Imagining the Future

Planning and environment courts and tribunals in the 21st century

Keynote Address
Australasian Conference of Planning and Environment Courts and Tribunals
Quay West Resort, Bunker Bay

By The Hon Justice Michael Barker

Thursday 30 August 2012

 RTF version

1  Ladies and gentlemen: I am honoured to be delivering this Keynote Address at your 2012 conference, responding to the question 'How should a planning and environment jurisdiction look in the 21^st century?'.

2  Whatever the answer to this question might be, it is reasonable to observe at the outset that, if the jurisdiction were to look anything like the blissful setting in which this conference is being held in the Margaret River Region of Western Australia, there would be general approbation. To paraphrase the opening lyrics from Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" –

The sun is out,
the sky and ocean are blue,
the gum trees - ever so slightly - quiver and sway,
there's never been such a day,
in WA's Bunker Bay!

3  I have been wrestling with how I should respond to the honour of making this keynote speech to such a forward thinking audience. Should I be thoughtful, reflecting on my experience in the field over more than 30 years, or should I throw caution to the wind and seek to share with you truths to be found in poetry and literature about communities, cities, the natural environment and the law?

4  Ultimately, I found inspiration in the keynote speech given by Miles Massey, who you may recall was the fictional doyen of divorce lawyers (played by George Clooney) in the Coen Brothers comedy, Intolerable Cruelty, when he said to the admiring throng at their national conference in Las Vegas:

Friends,

this morning I stand before you
a very different Miles Massey... 

than the one that
addressed you last year... 

on the disposition of marital assets
following murder/suicide.

I wish to talk to you today
not about technical matters of law.

I wish to talk to you
about something more important.

I wish to talk to you
from the heart...

5  What I would like to do, in the guise of a futurologist gazing into my crystal ball, is paint a picture of how the world might possibly look at the end of this 21^st century, in order to leave you with two thoughts. The first thought is that the circumstances of the human species on this planet are rapidly changing, as a consequence of which the jurisdiction your courts and tribunals currently exercise may soon require radical adjustment. The question here is whether your courts and tribunals should not be engaged more comprehensively than they currently are in auditing the environmental and social sustainability of major development projects, if not their economic sustainability.

6  The second thought, related to the first, is that the jurisdiction currently exercised by your courts and tribunals is not entrenched or immutable, might be curtailed at any point in time, and should not be taken for granted. The question here, in some ways running counter to the first question, is the extent to which development pressures and some theories on the structure and practice of government require smaller, more direct government, free from the control of review agencies such as your courts and tribunals.

7  Each thought demands active consideration, although my plan is to leave the final consideration largely to you!

8  So let me begin by giving you an insight into my dark side! Gazing into my crystal ball I am trying to see what the world look likes in 2100, how it is governed, if there are in fact any things that look like planning and environment courts and tribunals. I see bits and pieces of things that might be environmental dispute resolution services. I also see things that may or may not be regional governments. Now I see some text flashing on a screen. It looks like a notice of a meeting. At the top I see the letters 'CWC' and, beneath them, words that are a little hard to make out. They may be 'Confederated World Cities' or 'Central World Caucus'. I'm not sure.

9  The meeting is said to be of 'representatives', although of what exactly is not clear, and it is to be held at the Swiss town of Davos. There are topics listed for discussion including population management, economic output, technical education, food security, city planning, transportation policy, something called 'environmental allocation' in relation to resource development, climate change, and another referred to as 'refined human rights'. There is also reference to a topic about an expanded world football league, and, finally, a topic described as 'seniors' control'. Ah, I see there is also a session to discuss, 'How we got to Davos: the evolution of the World Economic Forum and lessons from the past'.

10  There is also mention on this notice that ODM - the Occupy Davos Movement – is trying to join forces with the ITP – the International Tea Party – in a combined attempt to derail the meeting. However, I also see a late message that suggests this is unlikely to come to anything as Facebook Inc has 'unfriended' known agitators and WISP (World Internet Service Provider LLC) has limited their contact capabilities. Additionally, PEL (Planetary Energylines LLC) is considering withdrawing the en-tran (energy transfer) privileges of leading agitators to keep them at home in their work spaces.

