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Property Council calls for refinement of the Government’s initiatives

  • September 19, 2017

Queensland’s largest industry has called on the State Government to use next week’s Budget to revamp two of its hallmark initiatives, to ensure the power of the private sector is fully harnessed to drive new economic opportunities.

Queensland Executive Director of the Property Council, Chris Mountford, says that the Government’s Advancing our cities and regions strategy and Market-Led Proposals framework both require reexamination to ensure they achieve their objectives.

“These programs were launched to catalyse new investment in Queensland, but after several months in operation neither are filling the property industry with confidence,” Mr Mountford said.

“The Government needs to be commended for putting these programs in place, but in practice we are seeing too much red-tape and inertia getting in the way of good outcomes.”

“By using the Budget to commit to debug these programs, the Government would send a strong message that they are keen to work with industry to develop new job-creating projects.”

The Government’s Advancing our cities and regions strategy, aimed at unlocking underutilised State-owned land for development, has been in place for nearly eight months – but is yet to deliver any redevelopment projects. 

“A lack of cooperation between Government agencies to identify and discharge surplus land is undermining the core objective,”

“The Treasurer needs to consider ways to ensure all agencies and arms of the government are pulling as one on this initiative.”

The Government’s Market-Led Proposals framework was warmly welcomed by the property industry. But nearly two years on, only one project has emerged from this process.

“The biggest hurdle in the current Market-Led proposals assessment process is the ‘uniqueness test’ – ultimately, the main test should not be whether a project is ‘unique’, but whether it will benefit Qld.” 

“If the Government could streamline decisions and create greater certainty through the assessment process the market-led proposals framework could be an invaluable pipeline of future job-creating opportunities.”

“By overhauling these two programs, the Government could ensure that more projects get off the ground, and more jobs are generated for Queenslanders.”