Court finds Cairns Regional Council had failed to prove allegations in two-year saga

A two-year court battle has come at a large cost to Showbag Warehouse owner Gordon Richards - and he believes the infringements were written out of ‘malice and spite’.

A MAINSTAY of the Australian show circuit for more than 40 years, Gordon Richards is feeling relieved this week, having taken on Cairns Regional Council over $20,000 in fines – and won.

Delivering her judgment in the case this week, Cairns magistrate Susie Warrington found Cairns Regional Council had failed to prove its allegations that wastewater discharged from the Showbag Warehouse owner’s campervan in July 2019 had “any reasonable expectation” of moving into a nearby stormwater drain.

She found Mr Richards, and his company Gordon Richards Enterprises Pty Ltd, not guilty of two offences under the Environmental Protection Act.

Mr Richards, 70, said the two-year saga had been “very stressful” and came at a large cost – some $28,000 in legal fees.

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He also believed the two penalty infringement notices of $10,000 each should never have been issued, owing to the lack of evidence.

“As far as I’m concerned, that ticket was written out of malice and spite,” he said.

Mr Richards recalled how after a late night travelling to Cairns for the show on July 10, 2019, he and his wife Shelley Pink-Easey had a knock on the door the next morning from two council officers.

He said one of the officers was “verbally aggressive” toward him, which resulted in them “having words in a sense”.

The officers brought to Mr Richards’ attention that he had not attached a skimmer sock to the end of the greywater pipe connected to his campervan.

On one of the council officers’ own evidence before the court, Mr Richards recalled that was a requirement from previous years and that he would fit a skimmer sock now that he had been reminded.

“They never wrote out a ticket then and there. I never had any indication I was going to get a penalty infringement notice … two weeks later it turned up in the mail,” he said.

“The fact they could write out a $20,000 ticket without doing the due diligence of water samples, or ground testing, is beyond my belief.”

Mr Richards said the incident hadn’t changed his feelings towards Cairns.

“We love coming to the Cairns Show. We understand you run into people like this in your lifetime – people that have got a little bit of power for a day or two,” he said.

“That doesn’t change my opinion of anything else, and the show society has been very good to us.

He praised the council officers who were conducting compliance checks this year.

“The council officers that are here at the moment have been very good. And they’re not turning a blind eye to anything, but they are using a commonsense approach,” he said.

“And that’s what should have happened in my case.”

The court awarded Mr Richards just under $5000 in costs.

Originally published as Court finds Cairns Regional Council had failed to prove allegations in two-year saga