended social and economic impacts as a result of rezoning land, and investors won’t touch land with these zonings over them.”
Pastoralists and Graziers Association spokesperson Geoff Gare said that if the community deemed it necessary to remove or restrict rights, then they should have to pay for it and justify it.
“If Main Roads wants your land then they have to pay for it, but if planners want it, they don’t have to,” he said.
“In business terms, they have the sole option on your land, and it is causing a real problem for rural investment and is a serious disincentive to private industry.”
Mannkal Economic Foundation chairman Ron Manners said “environmental fundamentalism” was responsible for denying property rights, land access rights and water rights for farmers, fishermen, hunters, prospectors and developers.
“The problem in the mining industry is that most people won’t say how bad it is because it scares investors away,” he said.
“You used to be able to go from discovery to production within a year, but now you are lucky if it is five years, and this comes at great cost to all Australians.”
Mr Manners said restrictions and legislation should take into account economic impact, and that much of it didn’t even seem to be based on sound science.
Late last year, a 600-page report was tabled in State Parliament with 37 recommendations in relation to land use and land rights, to which Greens MLA Dee Margetts was a signatory.
“We do endorse the recommendations on the report, but property rights is not about doing what you like on your land, because what you do impacts on other people and other people’s land,” Ms Margetts said.
“Our current system of economics and environmental management is fundamentally flawed, and we work very closely with communities and scientists to look at ecological and economic impacts.
“Property rights appears to be the one and only platform in which the Liberal Party is operating in regional Western Australia, and I’d like to think that the majority of people in regional Western Australia can see through that.
“With freehold land there are a number of activities that you can’t do on land because it impacts others and their land – there is a responsibility to preserve the biodiversity of Western Australia.
“People who have bought environmentally sensitive land on the assumption that they can change the use of the land need to have that activity assessed because there is a wider responsibility than just your land.”