FARRUGIA, Mr Jacob Jeremy, Private capacity

CHAIR: Welcome. Would you make a short opening statement for us?

Mr Farrugia : No problem. I'm a landowner in one of the initial precincts, and I've come to speak on behalf of a majority of the landowners in the initial precincts who at the moment are suffering a great emotional and psychological toll due to the way they feel they're being treated by the aerotropolis and the way they feel they've been left in limbo for an indefinite amount of time. At the moment everyone is screaming out to have their voice heard and their property rights around the aerotropolis heard. At the moment the current community feels helpless, deserted and very distraught in the current evolving situation.

I will give a summary of the current situation up until now. As you guys probably know, the aerotropolis has recently been rezoned to a few different precincts—either environmental, enterprise or urban. As part of that, a precinct plan has also been released which outlines the department of planning's vision for the area, including roads, open space parks, linear parks, areas of recreation and those sorts of things. Under this precinct plan, there have been enormous and unprecedented amounts of open space and public space allocated in people's land. This was not reflected in the SEPP rezoning. Us landowners are not against open space or public parks or any of that sort of thing, but it makes it more difficult for the properties to then be sellable to a developer or an investor.

After I personally spoke to the department of planning, they informed the community that at the moment only Thompsons Creek is reserved for acquisition and that there is currently no plan for any compensation of any landowners in Winamatta South Creek or any other landowners that are zoned urban or enterprise, but, in the precinct plans, have their properties allocated as open space. They announced this in a webinar that can be found at a link that I provided in my submission.

Although some residents' properties are what you would call a good zoning, enterprise or urban, if you look at the precinct plans 100 per cent of their properties are allocated as open space, which, to a private investor or a developer, renders their blocks unsellable. Others have a portion of open space in their property under the precinct plan, which reduces a portion of their potential sale price. Then there are the other residents who fall within Winamatta South Creek who are zoned industrial and who also face the issue that their blocks are currently unsellable. On the airport coming in: we weren't against the airport coming in. There was a lack of jobs out there. We're also not against the environmental zoning or open space, if that's the department's plan for the area. But there needs to be a clear compensation strategy in place when private buyers aren't available to buy properties.

Another issue is that, because of the rezoning, residents can't get council approval to do what they could have done previously. If they, for example, already had previous land use rights—if they already have something approved, they can continue to do that. But if they were to sell the property to somebody who wanted to use it as a chicken farm or put horse stables on it or build a granny flat—I've even heard cases of renovating a house—they wouldn't be able to get council approval anymore. Even if they were to sell the property not to a big developer but to someone who wants to use it just for farm use, because it has been rezoned as either enterprise or urban or mixed use a lot of the things that were previously able to receive council approval are no longer able to receive council approval. So it also removes the buyers who would have wanted to just use it for a farm.

There are many landowners out there, each with their own personal circumstances. Some are old, and need to move and go into aged-care facilities. Others have worked their whole life and their property is essentially their nest egg, and they've planned their retirement based on selling their property one day. That's now all been taken away from them. Two days ago or yesterday on A Current Affair,there was a lady suffering from terminal lung cancer. Her husband said their property is worthless and he wasn't able to sell it for at least what he bought it for two months before that. He wasn't even able to go and spend any time with her in hospital during her dying days; he had to work to pay off the mortgage they'd got themselves into a couple of months before. That is an example of someone who either has a property that is now unsellable or can't get what they paid for the property, under incredible circumstances, and is stuck in a situation where their wife is dying and they can't spend that last year with them.

Most landowners currently feel they're stuck in limbo. A lot of their properties are unsellable or worthless. There's no clear compensation strategy or acquisition strategy in place. For a lot of people, their lives have been put on hold. I'm urging the inquiry to look into this issue. If the land is zoned as environmental under the SEPP or even if it does have good zoning but is marked as open space under the precinct plan, still making it unsellable, the community want a fair compensation plan put in place by the government so that, that way, they're able to move on if they're presented with circumstances where their families are suffering or they've got hardship. I know it's probably unrealistic to compensate every single landowner immediately. But if a clear compensation strategy were in place, everyone would know where they stood. If people are suffering from hardship or certain circumstances, they could possibly be given priority over people that may not necessarily be in a situation where they need to move out straight away. Regardless, I think a clear compensation strategy with a time line for all landowners is definitely important.