11  The notice of meeting also has discussion notes attached. They record that the human population of planet earth is about to hit 14 billion. It notes that the world's population was estimated to have been around 1 billion in 1800, at around 1.6 billion in 1900, and that by 2000 it had grown fourfold to about 6 billion. It describes this growth as 'exponential', but also says this is not a new description, having been used to describe the phenomenon of human population growth since at least the 1970s.

12  The notice mentions that most of the world's human population is increasingly housed in modern or recently modernised cities. It points out that China revolutionised this social trend in the first part of the 21^st century, building many new cities designed by the world's best architects and planners, including some from Australia. In turn, Australia followed the Chinese model city example and now has numerous major urban areas supporting a total population of approximately 100 million. Very few live in rural or remote areas, but those that do work on food production, transportation and delivery.

13  Australians, it is noted, are now engaged primarily in the preservation of their cities in light of a decline in the holdings of their Future Fund, following the need to liquidate the capital following the decline of the mineral resource and oil and gas industries in the later part of the 21^st century. Along with food production, tourism, especially res-oil tourism, is now a major revenue winner for Australians who still call Australia home. The wealthy middle classes from Asia, in particular, enjoy an en-tran to areas like the Pilbara region of Western Australia, where they are able to undertake physical travel in replica iron ore-movers and camp in specially preserved single men's dongas for weeks on end, in the course of clambering through the mine pits that made their distant countries great. Similar tours of long-retired oil rigs by replica helicopters are also possible.

14  Fast trains have served the people well by linking cities and locations within cities for years, the notes point out, but are increasingly expensive to operate, requiring an answer to the question, 'Whither from here'? While en-tran facilitates long distance travel, it apparently functions less well over shorter distances, is relatively expensive to use, and the side effects are still not fully known. The use of 'push-bikes' was apparently trialled in the early 21st century as a mass people-mover, but failed in the face of universal citizen apathy, the lure of motor vehicles, particularly hybrid and electric ones, and a contemporary belief that these alternative vehicles would save from destruction, not only the then struggling auto industries, but also the planet. Whether people can be encouraged to walk is the subject of constant debate, the activity being restricted largely to seniors living out their increasingly long lives in city-run residential and grand-parenting facilities.

15  Medical facilities are apparently a feature of every large shopping centre/town square and enable long life. The Scandinavian health services model was adopted under pressure from the Davos CWC meeting of the year 2050, at which the former US President Barack Obama (then aged 89) spoke in favour of universal health care, a driving ambition of his ever since the US Supreme Court upheld his health law in the run up to the 2012 presidential elections, which in turn was one of the last acts of the Court before the Occupy Wall Street movement occupied the Court and prevented it from sitting for two years, and Tea Party candidates won a majority in the US Congress, abolished the Federal Reserve and then, for the following four years, dried up federal funding for all unnecessary, 'big government' initiatives, including the third arm of government – all, that is, except for local road funding in small town America.

16  The notes also record that, as at the date of their writing, food and sustenance generally remains a topic of endless debate, especially since the coming into operation, in the fifth decade of the 21^st century, of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Meat Eating (CEME) done at Paris on 1 June 2040. Astonishing as this was at the time, the discussion notes record, the results have been as beneficial as the movers predicted they would be. The average size of a European male has reduced to the size of the average midshipman who sailed on Lord Nelson's flagship, Victory, at the Battle of Trafalgar. Women are of a similar size. Other races are equally reduced in size. There is now nearly enough food to go around. This has also had the generally accepted beneficial effect of permitting most racial groups on the planet to compete on an even footing in most sports, though this has always been irrelevant in the sport of Frisbee throwing where skill has always been everything. A debate also ensues as to whether permaculture is, after all, an idea about to find its time.

17  The notice of meeting also mentions that, if time permits, representatives will be asked to vote on the proposition that World Environment Week be renamed 'World Environment Month' and that subsidies be increased to facilitate the requirement that all city-based people - accounting for most people on the planet - spend at least one month each year working on a SAHE (State-owned Agricultural or Horticultural Enterprise) in a rural or remote setting approved by the IHC (International Harmony Committee).

18  Ladies and gentlemen, I am finding this crystal ball gazing very challenging. Who actually is running the planet, I am not sure. What I cannot get an angle on, as I glance at the notes, is just what the Davos CWC actually is, whether it is a world government that has assumed a role suggested by our current United Nations, or a confederation of world states bound by an interlocking set of international conventions, or a collective of world cities that co-operatively exercise dominion, like 19^th century European States once did, over the majority of the world's population and resources. Whatever, it is plainly an important body.

