Page 1480 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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Before I was so rudely interrupted by Mr Connolly, I was talking about the fact that the Follett Labor Government actually did nothing about this very important aspect of planning appeals via the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which, as Mr Connolly mentions, is included in here.
Mr Connolly: Mr Deputy Speaker, I am compelled to rise to my feet again. We are supposed to be talking about court structures. Mr Jensen is giving a speech on planning. I suppose anything can come to court, so Mr Humphries will no doubt give us a speech on the school system because I have said that I might take that matter to the courts and that therefore makes it relevant. Can we have a direction that we ought to be addressing the Curtis report, not the planning system?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Connolly.
MR JENSEN: Once again, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I have already indicated in my speech, the issue of planning appeals is part of those court structures.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: If you relate it to the Curtis report, that is all right; but let us have that relation.
MR JENSEN: Let me then directly relate it to the Curtis report, Mr Deputy Speaker. I refer Mr Connolly to page 73, if he would like to take the time to turn to that particular page. It talks about persons seeking review from merits and judicial review. I quote:
... there will be cases in which it is desired to challenge a decision subject to merits review on grounds which go both to the substance of the decision and to the procedures by which it was reached or even the legal power to make the decision. It is desirable that all of those grounds of review should be ... dealt with by the same body; to require a choice to be made whether to go first to a court for a judicial review or to a tribunal for merits review adds to the cost and complexity of the review system.
If planning decisions are not subject to that sort of activity, what in God's name is? So, just to respond once again to the fatuous comments by the member opposite, I suggest that, in fact, what I am talking about is directly related to the issue raised by Mr Curtis in his report.
The whole issue of planning appeals relates to the court structures in the States. It might be interesting to note that there was a recent statement on a similar report on the court structures in South Australia. An article in the Weekend Australian in May 1990 refers to the suggestion that development rows should now be settled in new courts. It refers to a report by an Adelaide QC, Mr Brian Hayes, and solicitor Ms Christine Trenorden of Norman, Waterhouse and Mutton, also of Adelaide. That was produced for the
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