Full rating sought for Crown land

Press, 12 June 1986, Page 8

Full rating sought for Crown land

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington

Full rates will be paid on Crown land within five years, under a recommendation being promoted by the Minister of Local Government, Dr Bassett. He said yesterday that he favoured "a phased movement to full rateability,” the first step taking effect when the Rating Power Bill, now before Parliament, came into force. Immediately affected would be Railways Corporation land other than permanent track and marshalling yards, sites occupied by State electric-

ity enterprises, land taken under the Public Works Act, Tourist Hotel Corporation hotels in national parks, and land held for commercial, industrial and residential developments. Dr Bassett said he was also proposing that, as some State trading agencies became corporations, the land they occupied should become fully rateable “as a matter of course.” This would be consistent with the over-all thrust of the Government’s economic strategy in that it would remove what was in effect a subsidy, he said.