The board of the now-defunct Land Development Agency raised concerns with senior executives about the potential for "unfounded criticism" of the agency "land-banking" by buying up rural land across the territory last year.
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Despite the board's concerns, the agency and its main successor, the Suburban Land Agency, have continued to buy $10 million worth of rural land, including some purchases resulting from unsolicited approaches from lessees.
It comes as the ACT's Auditor-General, Dr Maxine Cooper, is preparing to release an audit of government purchases of rural land across the ACT in coming days, while the government has already amassed at least 4000ha of such land in recent years.
The concerns were raised during a board meeting on March 30, 2017 with senior agency executives, who at the same meeting told the board that the audit office was preparing to examine such purchases.
Minutes of the agency's meetings during 2017 released under Freedom of Information laws show the board discussed an un-disclosed rural land purchase on the "edge of the Eastern Broadacre".
During the meeting, the board expressed concerns that "the LDA could invite unfounded criticism by responding to unsolicited approaches from rural lessees to sell their leases at windfall prices, causing the LDA to land bank".
Since 2014, the government has spent at least $43.7 million on eight major rural land purchases, mostly in a vast swathe of land stretching from the western border with NSW and curling around the city's western fringe south to Weston Creek, as well as some other isolated properties to the east.
While the board expressed the concerns, it noted the agency saw it as a "strategic acquisition", asking executives to draw up a business case on the purchase, though an SLA spokesman said the purchase did not proceed.
It is unclear why it did not go ahead, though the land was in a key flight path at Canberra Airport and the minutes show it was suitable for "industrial [land], a cemetery or environmental offsets", rather than potentially more lucrative residential land.
Asked what was done to assuage the board's concerns, the agency spokesman said only that the minutes of the meeting "do not record an action requested by the former LDA board on this issue".
"The comments of the former LDA board were their observations on how potential unfounded commentary may be misconstrued," he said in a statement.
"However, given the LDA board no longer exists, it would be difficult to respond to, or clarify the reasons for those comments."
Since the March 2017 board meeting, the government has spent at least $10 million on two other rural land purchases; $4.6 million on the Pine Ridge property in West Belconnen and $7.5 million on Winslade at Mount Stromlo.
While the ACT Legislative Assembly awaits the auditor-general's report, an assembly committee earlier this year urged the government to stop buying any more rural leases until the audit report was released.
But the government has ignored the committee's recommendation, with the Suburban Land Agency spokesman confirming the agency is in talks with the owners of two other rural land packages, which it expects to settle this month.
"Once this occurs, the information will be tabled in the Legislative Assembly within the required timeframe as stipulated in the land acquisitions framework," he said.
In a government response to the recommendation tabled in the assembly this week, the government agreed not to enter any new contracts for land zoned as "broadacre" before the audit report was released.
However, the government noted "the need to honour contracts entered into" before the auditor-general's investigation began in May last year, and "the need not to prejudice current or future negotiations".
The spokesman said that since the suburban agency's inception it had significantly changed its processes related to land acquisitions, which now included public reporting on such purchases.
