Page 313 - Week 01 - Thursday, 12 February 2015
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Best democratic principles require that the actions of governments are open to scrutiny by the courts, to ensure that decisions taken comply with the Constitution, with relevant statutes and other law, including the law relating to the principles of natural justice.
They make some interesting observations about the right of appeal. First of all, they say—
Mr Coe interjecting—
MR CORBELL: I know they do not like it, Madam Assistant Speaker, but they are going to have to listen to it. The review concludes:
In some matters the right of appeal can be seen as a highly over-rated commodity and itself a cause of concern to the citizenry.
That is a pretty bold statement, but let us listen to why they came to that conclusion. They say:
The common feature in the following examples are that narrow vested interests seek to overturn decisions on public or commercial amenity approved for the wider good by the government.
They reflect on a number of high profile examples, including the Canberra Airport’s attempt to stop commercial competition with the development of DFO at Fyshwick, the significant attempts to stall the development of the GDE and, most recently, the Giralang shops redevelopment, where they conclude that the interests of citizens in access to local convenience shopping have been denied, not by the actions of government but by the process of judicial review itself being pursued by competing commercial interests to delay and limit access by other supermarket chains.
That is not my conclusion. That is not the government’s conclusion. It was not a review commissioned by the government. It was a review commissioned by the Speaker of this place and undertaken by an independent and expert policy and academic body on governance.
What is their final conclusion of most relevance to the debate this afternoon? It is about the capital metro project. I will just read what the review says:
The Government has recently sought to limit appeal rights through legislation in regard to plans for a light rail system in northern Canberra and Gungahlin in an attempt to reduce the additional cost to the project of being subjected to delay and appeal by narrow vested interests. Its justification for this action has been that the project is part of an electoral mandate. It seems that the unfettered rights of narrow vested interests to seek to thwart broader interests of the citizens of the ACT needs reflection and review if the very expensive and most often fruitless processes are to be avoided.
That is not my argument. That is not a review commissioned by the government. That is an independent review commissioned by the Speaker, Mrs Dunne, and undertaken
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