Erskine Park. Tax will 'kill' proposal

Developers said the NSW Government's plan for an 800-hectare new business park, at the intersection of the M4 and M7 motorways, to support 16,500 jobs in Western Sydney is too costly to succeed. The Urban Taskforce, said the $180,000-per-hectare tax being imposed on developments on the site was about three times the cost of developing other land in the area. The Property Council of Australia's NSW executive director, Ken Morrison, said the "state infrastructure charge" would kill any chance of the park succeeding. "It will just kill this proposal stone-cold dead," he said. "You just cannot ask a piece of land like this to be viable and have this level of taxation associated with it." The acquisition of land for the road is beginning this year, with construction due to start in 2010, according to the ABC.