Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4335 ..

Mr Moore: It is always those who complain, of course, whom you hear. That is the nature of the beast.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Moore, I speak to lots of people about the processes. I have spoken to lots of community groups about their experience in the Land and Planning Appeals Board as well. I have to emphasise that that has not been a particularly happy experience either.

It is most unfortunate that we had to have this debate, because I did not really want to make adverse comments about the Land and Planning Appeals Board; but since criticisms have already been made I have to respond to them. The perception has been that decisions in that forum have been capricious. The board, in effect, has taken each case as a self-contained case unrelated to other matters which might come before the board and, purely on the basis of the circumstances of a particular matter, it has decided whether it is a fair thing or not to grant the relief being sought. Mr Speaker, to a lay person that might sound like a great idea, but it has the major disadvantage that it deprives people who come before the board, or whatever other body it is, on a day-to-day basis, of consistency in decision-making. People who use our system, particularly a system which deals with the right to use land in the Territory - an extremely valuable resource - people's homes and people's livelihoods, have the right to expect some consistency in the approach by appeal bodies.

I had a planning official say to me today that they would often have to deal with applications on the assumption that if they approved whatever was in the application they could expect a certain amount to be knocked off by the Land and Planning Appeals Board, not on the basis that it offended against some formula that provides for a need for it to be reviewed but because their custom is to give everyone a little bit of what they ask for. That is not the way to run an effective planning system, here or anywhere else in the country. People who seek to make applications in respect of land, be they ordinary householders wanting to build an extension or be they people wanting to build a multistorey block of flats - whoever they might be - are entitled to consistency. Frankly, the Land and Planning Appeals Board did not provide that consistency. Again, I would invite people like Ms Horodny to speak to those people - even community groups, if you like - who have had exposure to the process. They will find that the processes have often - in my experience, always, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt - been unsatisfactory.

We have had a very strong concern, reflected in the Stein report, to replace the Land and Planning Appeals Board with a process that is more certain. However, we are not replacing it with the Supreme Court or even the Magistrates Court. We are replacing it with an informal tribunal which has delivered service to the people of Canberra for a number of years now, a forum where a less rigid approach is taken to the rules of evidence and to the rules whereby evidence may be adduced and put before the tribunal, a forum which has a history of allowing people to appear unrepresented before it and of giving assistance to those people so as not to create a disadvantage for those who appear unrepresented. I believe that it has succeeded quite well in that task over a number of years. I reject the suggestion that there is some disadvantage in having to appear before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .