UP TO 400 houses could be built on federal government land at Birkdale in a budget announcement that has outraged mayor Karen Williams.
Council had been negotiating for more than three years to secure the 80 hectares owned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, citing uses like educational facilities and recreation.
The federal budget handed down on Tuesday night states the government would divest the land in 2019-20.
“The property divested can support up to 400 homes and will increase the supply of land for housing in metropolitan Brisbane,” the budget says.
Within hours of the budget being released, Cr Williams launched a petition calling for the decision to be rescinded and negotiations with council to acquire the land without going to open market continued.
“Council has been blindsided by this sudden decision announced in the 2018 budget papers that ACMA is proposing to sell this land for 400 houses under the guise of ‘reducing pressure in housing affordability’,” she said.
In January 2015 council agreed to try and buy the land on Old Cleveland Road East to prevent the site being land-banked and sold for housing development.
Councillors agreed on Wednesday that Cr Williams should hold urgent negotiations with federal government and ACMA, and Air Services Australia, owners of neighbouring land.
In response to the budget, Capalaba MP Don Brown has called residents to a meeting at Thorneside on May 20, saying they needed to ensure the houses were not built.
He supported council trying to stop the sell-off and development through the petition.
“However, the only thing that is stopping this development at the moment is that our (state) government took this land out of the urban footprint, which this council opposed,” he said.
The site has long been the subject of contention.
In July, a political brawl broke out between Cr Williams and Mr Brown over the bushland.
It followed a petition started by Mr Brown calling for the land to not be included in the urban footprint.
In January 2015 federal MP Andrew Laming said the site would be ideal for a university campus and said he had been working on a plan for the federal government to sell the land for nine years.
On Wednesday he said the land would be released to the community, a campaign he had started 10 years ago.
Mr Laming said he would fight for the land not to be sold to anyone other than the state or local government.
He said there would be no houses built on the land if the state or local government did not want housing.
“The government is committed to working with the Redland City Council and the Queensland government to improve the use of this land to benefit the local community and Queensland more broadly,” he said.
“There will be nothing in the sale that will instruct the state and local government on how to use the land.
“In the coming months the government will develop a divestment strategy for the land which will take account of the local amenity, Indigenous, environmental and heritage matters.”
On Wednesday afternoon Mr Laming said he was happy to apologise for the confusion caused by clumsy wording in budget papers.
Mr Laming said Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar would meet with residents at Ginger and Lime, 112 Birkdale Road from 9am on Tuesday, May 15.
