The new Minister for Planning, Gary Humphries, served notice on developers yesterday that they could not undermine the low-cost planning appeals system by lodging expensive points-of-law appeals to the Supreme Court. Mr Humphries said his message was that he would defend residents’ expectations that they could take cases to the Land and Planning Appeals Board without fear of being dragged into an expensive lawsuit in the Supreme Court.
He was speaking after instructing the solicitor for the Department of Environment, Land and Planning to take an active role in defending a board decision which upheld a case brought by residents in Yarralumla. Earlier the department’s solicitor was going to say he would “”abide by the court’s decision” and let the developer and residents fight it out.
The residents feared legal costs would prevent them from defending a victory they had in the board last month over the developer who wanted to build three units on a site that previously contained one house.
Mr Humphries said he would get his message across either by getting the department to defend board decisions or, if necessary, by changing the legislation to restrict the appeal process. At present the board could get advice from the Supreme Court on questions of law and he hoped that that would happen rather than the parties appealing. He wanted planning out of the courts.
In the Yarralumla case, the department’s solicitor would look at the appeal documents and see the strength of the objector’s case and either defend the board’s decision or seek a consensus approach on remedying any defects.
The president of the Canberra Conservation Council which brought the case to Mr Humphries’ notice, Jacqui Rees, said, “”At last we have a planning minister who is interested in just process and decisively running his department rather than being run by it.”
One of the residents, Les Landau, said he was pleased with Mr Humphries’ action. Earlier he had thought the whole planning process could be undermined by developers starving out residents with high legal costs.
The developer, Dectase Pty Ltd, says it is appealing because its representatives were not given notice of the inspection of the land by the board and were not present at the inspection to give their point of view. Also it says the board took into account irrelevant matters and did not take into account relevant matters.
In another case begun before the election, the department itself appealed to the Supreme Court against a board decision that favoured residents. The two cases led Mr Landau to say that the department was pro-developer and Independent MLA Michael Moore to say that the department was wasting taxpayers’ money to help developers. However, up to yesterday the department was saying that it was judging each case on its merits and intervening when it thought the board in error and not intervening when it thought it was correct.