19  So, do planning and environmental courts and tribunals still exist? Well, as you can see – or as you can see, I can see – there is not much evidence in the crystal ball that they do! The bits and pieces I see swirling about remain just that – bits and pieces. I would have to speculate whether, if properly put together, the bits and pieces might constitute an independent, coherent whole object or a series of minor objects operating as adjuncts to something else. Just how food production, environmental allocation, climate change, city planning and transportation policy determinations, for example, are made – because obviously they remain important from what I can see – is not at all certain, but one gets the impression they have become determinations largely left to expert committees by the CWC. Presumably, though, the CWC and its committees take advice, and there is no reason why the advice on key issues should not be tendered as a result of court or tribunal audits of primary proposals put forward by the relevant state or city, or whatever.

20  If these courts and tribunals do still exist, however, will they have a major or a relatively minor function? I ask this because the processes of food production, environmental allocation, climate change, the planning, design and building of cities, and transportation: will have become increasingly complex; will, presumably, need to be completed as quickly as possible; but, at the same time, according to high standards based on well-structured plans developed according to, say, 5 year plans. Is it inevitable that government can only complete these processes with oversight from planning and environment courts and tribunals?

21  For those of us born in the middle of the 20^th century or thereabouts, all this central planning and control language may sound so Stalinist, so totalitarian, so anti-capitalist, so tried and failed. But is it? On the one hand we have the recent phenomenon of the Tea Party in the heartland of capitalism – the USA – which proposes a reduction of state involvement in the lives of humans, leading, presumably, amongst other things, to the removal or a significant reduction in planning and environment controls, as a result of which people in small and large communities would be left to engage in some form of actual, not presumed, 'social contract' negotiations for the doing of things like: paving a road, deciding where a needed community service should be located; determining whether to centrally deal with waste, permit motor vehicles, or indeed impose any controls at all on who can do what with land and other resources.

22  Is it possible to shrink the role of government, to be so withdrawn from wider society? Is it a denial of our experience of human social organisation and general economic theory to think that humans can be so micro-organised, so generally unregulated? Is it possible to have such a low level political economy? In many ways we, at least many of us, strive for such an outcome by drawing much of our physical, emotional and spiritual nourishment from our families and local communities. But even so, most of us continue to look to outside sources for other support, employment, other ideas, philosophies and inspiration. We look elsewhere to see what works and what doesn't and what is likely to serve our community well.

23  Then we have the even more recent phenomenon of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which champions the interests of the group it identifies as the financially oppressed 99% at the hands of the group it identifies as the financially privileged 1%. The groups it depicts have usually been depicted by reference to the workings of particular state economies, not the world as a whole – although they can be depicted globally that way too by reference to states, or human populations as a whole. The Occupy movement appears to have derived its inspiration from anarchist theory, although its egalitarian overtones (or undertones) have struck a chord with the many who have felt dispossessed or left behind during a time of global economic crisis. What the actions are that follow from the acceptance of an Occupy movement perspective on life are not entirely clear, but they would seem to encourage the further democratisation of, and not simply seek to deconstruct, all systems of government, local, regional and central - and global. This indicates a return to the sorts of demands for a participatory citizen democracy that were nourished in the 1960s and flourished in the 70s. In planning and environment terms, this would not necessarily mean a local-only form of government, but it would mean greater self-government, perhaps, and less government from afar by means that are perceived to be controlled or influenced by the privileged few. One assumes the central agency, or the expert committee, or the planning and environment court or tribunal, unelected by the many would fail the Occupy movement's acceptance test.

