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Gary Morgan Lord Mayor Candidate Margaret Wood Deputy Lord Mayor Candidate

• VCAT involves too many complex planning cases, worth multi millions of dollars, being decided by too many tribunal members with too little legal experience.
• Not enough Judges available to hear cases in the important category of planning.
• Currently, two County Court Judges and one Supreme Court Judge head the entire Tribunal.
• VCAT is a huge tribunal that deals with about 90,000 cases a year, a large proportion being landlord and tenancy, small claims and anti-discrimination. Planning cases numbered about 3,000 last year.
• Planning is too important to be part of such a diverse tribunal.
• Planning appeals should be referred to a separate authority with the status of a proper court.
• Before VCAT and AAT there was the Town and Country Planning Appeals Tribunal run by the State Government.

ALTERNATE EXAMPLE:

By contrast, NSW has a dedicated Planning Court called the LAND & ENVIRONMENT COURT consisting of seven Supreme Court Judges and 10 Commissioners.

Cases are divided into seven different environmental cases i.e. environment protection, enforcement, construction development.

CONCLUSION:

Planning cases impact on the entire community and should be in the care of an independent dedicated Court.

The current system has failed because it does not provided public confidence through this current set up in Victoria .

Public perception is that there are too many inconsistencies in VCAT decisions.

Public perception is that Government is taking away cases from Council and VCAT on an ad hoc basis.

This is the fundamental cause of uncertainty in planning.

Effectively — VCAT is “justice on the cheap” and the State is getting what it pays for. Setting up a Court like the NSW Land and Environment Court would cost the State Government more to operate than the present system, but would be a sum well invested.

A Planning and Environment Court would bring more certainty and professionalism to planning outcomes.

Gary Morgan is running for Lord Mayor in the coming Melbourne City Council elections, along with Margaret Wood, Deputy Lord Mayor Candidate. Councillor Candidates Peter Clarke and Emily Tang make up the Melbourne Civic Group ticket.

Mr Morgan’s policies can be viewed on the Roy Morgan Research website:    www.roymorgan.com/melbournecivicgroup.cfm/

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