There are Laws in the Constitution that you may not know exist.
These are your Rights regarding land resumptions.
There are thousands of people who are having their land taken from them by local, state and federal governments at a fraction of its value; under the guise of building infrastructure, only to eventually have the land on-sold by government to high rolling property investors, mostly from overseas, who build units and housing on that land to make a profit from the original land owners property that the government took.
The following recent High Court ruling will prove to be very reassuring for those looking at losing their land to rogue councils and state and federal governments. This link will take you straight to the case in question:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/
There are however certain other issues that were not canvassed in this case that would further back up the rights of land owners, especially against ‘councils’. Local councils are supposedly given authority by State statute to be an arm of government. Most of us are aware that the 1988 referendum made clear that the sovereign people of Australia did not approve of local council being an arm of Constitutional government. Nowhere in the Constitution does it give the State the right to create another level of government. After all it is the Constitution that Creates the States which prior to the constitution were colonies. Look at it this way. The boss of a company creates a position for me in his company. I am subordinate to the boss. I can’t then go, with any authority, and employ a new boss to that company.
The framers of the constitution spoke about the people of the States having security in owning their land. They did not want a system where people would be concerned about developing their land and then to have it taken away at a whim by any government. If you look at section 51-31 of the Constitution in the Annotated constitution by Quick and Garran,
218. “Purpose in Respect of Which.”
The second limit to the power of the Commonwealth to acquire private or
provincial property is, that it must only take it for purposes in respect of
which the Parliament has power to make laws. Thus lands and buildings
could only be taken for postal, telegraphic, telephonic, naval and military
purposes; for arsenals and fortifications; light-houses; quarantine stations;
customs houses; federal offices and federal law courts; and other purposes
similarly authorized by the Constitution.
The States believe they have the power to take land for any purpose in which they have the right to make laws but they are still controlled by the fact that they can only make laws for peace, order, and good Governance. The States need to recognise their inherent nature and that is to use our taxes for these reasons. They are not a business and as such cannot lawfully acquire land for anything but State infrastructure. It may be argued that a railway is infrastructure and they would have that right. They may even be able to enforce that right of compulsory acquisition even if that railway were to be run by a private company. If they take land for a railway and then after constructing that railway have land not used by the railway then the land must by law be returned to the owner of the land. It cannot be then sold off for private development unless it is for further public infrastructure. It cannot be sold to a private developer to make profit.
We have not even touched on the fact that in 1975 the State of Victoria wrote a new State Constitution without a referendum, which although many lawyers will tell you that they could do so, we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the States lost their right to alter their Constitutions without referendum at federation. The lawful implications of that are that we believe that any law passed by the Government since 1975 is invalid as it will have been done under authority of a Constitution not lawfully enacted. It would even extend to the fact that no parliament since 1975 has any lawful authority.
What we need is for the people to wake up, and stand up, and demand the State and Federal Government act under their respective Constitutions. Many of us have taken the time to study and learn what is required to fight for our rights. Unfortunately most normal people, unless they are directly affected, have no interest which makes the job of trying to force the Government and the courts to obey the Constitution so much harder. Why do the politicians and media push the Republic issue so hard? They need to alter the structure in which they operate before enough people wake up to their evil, devious, and unlawful activities and hold them all accountable.
This issue is the sort of issue that makes people wake up. There is a need to ensure that that awareness lives on in those people for the rest of their lives, so that they too become fighters for the cause of the rights of everybody. There is a wealth of information available now with the internet and more and more people to teach others their rights. It does however disappoint many of us fighting the good fight that many that are affected, although they may stand up and fight for the cause directly affecting them, once the fight is over they go back to the television and their sports, etc, and nothing long term or lasting is achieved. Until the average person is willing to fight for the rights of others and not just for what directly affects them, then we will see no change in the way we are cheated and deceived in the future.
When you look at the way people vote for the major political parties we know that the mindset of the people is not sufficiently motivated enough to want lasting change. People need to stay angry and act long after their own cause is over. If we have Independents in parliament that represent their electorates and not their party we would not be having this exchange.
Devastated families in Sydney’s southwest have told of their heartbreak at losing their homes for a pittance to the Labor Government, which stands to make millions. Yet a spokesman for Premier Kristina Keneally blamed the Opposition and said the land was bought under laws passed in the early 1990s by a Coalition government.
Leppington families will lose their acreages tomorrow in a compulsory acquisition by the Government, which plans to build the southwest rail link on part of it.
The land not used for the line may be sold to developers for apartment blocks and homes.
Frances Vumbaca said she obtained a master plan yesterday that showed part of her 2ha property would be zoned for high-rise units. She and her neighbours were offered little more than $70 per square metre.
Land at nearby Edmondson Park was bought for $400/sq m.
“We’ve been here for 23 years. People are losing their homes. It has caused health problems, it has caused problems in families, in relationships,” Ms Vumbaca said.
Stuart Dennon has been representing his in-laws Michael and Kim Su, who run a market garden. He said the Government’s treatment of the family had been shabby.”
The treatment has been very terse, very abrupt, very bureaucratic and unhelpful,” he said. “The Department of Planning appears to be running an agenda to acquire as much land for as little as possible. This is an outrage.”
Ms Vumbaca will be paid a little over $1 million in total for her land while the Su family will get $950,000.”
The Government announced it would pass laws as early as June which was to straight-out rip off people’s homes then on-sell them to developers,” Opposition planning spokesman Brad Hazzard said.
A spokesman for Planning Minister Tony Kelly said the valuer-general had provided an independent determination of the land value. Landowners could accept this official valuation or lodge an objection with the Land and Environment Court, he said.”
(The devastation to farming families caused by the native vegetation act, which in effect locked up huge areas of land owned by farming people, so that they were unable to use that land but were still liable for all costs, has also been explained elsewhere. In effect this has allowed the NSW Government to avoid compensation as the land was still owned by the farmers but was unusable.
Since 1998 there have been 554 suicides by farmers as a direct result of these restrictions being placed on landowners.)