24  Oddly, in some ways, given its anarchic foundations, the Occupy movement fabric seems to be stitched with the same, or at least a similar thread, to that which binds the Tea Party cloth. To suggest that each is jealously individualistic would, however, be to misstate the likeness. The Tea Party, although it is not alone in this, harkens back to a time when it is perceived the liberty of the individual was ensured through self-government, that every person exercising public power should be elected and governments were truly republican and respected the rights of the citizens; when citizens, not governments or a privileged few (whether individuals or corporations), actually influenced the actions of governments small and big. The Occupy movement similarly espouses the rights of the many, but it is unclear if the proponents of the Occupy ethic see the many as persons with individual rights or more as class, a proletariat if you will, who by a more general social theory are entitled to retake as a class that of which they have been notionally or actually dispossessed. While both Tea Party rhetoric and Occupy rhetoric emphasise the need for broad citizen action to remedy perceived economic, social and political maladies in society, they do not necessarily propose the same remedies. They do each tend to espouse, though, the need for a new political force to dispense the required remedies, the old forces once moved by republican sentiment, or a social egalitarian agenda, being now perceived as having dismally failed.

25  The reality for me, though, is that in the light of world population growth and the changing economic forces on the planet, the governing of national groups is likely to become increasingly complex, and international organisation, or at least cooperation critical. We cannot realistically retreat from government, but we can seek to make it more responsive to people's needs in order to sustain human life on the planet.

26  As you can see, I have been wondering for a little while whether our democratic institutions can survive in the face of the type of environmental and technical challenges to survival that arise from population growth that I have mentioned. Will we, as a species, on the one hand, be forced to settle for more 'streamlined' decision-making processes than we are perhaps used to in order to maintain the infrastructure we depend on to feed, house and employ us. (I leave to one side the infrastructure that provides security.) Or, on the other hand, can we expect to see a real expansion of the community sector, a sector sometimes called 'civil society', that will see communities increasingly organise themselves locally and provide and service this infrastructure? In either scenario the question is whether there a place for planning and environment courts and tribunals?

27  When we look about us today, what in fact do we see which might provide clues to the future of the planning and environment jurisdiction? First, we should note that our existing courts and tribunals are of relatively recent invention, not having been developed as independent review agencies until the second half of the 20^th century. In the State of Western Australia, where we are now meeting, an independent tribunal for the review of planning decisions wasn't established until 1980. Such bodies are by no means guaranteed, therefore, if proof of long establishment is a necessary ingredient of longevity.

28  Secondly, we should note that having been established and given broad review functions, especially in relation to planning decisions – less so in relation to discrete environmental assessment decisions – central governments have regularly cut back on their functions. The techniques to achieve this have been various. Some immediately come to mind. In the 1980s, the New South Wales government used the technique of regional and state environmental policies developed by central government agencies to limit the discretion of planning bodies generally, including local governments, and affecting the exercise of discretion of the Land and Environment Court. Most jurisdictions are also familiar with the recall power most ministers or central government planning agencies keep to themselves, in order to remove a range of decisions from independent review.

29  Thirdly, in many jurisdictions subdivision control remains a central government function and is unreviewable. In many jurisdictions plan making and plan amendment, or zoning, in also controlled by the minister or agencies other than the planning and environment courts or tribunals and its exercise is unreviewable.

30  Fourthly, and more recently, in the face of demands for the efficient redevelopment of industrial waste lands like old railway yards, ports and airports, or sensitively located areas such as those near coastlines, or other areas the subject of major redevelopment proposals, parliaments have set up special purpose planning and construction authorities tasked to do a job free from review by planning and environment courts and tribunals. The various metropolitan redevelopment authorities in Western Australia are good examples of this approach to development control, the latest being the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority which is tasked to oversee the redevelopment of the Swan River waterfront in Perth, referred to by some as 'Dubai on the Swan'. There are also many examples of moves to establish expert committees to oversee particular types of building and planning issues or other modifications to 'streamline' development processes. For example, The Age newspaper on 16 May 2012, reported on proposed Victorian legislation that would see up to 11,000 building permits being assessed annually without the need to notify neighbours and free from review in the case of ''small-scale, low-impact applications such as home extensions and small works such as fences''. The report said the new system might also be used for new buildings and subdivisions. If both smaller scale development and major projects are removed from the purview of planning and environment court and tribunals, exactly what is left? What is the continuing rationale for these review agencies?

31  It is also instructive to compare briefly the history of the environmental assessment jurisdictions of the NSW Land and Environment Court under the NSW EP&A Act 1979 with that of the appeals committee and the Minister under WA EPA Act 1986. While the NSW Act enables Court review of environmental assessment, under the WA Act, the Minister, based on an appeals committee's recommendation, may refuse to permit a project to proceed if the project fails the assessment rules. The former process may be characterised as structured and legal, the latter as highly administrative, even, one might say, political, in the broadest sense of that word. Is one process better than the other? Well, I am not here today to say. The NSW model has not been widely emulated in Australia. This emphasises that governments will often refrain from placing sensitive resource use decision-making in the hands of courts because they fear that to do so will introduce technical, non-responsive decision-making and delay.

