Resource Management and Appeals Tribunal: closing submission by J. Levett in the matter of Gunns Ltd [appellant] and Kingborough Municipal Council and others 31 May [and following] 2005

Mr Chairman,
Let me begin by acknowledging the courtesies extended by you to us laypeople who came before the tribunal in a state of relative innocence and considerable ignorance. Your management of the proceedings has been fair and equitable. I have appreciated and gained from the learned interventions of your fellow tribunes. Many of the witnesses too, regardless of which side of the argument they represent have added to my understanding of the issues, and I am grateful to them.

I have been able to sit beside, and converse with, members of the other side, and respect their points of view, however much I disagree with them. I hope they may reciprocate.

I am a resident of Middleton: I have lived in the district on and off, since 1982. I have lived in many other parts of the world. I choose to live where I now reside because it is beautiful, clean, unpolluted, quiet and safe. Many newcomers settle here for the same reasons. My neighbours are people with whom I share these values.

As residents all, we pay our dues to the local municipal council, the state and commonwealth governments on the assumption that in levying and accepting those rates and taxes they will in return support us in our way of life and in the place, and in the way and under the circumstances in which we choose to live.

As part of that process, our closest governmental agency, the municipal council, after long deliberation and extensive consultation with the community, produced a ‘planning scheme’. One of its tenets is to define zones and areas of the municipality for particular ends and uses. This is so that ordinary individuals, businesses, schools, enterprises, may live and conduct their activities in reasonable harmony, and with due regard for the rights and needs of each other. Political scientists call this the ‘social contract’: without it and without the mutual respect and obligation which it implies, we would degenerate into lawlessness and anarchy.

‘Respect’ and ‘obligation’. These are not words to which any meaning may be attached or implied depending on the exigencies of a particular situation. They have real and consistent meaning. They must. Otherwise there would be no society. No schools. No law. No institutions. So we respect our local council and its unpaid councillors when they produce a plan for the management of our community and its resources. We are obliged to accept it.

Sensitive

And when they declare certain areas to be so sensitive, so significant that they warrant inclusion under the category of ‘an environmental management zone’, we take them at their word. We accept that in such an area, we may not cut down a tree, open a gravel quarry, dump rubbish, degrade the landscape, or alter it in any major way whatsoever. We also trust that as the plan directs what we may or may not do, it will also prescribe for and direct the actions of others. We rest on that assurance. We trust it. We rely on it.

But apparently we are wrong, or foolish, or misguided to do so. The process in which we are presently engaged tells us that profit — or the prospect of it — can overturn and contradict these verities. Money can engage highly skilled advocates, it can employ expert witnesses, it can exploit the chinks and loopholes of process to subvert the values of our community and in the process imply that the few of us gathered here to contradict those arrogant assertions are of no account. That our chosen place of living, that the environment surrounding it, that the streams which run through it: that our way of life in short, when set against the balance sheets of a corporation, are of no account.

We are not versed in the technicalities of the law; we hesitate to attack and demolish the credibility of a fellow human being; we do not sneer at, or pour scorn on a fellow citizen’s beliefs. But all of these things have occurred in this place and during this process, and all in the financial interests of a wealthy, amorphous and anonymous body corporate which does not reside in our municipality, pays no rates to it, is not seen in our villages, our streets, our places of business or governance, and is virtually faceless, employing others to do its business.

It is able, apparently, to propose to overturn a decision by our legally constituted municipal government in order to conduct an industrial operation in contravention of the Council’s Planning Scheme. Without appearing before it, without facing the electorate, without explanation to its residents as to why what it proposes is necessary. It can do this without shame or embarrassment, and generally without fear of contradiction.

But a majority of our municipal councillors, God bless them, and a small group of us, think otherwise. My fellows and I, the ‘attachments’ to this process if you like, have spent six days here, and countless hours otherwise, at our own expense. We will gain nothing from the expense of spirit which has brought us here: nothing of a pecuniary nature, that is.

But by attending and enduring, watching and observing, reflecting and noting, we have learned a great deal: we will share that knowledge with others, so that they will not come here as ignorant as we did when in their turn they confront and contradict that entity to which we have here been opposed. To that extent at least, and whatever the outcome of your deliberations, the exercise has been worthwhile.

John Levett
Middleton
Tasmania 7163