Two-time Labor candidate and senior Labor staffer Adina Cirson will take the helm at ACT Property Council at the end of the month, ending uncertainty for the council since the departure a year ago of Catherine Carter.
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Ms Carter held the job for a decade. In March, Merlin Kong, a former adviser to Liberal parliamentarian Brendan Smyth, took the job, but he was there fewer than six months before leaving to join a community services organisation.
Ms Cirson resigned on Monday from her job as chief of staff to Mick Gentleman, who is Minister for Planning, Urban Renewal, Police and the Environment.
Ms Cirson said her appointment as ACT Property Council executive director was recognition by the council that it wanted a closer relationship with government at a crucial time for commercial property developers in Canberra.
The light rail line from Gungahlin to the city, and next to Woden, would bring certainty for property developers wanting to invest in the corridor and it was crucial to get the policy settings right, she said.
"There's nothing like tracks in the ground to give certainty to investment because you can't move tracks," she said.
Ms Cirson travelled with Mr Gentleman to Seattle, Portland, Tucson and Vancouver earlier this year where they, planners and business leaders, looked at development around light rail lines. She pointed to incentives offered in Vancouver to encourage developers to invest in the line, with light rail needing density to be viable.
The "huge" urban renewal about to begin in Canberra also provided opportunities for sustainable building and working with the community sector, she said.
"There's a conversation that needs to start and it needs to start now," she said. "The time is right to really do it in partnership. I'm a bit of a dot-connector, I suppose."
Asked about the government's focus on "value capture" through rates and other property and development taxes to raise money in the tram corridor, Ms Cirson said she was yet to talk in detail to the Property Council and its members, with her job starting at the end of November.
Ms Cirson has stood unsuccessfully for Labor in the ACT twice, in 2004 and 2008. She worked for Labor Senator Kate Lundy before joining former chief minister Jon Stanhope's staff as an adviser working on affordable housing, water and energy. She worked in communications at Actew Water before joining Katy Gallagher's staff in 2011 and Mr Gentleman's office in 2014.
The Property Council has 140 members in Canberra.
Ms Carter frequently took on the government over land taxes and other property charges and strongly pushed for no slowdown on the abolition of stamp duty on house sales. The issues are still top of the agenda, as the government shifts more of its tax take to rates, and shifts more of the burden to owners of apartments.
