Comments on: The best Justice money can buy?

By: Stephen Rowley

Stephen Rowley — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:01:53 +0000

But this isn’t a proposal to simply allow VCAT to better manage its cases according to complexity. It’s about allowing some applicants, but not others, to pay to skip a queue.

As I said, the investment of resources should be across the entire planning list and then the list managed according to merit. That can include short and major cases lists – the point is that it should not be a pay for access arrangement.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:15:21 +0000

Stephen, access to the courts has always been an inequitable thing and it should be. At no level, save for the Magistrates and Family court do people represent themselves, every other place including the practice courts requires costly representation. The courts have a natural heirarchy that follows the severity of the issues under consideration. I agree that VCAT is under resourced but see no exception to a Major Cases list. Why should an application regarding the siting of a single garage stand alongside a liqour application in one of our famous Melbourne wowser belts and alongside the redevelopment of the Flinders St railway station precinct? The cases must all still be heard on their merits, their complexity and their ability to drive the economy.

By: Stephen Rowley

Stephen Rowley — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:19:56 +0000

I feel like you’ve misunderstood the objection to this. It’s just silly to say only “tree huggers” would be worried by this and to tie it up with some unrelated anecdote about SOS.

The issue is that VCAT times should be shortened for *everyone* – not just those willing to pay. That allows unequal access to justice. Keep in mind, your development has to be over $10 million to qualify. So it’s not going to help the vast majority of middle-order developers, let alone the mum and dad applicants who just want to renovate.

As I’ve pointed out on my site (here http://www.sterow.com/?p=2871) , Matthew Guy recognised before the election that VCAT needed more resources. He should have provided those resources without selling out the fairness of the list.

If the government really couldn’t come up with the cash, they had an option: raise fees for the hjgher order cases (which do require more resources to administer), and then spread the money raised across all the cases in the list and reduce timeframes in an equitable manner for everybody.

As I said, to suggest the opposition to this measure is based on nimbyism is just incorrect and insulting. There are serious issues of integrity and fairness raised by this.