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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4332 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

It is clear to the Committee that the majority of complaints relate to disagreements which are matters of fact rather than matters of law. People are unhappy with decisions which result in their views being blocked, their privacy reduced or their amenity reduced in other ways. Alternatively, applicants wish to contest a refusal by the Authority which relies on these arguments. The Committee considers that these and other related matters - which include urban design controls and the appropriate land use and carparking provision - are best decided by an expert appellate body operating in an informal setting. This would encourage the proponents, objectors and planners to make direct representations rather than requiring them to be represented. It would also facilitate a cheaper and more expeditious process.

In fact, it was the Labor Government at the time which introduced the Planning Appeals Board. Mr Wood, who was then Planning Minister, noted in presenting the amending Bill that the then existing appeals process through the AAT was too formal and costly, that there were delays in finalising appeals and that these matters could deter a person from appealing. Mr Wood said that he wanted an appeals mechanism that would be accessible to members of the community and that would quickly, informally and in a cost-effective way resolve what are, in the main, disputes between neighbours, disputes which should not be resolved by an adversarial process. He believed that it was also important for parties to have an equal opportunity in representing their case and that it would not be in the public interest if parties were represented by another person as this could conflict with the desire for the appeals process to be as informal as practicable.

The Greens believe that the original reasons for establishing the Planning Appeals Board are quite valid and still relevant today. The question therefore arises whether the board has somehow failed to meet these objectives. In answering this question, it is important to separate criticisms of individual board decisions from criticisms of the board's processes. In any dispute it is likely that there will be a winner and a loser. Persons who have lost a planning appeal may criticise the board for its decision, but this does not mean that the board has not done its job properly. It is more likely that the circumstances of the case went against the individual. We should be wary of throwing out the whole appeals system just because some people have been unhappy with its decisions.

It is worth noting that nearly 80 per cent of appeals lodged with the Planning Appeals Board have come from proponents who have been unhappy with decisions to reject aspects of their development applications and that only a minority of appeals have come from third-party objectors. In addition, there is a fairly equal distribution of the number of planning decisions which the board affirms completely, affirms with some variation or sets aside. It would therefore be hard to argue that the board is grossly distorting the decisions of the planners or, alternatively, is favouring objectors. It should also be noted that, while the Stein inquiry into leasehold administration did make some recommendations regarding changes to planning appeals, these were done in the context

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