CHAIR: Thanks, Mr Farrugia. I am going to do to you what I did to the previous witnesses: I know that you're here to speak for a larger group of landholders who you've been working with, but I do want to get you to reflect for a minute on your personal circumstances. Can you tell us about where you live, what kind of property it is, how long you and/or your family have been there, what the circumstances of the property were prior to zoning and what the position is that you're in now?

Mr Farrugia : No problem. I've lived in Austral for a long time, about 20 years. Austral has obviously been getting redeveloped recently. We still wanted that rural sort of lifestyle, so we ended up purchasing a property out on Mersey Road. Again, after purchasing it, we realised that we can't do a lot of the things that we're able to do on our Austral property now. We've realised we can't build a shed just to store our lawn mower and stuff like that. We can't farm the land.

CHAIR: How big's your place?

Mr Farrugia : It's 10 acres, or 40,000 square metres. It's limited the capacity—the people I bought the property off had been there for 30 or 40 years. It's run down. It really should be a knockdown rebuild. But, again, we're not able to do that either, because now it's zoned as enterprise, which means it's zoned for more of an industrial use than a residential use. The rezonings have limited the capacity of a lot of people to do certain things on their property.

CHAIR: So you can't make improvements to the property—you're prohibited by the rules from doing that?

Mr Farrugia : I've heard people say that, at the moment, they're not able to do any renovations. My understanding is if I put through a development application to build, say, a second dwelling on the property, it wouldn't be allowed. It's not one of the permitted uses anymore.

CHAIR: It's zoned for industrial use. Were the previous group of landholders in a position where their land was zoned for environmental purposes?

Mr Farrugia : Yes.

CHAIR: So the properties became almost worthless, and there's no exit plan for them. What do you see in the next 10 years for you?

Mr Farrugia : There are two categories of property owners. The first is those whose land has been zoned as environmental. Typically their properties are in areas that have been allocated by the department of planning as maybe having environmental significance—maybe next to a creek, possibly flood prone and possibly not developable. The second category don't really have any environmental significance on their property, but the way the Department of Planning is advertising this whole package is essentially as a green city and doing things differently from how they've been done until now. Even on properties that don't have any environmental significance, if you look at the planning package, you'll see glossy brochures of buildings, and there are trees everywhere and big parks and that sort of thing, for example. Just on my street alone, for example, for the property that we own, 70 per cent of it is enterprise and 30 per cent of it, at the front, has been allocated as a park.

I haven't been hit as hard as some people. There are other people on my street—at least five or six properties—whose whole property is 100 per cent open space, 100 per cent a park. Even though it's zoned as enterprise or industrial, the whole property has been allocated as a park in the precinct plan. So what would happen is when you put forward a DA, for example, to do a development, the DA has to be in line with the SEPP—the zoning—and has to also be in line with the precinct plan. So, if the general idea is to have a park in that area, you're obviously not going to be able to get approval to build a warehouse or a business park, for example. So the attractiveness for a developer to come in and buy that property is almost next to nothing.

CHAIR: But the value of the property that they do buy will be improved by the fact that that green space has been established next door?

Mr Farrugia : If they've bought a property next door, for example?

CHAIR: Yes. So some property holders are bearing an unfair burden in that their properties are losing value—

Mr Farrugia : Correct.

CHAIR: and, for those property holders who are enterprise, industrial or residential, their property values increase because the nature of the overall development is to create a different kind of city, where there's lots of green space and people want to live and work there?