32  In many ways the sorts of expert and administrative development control trends I have adverted to, if that is what they are, are not entirely new. Local governments, for example, are not, uniformly, fans of independent review of their decision-making. I can think of at least one local media outlet in Western Australia that regularly refers to decisions of the State Administrative Tribunal which depart from those of the council, as decisions made by the 'unelected' SAT. And those who are involved in the business of developing land and other natural resources similarly do not always see value in independent review processes, at least where third parties are permitted by law to seek review of a proposal. They are however supportive of independent review where they consider the primary decision to be wrong. Generally speaking, the land development and resource industries don't like "green tape" or tape of any colour. Consequently, politicians are often willing to remove the tape if they believe it will reduce costs to consumers of the products of the industries concerned, or will boost productivity, profits and employment within these industries.

33  The concepts of local government autonomy, efficient approval practices and a productive economy are concepts that are hard to argue with. But they each have the potential to restrict the rights of citizens and corporations to challenge public decision-making. Depending on one's concept of democracy, assuming one accepts the concept in the first place, there is room to argue about the extent to which fettered or unfettered review of public decision-making in planning and environment matters should be permitted.

34  Questions obviously arise as to whether the benefits to be gained from having an independent review of small scale developments (however that term may be defined, and there is plenty of room for debate) outweigh the costs of the review process in terms of its financial and human transaction costs. If the decision was made in the first instance by persons elected by the local community, with the advice of qualified advisers, is there really any need for an additional layer of decision-making by a planning and environment court or tribunal? What is the justification for providing it?

35  If the question is whether land should be resumed and redeveloped because the state government considers the proposed development will define and represent to the world at large the forward-looking character of the city and its citizens, or provide much needed infill living for the benefit of the broader community, for example, is there any requirement for the executive decision of a state government to proceed in this way to be amenable to review by an independent court or tribunal?

36  The circumstances in which independent review of government decision-making, in a number of settings, especially after the Second World War, became an accepted part of our liberal democratic process have been explored on many occasions and do not need further exploration here. Suffice it to say that an independent review process was considered to provide an effective means of remedying incompetent decision-making, at one level, and bad, even corrupt, decision-making, at another. Generally speaking, where decision-making was perceived as requiring, not the application of higher order political priorities, but the application of generally accepted, rational principles, and sometimes expert considerations, the broader populace came to accept that administrative justice for individuals and better decision-making across the board was more likely to be achieved if the primary decision were to be subject to review by an independent body. Independent review was seen as serving the ends of a practical democracy, of achieving accountability, and enabling a reasonable balancing of private rights against public interests.

37  It is not only administrative justice on behalf of citizens that is served by such review however, but also consistency in public decision-making across the board. For example, it would not seem sensible that like cases should be decided differently by different decision-makers. A review body has the capacity to harmonise decision-making across space and time to the advantage of individual citizens and other entities but also the wider community, removing the potential for future disputation once a precedent ruling has been made. Also, the independent reviewer, in relation to a range of decision-making, is often in a better position than the primary decision-maker to put distance between particular pressures leading to one result and more objective considerations that might lead to another. Sometimes there is no perfectly correct answer to some questions and a second layer of decision-making is more likely to produce the preferred outcome – not necessarily, but perhaps more likely.

38  So there is a range of review decision-making that planning and environment courts and tribunals currently engage in that provides administrative justice to citizens and entities affected and that has the effect of moderating like decision-making more generally in any given jurisdiction. The range owes itself to the review functions historically bestowed on planning and environment courts and tribunals. They are not the same in each jurisdiction. Victoria, for example, has long allowed a wider range of citizen, third party appeals than most other jurisdictions in Australia. It is arguable whether Victoria's review process adds value to the system or unnecessary green tape and transaction costs. Views differ. Other jurisdictions seek to identify particular categories of development as justifying third party reviews. Sometimes these sorts of debates are had at the margins where what is to be lost or gained is perhaps more apparent than real. But there seems to be community consensus that, in the ordinary course of events, in relation to more intensive or larger scale proposals that have the potential to impact the interests of a local community, the review of a primary decision should be available in a court or tribunal.

