Page 5369 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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so frightened of appeals. What appeals do is empower people. They give people a chance to have their say. It does not give them the sort of power that says, "No". What it does is give them the power to present their view. That is all it does.
To prepare an appeal takes a tremendous amount of work; it takes a tremendous amount of effort. I have heard it said that Canberra people are too litigious in this sort of area.
Mr Kaine: Only some of them, Michael.
MR MOORE: Exactly. The Leader of the Opposition interjects, "Only some of them". He is probably aware that I have an appeal under section 11A in the Supreme Court this Friday.
Mr Wood: It should not have to go to the Supreme Court, should it?
MR MOORE: Mr Wood now interjects - and we digress a little here - "It should not have to go to the Supreme Court". We are all in agreement with that. It is very awkward, and it is an entirely inappropriate place in which to have these sorts of planning appeals. There is no question about that, and I think we are all in agreement on it. When the Supreme Court was originally used, of course - and I think I have mentioned this in the house before - it was as we perceive the AAT today; and I hope that the AAT never develops into a body like the Supreme Court where such matters become so legally embroiled that the only way to achieve something is by a very expensive methodology employing QCs and so forth.
I think it is very important for us to accept, though, that the simple way to deal with appeals is to ensure that they can be done very quickly and in a non-legal framework, as much as is possible. I think that is what would have given certainty to members of the public, to the residents, as far as this Bill went. The defined land concept does not. All that the defined land concept does is give certainty to the people who are proposing the development.
When this legislation was originally being discussed and we were setting out the principles of it, a couple of years prior to self-government - Mr Jensen will remember - there was a great deal of talk about certainty. But what we understood was that there was to be certainty for residents as well as for the developers. What comes out of this Bill, though, in the areas where there is no chance for appeal, especially when you read it in conjunction with the draft Territory Plan, is that the developers will have certainty but the residents will not.
The solution was straightforward, and that was to have a rapid appeals system with a defined amount of time in order to ensure that the developer could put up a proposal and know, have certainty, within a month or six weeks, whatever
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