Alienation of land for housing development projects in Malaysia and New South Wales, Australia: A comparative legal analysis

• Main Author: Md Dahlan, Nuarrual Hilal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lexisnexis Malaysia Sdn. Bhd 2016
• Subjects: K Law (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/17921/1/%5B2016%5D%201%20MLJ%20xliii%201-19.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/17921/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

The state authority in Malaysia has an absolute power in the alienation of lands as prescribed in List I1 to the Federal Constitution and the National Land Code 1965 ('the NLC').The state authority is not obliged to refer to the technical agencies and professional parties for views before making any decisions to alienate land or otherwise.Due to the absoluteness of their power to alienate land, there have been cases where the state authority has failed to carefully carry out this power to the detriment of the housing projects' developers.This failure to the extreme may contribute to the occurrences of many abandoned housing projects in Malaysia.This paper analyses this issue through a combination of qualitative case study, conventional legal research and comparative legal research methodologies.In respect of comparative laws, the author compares the laws and practices that are applicable in Malaysia and New South Wales, Australia concerning the alienation of lands, to determine the advantages of that of the New South Wales', that can be learned and adopted in Malaysia to avoid the occurrences of abandoned housing projects.