D’Ath turns Supreme Court case on its head

WILL a rare legal decree issued by the Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath set a precedent to allow protest groups to ride roughshod over the decisions of courts and councils?

Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath quietly issued a rare “fiat” or legal decree effectively setting aside a decision in the Supreme Court by granting the Save Surfers Paradise group the legal status to continue its fight.

A SUPREME Court decision was turned upside down by Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath who has backed a band of Gold Coast activists attempting to stop the council selling a car park.

In what looks to me like a political intrusion into the court system, D’Ath quietly issued a rare “fiat” or legal decree effectively setting aside a decision in the Supreme Court by granting the Save Surfers Paradise group the legal status to continue its fight.

No matter that the sale of the eyesore car park and transit centre was agreed to by a clear majority of the democratically-elected Gold Coast City Council.

No matter that the sale by public tender was set to reap a $48 million windfall with the funds injected into the new arts centre planned for Evandale Lake near Southport.

I’m sure Save Surfers Paradise is well-intentioned, but its objections are entirely misguided in my view.

D’Ath’s intervention was unfathomable to some legal minds I spoke to who asked whether she has now set a precedent to allow future ratbag protest groups to ride roughshod over the decisions of courts and councils.

The Bruce Bishop carpark in Surfers Paradise. Picture: Jerad Williams

What next? If Friends of the Earth, Lock the Gate or Animal Liberation are blocked in their legal challenges will they, too, apply for fiats so they can frustrate councils or governments whose decisions don’t fit with their leftist ideologies?

To delay a project is often an attempt to kill it, as litigants from some protest groups freely admit. Not all cases are the same. Some enjoy a natural right to challenge projects in the courts while others do no.

I can’t wait to see what civil liberties lawyers make of D’Ath’s interruption to the process.

“We are now in uncharted waters,” said a council source who suggested the fight may continue in court in a revised form.

The drama unfolded in the Supreme Court in May and again last month when Justice David Boddice agreed with the council’s solicitors that Save Surfers Paradise Inc did not have the legal standing to bring proceedings that may halt the sale.

Said Boddice: “There was insufficient evidence to properly characterise the applicant, Save Surfers Paradise Inc., as a ‘peak’ body recognised by government.”

The Bruce Bishop carpark. Picture: Jerad Williams

Save Surfers Paradise had sought an injunction restraining the council from selling the Bruce Bishop car park and transit centre to Care Park, a significant operator with more than 300 car parks throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

It based its claim on allegations of “misleading and deceptive conduct” surrounding the council vote.

Boddice noted the activists had lodged a complaint with the Crime and Corruption Commission and the Ombudsman.

The council has repeatedly rejected suggestions of improper conduct.

The Bruce Bishop car park and transit centre was built in 1974 and is showing its age. Entry and exit lanes are narrow and confusing as I discovered recently when I had to do an extra loop to get out.

And the rooftop park is a meeting place for unsavoury types, according to a former journalist and RSL member who parks there regularly.

Bruce Bishop was a local council alderman and Member for Surfers Paradise and a friend when I lived on the Gold Coast. He died in 2008. I’m certain that Bishop, a free enterprise Liberal who loved Surfers Paradise, would have backed the plan to rebuild the car park bearing his name.

A council spokesman said the car park had 1600 spaces but is lucky to fill 700 a day and that the council had better ways to serve the community than running a car park.

So I don’t understand the opposition to the project by Save Surfers Paradise. A redevelopment would also enhance the small shopping precinct and bus station at no cost to ratepayers.

Care Park proposed parking fees cheaper than they are now, said the spokesman.

And members of the RSL club nearby would continue to enjoy special parking privileges.

Boddice made no adverse findings about the project. And he noted council’s approval of the sale had many conditions attached.

Any redevelopment will require the operator to provide “civic space” including lawns, trees and natural shade structures to “create a place for visitors, friends and families to gather to play”.

Care Park would have to provide 640 public parking spaces and an additional 100 spaces — at no cost to ratepayers — for community use.

Care Park would need to give tenants more certainty by offering them 12-month lease options to instead of the month-by-month arrangements now in place.

And, importantly, the developer would be required to maintain at least 740 car parks during the construction phase.

In a brief statement D’Ath said she granted a fiat because of “genuine community interest in the issue”.

She added: “The organisation will still have to run its own litigation.”

D’Ath said it was the first fiat she had granted and there were no more on the horizon that she was aware of.

