Urban Land Development Authority(Queensland)

The State Government this week will enact the ULDA which will have powers to "assemble land,assess and approve development and market land for development by the private sector."

The purpose is to provide sites for affordable housing in cases where the normal processes have stagnated. ULDA will either acquire the property or enter into a joint venture with the developer, and will sell the site with approvals. The profits will be ploughed into acquiring other sites. It all sounds too entrepreneurial for a government department- a bit like WA Inc.

The need for this drastic action highlights the shortcomings of IPA, the Integrated Planning Act(1997), which has been identified as the main cause of delays in rezoning approvals. It may have been easier and less expensive to amend IPA than to create another monster.

This is a strange case of a Labor government acknowledging the shortcomings of its administration and then duplicating what the private sector does best,ie identify, rezone and develop land. It is not something that a Coalition government would normally do, and is likely to be dismantled come the next State Election.