www.sos.asn.au

As reported in the media today, Attorney-General Rob Hulls has announced an 'audit' of VCAT.
The Age Article
SOS President Ian Quick on Jon Faine (774, wed 20th Feb)

The first thing to note is that the terms of reference for the 'audit' seem to be quite narrow (a common trick by this State Government), and won't include issues such as whether VCAT should oversee council planning processes rather than taking over the role of councils and determining planning applications itself, as it does now.

Also note that the 'audit' is being conducted by the new head of VCAT (Justice Bell) - typically, reviews are better undertaken by an external independent body (another thing this State Government doesn't like).

That said, from what we have heard so far, we believe that Justice Bell is likely to be a good president of VCAT.

However, there are still many issues even within the limited scope of the 'audit' that can be addressed, and we urge everyone who has been to VCAT and been unhappy with the process (ie, most people who have ever been party to a VCAT planning hearing) to put in a submission.

In the official invitation to participate on the forums you will note that community groups will be heard last (13th October 2008) - probably after everything has been decided! So don't wait till then, write up a submission and send it in now!

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of VCAT processes we would like changed -

Malvern East Group member Remy Favre has reviewed written a paper that reviews many of the VCAT decisions of 2005 - in his own words -

With the help of my daughter, we reviewed all VCAT Planning List decisions published during the 2005 calendar year that were concerned with medium and high density housing planning applications (1480 relevant decisions ), and grouped outcomes according to Member, and Council, and calculated the number of times developers won, and the number of times Council's decisions were upheld/reversed/varied.