LAW REFORMER TAKES A SWIPE AT LNP GENDER DISPARITY

Former Queensland Governor Sir Walter Campbell.

A MEMBER of the Law Reform Commission that recommended in favour of legalising abortions has entered the political debate with a jab at the LNP.

QUT Law School academic Dr Nigel Stobbs said recently on Twitter: “In Qld Parliament, 6 of the 39 LNP MPs are women. ALP 22 of 48. I wonder if this will have any impact on upcoming debates and vote on the Bill to decriminalise abortion?”

Stobbs, who describes himself as an expert in criminal and Chinese law, was appointed a part-time member of the commission by Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath.

He was one of a group of five lawyers in the Law Reform Commission group that recommended decimalisation of abortion.

I wonder whether Stobbs’ comments were wise, considering the need for impartiality in the commission?

And I wonder whether the commission was too top heavy with lawyers from the outset.

Here is what former Supreme Court judge Kevin Ryan, a philosopher, said in 1983 about the commission: “The range of complex matters to be investigated include … the provision of medical services, ethical problems and social questions. The committee has therefore been established with a range of membership which includes doctors, scientists, a moral philosopher and a social worker, as well as lawyers.”

Ryan also said advice on law reform should be provided by a body independent of the executive of parliament.

A former chief justice, Sir Walter Campbell (right), agreed: “I question whether institutions largely composed of lawyers and set up to recommend to governments desirable changes in law should, ab initio (from the beginning), be required to investigate matters which raise deep and often divisive social and moral issues.

“Is it a function of a law reform body to stir the public to reflect upon social and ethical issues, and then to request the executive government to refer it to those issues?

“Are there not many skilled people in the community who have more to offer than have lawyers … in relation to social problems?”

Tell that to the Law Reform Commission, Your Honour.

PS …

PAST MPS HONOURED

THERE were no toilets at Parliament House for women when feisty physiotherapist Joan Sheldon (pictured) won the Sunshine Coast seat of Landsborough in 1990.

Joan Sheldon.

“Every one of them had ‘Gents’ marked on the door,” she said. Sheldon fought and won her first gender-equality battle. Women MPs got their own loo. Sheldon, now 75, went on to become the first woman to lead a Queensland political party. Her sharpest critic, she said, was member for Bundamba Bob Gibbs, a unionist and former state president of the ALP.

“Once in the House, Bob Gibbs called me half-German and half-shepherd,” she said.

“Bullying and intimidation went on; we just put up with it.” Sheldon would like to see the LNP entice more females to run for Parliament.

However, many capable women do not nominate because parliamentary life is not family friendly. Sheldon was reminiscing yesterday after winning a lifetime achievement award for her community work. Former treasurer David Hamill also shared the award.

Former member for Peak Downs Vince Lester won a distinguished service medal for community service. The gongs were announced by David Muir, chairman of the Former Members Association of Queensland. Muir, a solicitor with HWL Ebsworth, also chairman of the Clem Jones Trust, was a founding director of Foodbank and Crime Stoppers Queensland.

BACKPAY RULING

I WONDER whether small businesses have considered the payouts they may face after a momentous court decision this week.

The Federal Court found Queensland truck driver Paul Skene, who was employed as a casual, was not a casual because of the regular and continuous nature of his work on a fixed roster. He was therefore entitled to receive accrued annual leave pay.

Skene was a fly-in, fly-out worker employed as a casual for 2½ years by labour-hire firm WorkPac. He could not properly be considered a casual under the Act because of the regular and continuous nature of his work on a fixed seven-day-on, seven-day-off roster, so he was entitled to accrued annual leave pay on termination of his employment.

Industrial lawyers say the case will have wide ramifications, especially in the hospitality industry where “permanent casuals” are commonplace. The case brought by the CFMMEU may pave the way for thousands of workers to claim unpaid leave entitlements.

TRANSPARENCY FAIL

THE mystery over the expenditure of $230,000 by TAFE Queensland on 2148 Commonwealth Games tickets deepened this week.

Minister for Training and Skills Development Shannon Fentiman has refused to say who got the tickets, despite a detailed question on notice in Parliament from Pat Weir, the Member for Condamine.

Fentiman said tickets went to “dignitaries”, “business clients” and “prospective and existing students”, but declined to name them.

On top of the Games freebies, a report to Parliament found TAFE spent another $83,303 for hospitality and $687,525 for international travel in just 12 months.

The amounts involved aren’t paltry, and if Fentiman won’t say who got the tickets, surely the Crime and Corruption Commission should demand answers.