Page 1092 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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I think there is a slight contradiction in terms here, but I respect the honourable member’s right to litigate a case which has absolutely no substance at all, because we still respect that right.
To return to the bill and to return to the amendments proposed around the costs of appellants, we have got to be careful that a person who is living in a particular part of the town and who believes that a development will reduce their amenity should have the right to appeal to a just court or judiciary body to have that decision reviewed. If that appeal is in fact an honest appeal—if it is not about holding things up, if it is not about trying to thwart an aim; if it is about the expression of honest distress—we have got to be careful that we do not bankrupt people in the process. We have got to be careful that we do not put people through pecuniary hardship in the process, whilst making sure, though, that vexatious litigants are dealt with by the imposition of the financial penalties.
I believe that the current situation allows that. We have got to be particularly careful not to change this legislation any differently from what applied before. If we wish to encourage people to participate in our planning process and not to consider themselves constant victims of it, we have got to make sure that they have full and free access to the law, allowing, however, that some people never get over it; some people in the town will continue to put in appeal after appeal after appeal for issues which are not in their immediate area. They just do it because they can. And we should be able to allow the system to deal with those people.
The government cannot support an amendment which seeks to lump both of these two groups together, which is what we believe these amendments being presented to the Assembly this morning do. We would ask members to consider themselves in the position of an honest appellant, a person who is in distress, a person who has never come up against the system before in their life and probably never, ever will again. All they want to do is to have a decision reviewed and to put their case according to the criteria at law.
Those people deserve our support. They do not deserve to be penalised because they lose. We do not have a population of planning lawyers. We have a population of ordinary people living their lives, and they should have the right in a situation like the ACAT to present a case as best they can. And if that case is not presented because it is not full of tricky legalistic words, if it is not successful, they should not be penalised for that. If, on the other hand, a person is a repeated attendee, they should be; they should be taught a lesson about being a vexatious litigant. So I commend this legislation to the Assembly.
This piece of enabling legislation really is not, in my view, controversial, but we can make it controversial if those amendments go forth and we find that ordinary people are being victimised by a system that they have no way of countering. I have to tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that, were I to appear before an ACAT, I would have no idea what I would be doing, and nobody in my street would know what they were doing. Are we saying that they therefore need to go and engage a lawyer, with the additional costs for that? And are we then saying that if they lose they are going to
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