The Lawyer’s Tribunal

Originally published as an editorial under a joint by-line with Tim Westcott and Gilda Di Vincenzo in “The Lawyers’ Tribunal,” Planning News 35, no. 5 (June 2009): 4.

By the time you read this, the submission period will likely have just closed for the VCAT review.1

The Tribunal is to be commended for conducting this important review. Commenting on the Tribunal’s performance is fraught with difficulty, however. Firstly, it is hard to generalise about the performance of a Tribunal constituting many different Members; the quality of the Tribunal’s performance varies from encounter to encounter. Given the passion that often accompanies VCAT hearings, it’s also a strong test of participants’ objectivity to try to judge when they got a fair hearing and when they were dealt a legitimate stinker. Finally, one needs to filter valid grievances from the great deal of unjustified criticism that swirls around simply because the Tribunal is at the pointy end of the process and has to make hard and unpopular calls that others chicken out of.

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The Animationless Animator

Mary and Max (Adam Elliot, 2009)

We might divide artistic achievements into two categories. There are those works in which an artist creates a work that is perfectly tuned to their sensibility and their strengths; and there are those that see an artist break down the barriers to move beyond what we know they are capable of. We should be grateful both types exist. It is the latter kind that surprises us, and that most often push the boundaries of artistic expression. But we need the former kind too. It is films where an artist’s material and approach meld into a perfect union that we tend to see the most perfectly judged works. The animated feature Mary and Max is one of those films: director /screenwriter and designer Adam Elliot knows what his strengths are, and this self-awareness has delivered a pitch-perfect blend of melancholy and humour.

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Senior Industry Figure Recalls Time in Local Government Fondly, Distantly

John Mendoza, partner in respected consultancy Mendoza Planning, launched a blistering attack on the performance and experience of local government planners at a seminar last month, while insisting he valued their contribution to the profession. “Most local government planners are obstructionist, reactionary, poorly educated, and unhelpful,” he said, “but I don’t wish to denigrate them.”

Despite his strong criticism of Council planners, Mendoza was at pains to outline the deep affinity he shared with them. “I am, at heart, a creature of local government,” he said, citing his time as assistant to the junior town clerk at the Hawthorn City Council from 1972 to 1974 as evidence of his commitment to the sector.

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Camberwell Residents Unveil Bold Vision of Status Quo

Camberwell residents have revealed their plans for the future of the Camberwell Junction precinct after the government ceded all planning powers over the area to a local residents’ group.

The dramatic development came as the government announced a range of fast-tracking measures in response to the Global Financial Crisis. “Now, more than ever, we need to be acting decisively to ensure certainty for jobs and investment,” said Planning Minister Justin Madden. “At such a time the last thing we need to be doing is wasting time with a political black hole like the Camberwell Junction.”

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Reboot

Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009)

I’ve said this before: the seeds of the problems with the Star Trek movie franchise were planted right at the start.

When they made Star Trek: The Motion Picture back in 1979 they tried to make an epic. They got an A-list director in Robert Wise (keep in mind that just a few years earlier his Sound of Music had been the highest grossing film ever) and treated it as a prestige production along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But Trek has always been a bit silly, and taking it too seriously killed the fun. So for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn – still widely considered the best film of the series – they went back to lower budgets and lesser ambitions. It worked, and Trek was fun for a long time, but it was never again particularly adventurous or grand or spectacular. Ultimately, the film and television Trek experiences blurred together, until there was simply no reason for either fans or the more casual observer to go to the cinema and see a Trek film. So when I reviewed the last Trek film, Nemesis, I suggested that Paramount needed to cut off the supply of Trek for a while, let some demand build, and then come back with something big.

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Back Paddock in the Moonlight

A 1 minute long exposure on my Lumix. No tripod, just grabbed one of the lawn chairs and put it on. The lawn is lit up with lights from the house, as well as the full-ish moon visible. Didn’t do anything in photoshop – this is straight from the camera.

Back Paddock in the Moonlight

Meeting Half-Way: A Collaborative Approach to Permit Assessments

One of the most dispiriting things about day-to-day statutory planning is the paper warfare. Consultant planners prepare a report justifying their proposal; given the length and repetitiveness of planning schemes, that might be twenty or more pages long. Council officers then prepare their own assessment, but for various reasons they tend not to rely a great deal on the applicant’s report. Apart form the description of the proposal – the bit that applicants know a Council planner will always read – many consultants’ reports are not especially useful as the starting point for Council’s assessment. I suspect most planners will know the kind of report I mean: huge slabs of text cut and pasted from the scheme; permit triggers incorrect, incomplete, or scattered through the text; glib and formulaic non-responses to the real issues of merit; and so on.

There’s a cycle here, in that the less Council officers rely on application reports, the more sketchily they are done, reinforcing the tendency of local government planners to give them fleeting attention. Meanwhile, Councils have traditionally tried to encourage better documentation through the issuing of extensive application checklists listing every last thing to think about. This increases regulatory burden, and further reinforces the trend towards over-documented but under-thought applications. And when Council officers finally come to assess the application, they largely start from scratch, duplicating work that in many cases has been – or should have been – done by the permit applicant. The whole process sees a lot of paper exchanged, but too little communication and co-operation between Council and consultant planners in getting applications across the line.

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Dubya

W. (Oliver Stone, 2008)

Oliver Stone’s W. is a solid dramatisation of George W. Bush’s life, but Stone has conditioned us to expect something that is both flashier and more incendiary. At his best Stone is an exceptional filmmaker – his earlier political drama JFK is one of the best films of the 1990s, whatever you might think of its central thesis – and with his reputation for shooting from the hip there is no doubt many expected W. to be an extended polemic. Instead, the film is traditionally constructed and fairly measured in its tone. Judging from some of the reviews, which have generally been lukewarm, Stone might have overestimated the willingness of the public to accept a fair-minded account.

I have seen some characterise the film as almost a defence of Bush. I don’t think that’s the case; some of the reviews seem to have set up a false dichotomy between “balanced” and “anti-Bush,” and suggested that because Stone’s film is the former, it can’t be the latter. But Bush is the kind of figure about whom a fair account can still be scathing. Stone is far from defensive of Bush, but he does humanise him and mostly avoids cheap shots. Why take cheap shots when the big picture provides such a compelling condemnation?

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Driving with the Handbrake On

Planning News March 2009Originally published as an editorial under a joint by-line with Tim Westcott and Gilda Di Vincenzo in Planning News 35, no. 2 (March 2009): 4.

The big planning challenge for the government this year is to get runs on the board. Disenchantment normally advances slowly, like old age, but the release of Melbourne @ 5 Million (M@5M) late last year will likely be remembered as a defining moment in which disillusionment made a bold and striking advance. Neither the Minister nor Melbourne 2030 are new any more, and if we are to maintain our faith in both, 2009 needs to see less spin by the government, more honest acknowledgement of problems, and more tangible progress towards planning goals. We are too far into the life of Melbourne 2030 to still be polishing our implementation measures.

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