Mr Farrugia : Correct. There are people who have good zoning but have 100 per cent of park allocated on their property. In my opinion—and from investigations that have been done by town planning companies—they are in a position where their properties are worthless. Then there are other properties—of which there are very few—that are, for example, 100 per cent enterprise. Then most people are sitting in between, where they may have slightly good zoning and then maybe 30 per cent, 50 per cent or 70 per cent of park. If you look at the overall precinct plan, maybe 50 per cent of it is parks scattered throughout the whole area.

CHAIR: And prior to the zoning, everyone's equal and after the zoning there is entirely different treatment for different kinds of small landholders, just because of a difference in where a line has being drawn?

Mr Farrugia : Exactly right—100 per cent. There are also other issues that have been raised. One of the other landowners on my street, in the lead-up to the rezoning—and there's no denying that property prices increased; that's a fact—had equity in his property. He used that to do different business ventures and to buy other property. He is now concerned that, when his bank does his quarterly meeting and values his property and it comes down to being virtually almost worthless and 80 per cent of his equity has disappeared, they are going to take everything now that all of his equity has gone.

CHAIR: What does the future hold for you?

Mr Farrugia : Fortunately I am young, but there are people who are not in my position. As I said, there are people there who are sick, or old or retired. When I have spoken to other people in the area—obviously I know the people in the area—they say that they felt like they were the scum of the earth moving out there 40 or 50 years ago when no-one wanted to live in Bringelly or Kemps Creek. They were pig farmers and chicken farmers and these properties were essentially their nest eggs—everything they'd saved for for their whole lives. And, literally, with a stroke of a pen, their next-door neighbour's property might be X amount but they can't sell their property and it's worthless. They might have wanted to retire and move to the beach, go to Queensland, travel Australia or whatever—who knows what they wanted to do; everyone has their own plan—and, for a lot of people, that has now been stripped away from them.

CHAIR: My office has prepared this map that I have, which I assume is right. It shows the Leppington Pastoral Company's property and the Leppington Triangle. So you're just sitting over here behind—

Mr Farrugia : My property backs directly onto the back of the airport.

CHAIR: How long would it take to walk to the Leppington Triangle purchase?

Mr Farrugia : I can see the Leppington Triangle. It is across my fence.

CHAIR: Of course, we had evidence as a result of the Auditor-General's report and then in Senate estimates, about the kind of access that put aside $30 million of public money to spend on a $3 million property. But how does the kind of access that the owners of that property and other large landholders have had to decision-makers in the department and, indeed, Parliament House contrast to the way that small landholders like you have been treated?

Mr Farrugia : Up until recently, and still now, we feel like our voices haven't been heard. There have been incredible amounts of effort made by the local community to try to get our voices heard and get our point of view across. The minister, frankly, hasn't met with anybody or spoken with anybody or come out and spoken publicly at all. There are larger landowners, like the Leppington Triangle, and families that I'm sure everyone here knows about who seem to get very, very cushy deals, and then, as I said, your mum and dad who were pig farmers for the last 40 years get shafted pretty much. To give you an idea, I was speaking the other day to someone else on my street. Again, this is in very close proximity to Leppington Triangle. He reckons that in 2017 he purchased his property for $2.7 million. Contrast that to what they ended up achieving. It's chalk and cheese, if you know what I mean.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Farrugia.

Senator CHANDLER: I don't have any questions for this witness. You've tied off very well on what has been done and what could have been done differently. Thank you very much for coming along and for your testimony today. It's really useful.

Mr Farrugia : No problem. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

CHAIR: Is there anything else you want to convey to us this afternoon?

Mr Farrugia : Just compassion. As I said, I'm young; I've got time up my sleeve. But there are certain landowners out there who are quite old and quite frail. If they're stuck in a position where they're trapped on their property and can't sell it and can't get a private investor to come in and take it on, it's really unfair on them. They've been paying tax and working their whole life in Australia, and now they've had a dream, maybe as part of their retirement, and it has been stolen away from them with the stroke of a pen. So compassion is what I think is important to take away from it all.

CHAIR: I think you're right, Mr Farrugia. Thank you for your evidence. We'll make sure you get the Hansard out of it later.