39  For me, the point is that planning and environment courts and tribunals will only survive so long as they are seen to be adding real value to the ability of the planet to sustain the human population, in each region or locality, and adding real value to the democratic process.

40  In a very practical way I could say that the answer to the question posed, "How should a planning and environment jurisdiction look in the 21^st century?" is to be found through an examination of the best practices of the acknowledged best courts and tribunals resolving planning and environmental disputes in Australia and New Zealand today. That would be profitable, although I acknowledge there may well be real dispute about the criteria for identifying the best courts and tribunals! If one were to do that, however, I suspect a number of factors would be identified as paving the road to success, not the least of which would be:

• Demonstrated community recognition of the importance and efficacy of the work of the court or tribunal.
• Regular consultation by the court or tribunal with the community, including representatives of government, government agencies, local governments, user groups and related professionals, to monitor and confirm the community's expectation of the court or tribunal.
• The engagement of high quality decision-makers who are skilled in all aspects of decision-making, planning, environmental and legal.
• The adoption of practices and procedures that reflect respect for the parties who come before the court or tribunal and which are designed to keep time delays and costs of proceedings to a minimum.
• An expectation by the court or tribunal that the resolution of planning and environmental disputes will be facilitated in most cases through mechanisms alternative to the adversarial processes usually employed by courts.
• The making of good, but not overly technical, decisions supported by good, but not overly long, reasons for decision, which are delivered quickly.
• The provision of dedicated and well-supported administrative staff.
• Adequate financial and human resources.
• And finally, but crucially, constant review by capable leaders of the court or tribunal to see that the court or tribunal displays all these factors.

41  It should not be thought then that planning and environment courts and tribunals have any particular right to existence or that their futures do not depend on performance. They are not constitutionally entrenched, but are creatures of statute. They are not of ancient lineage, but rather are of relatively recent invention, owing their existences to demands for administrative justice after the second war and environmental accountability in the 1970s. In short, if not exactly fighting for their survival, they remain vulnerable to attack on the grounds of relevance to many evolving issues to do with accountability, expertise, quality of decision-making, cost, speed and general efficiency. A failure by planning and environment courts and tribunals to appreciate these issues will see them die, not quickly perhaps, but slowly by a thousand cuts.

42  There are then for me competing, even conflicting, scenarios as to what planning and environment courts and tribunals will or should like in the 21^st century. There is no particular reason to think that the democratic values that informed the creation of these courts and tribunals, particularly during the last half of the 20^th century, are likely to change or dissipate in the period ahead. My own instincts are that the value of freedom, encapsulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made in 1948 and refined in many international conventions since, will continue to expand and inform the practice of government on the planet for centuries to come. Part of the process of democratic liberalism that informs government in countries like Australia and New Zealand is that citizens do get, in the Australian vernacular, a "fair go". There is also a healthy scepticism in countries like ours about the ability of the first tier of political or administrative decision-making necessarily to get the answers to all the big questions right. For me, I can see an expanded role for planning and environment courts and tribunals in Australia and New Zealand, whereby the sustainability in environmental and social terms of the use of land and other resources will be increased, not diminished. I see a real role for these courts and tribunals to increase their usefulness to the community by having practical audit functions in relation to a higher range of primary decision-making. This should not be rejected on the basis that the members of these court and tribunals are not elected directly by the community.

43  There are areas in which I think an auditing function of planning courts and tribunals could be particularly effective and that is in relation to the planning, building and design of cities and towns and the development of transportation policy. The planet is undoubtedly going to get more populous and our cities and towns are going to increase in number and in size. In my view, very little attention has been given, particularly at the review level in courts and tribunals, of the environmental design and social sustainability of the spaces in which most of us work and live. Too little attention is also given, in my view, in planning and environment review courts and tribunals, to the relationship of transportation policy to the practical operation of our evolving cities and towns and the people who live in them.

44  In this regard, planning and environment courts and tribunals should not simply be seen as some sort of safety valve to respond to pent up citizen concerns when issues arise at the fringes. Our planning and environment courts and tribunals should be used in a more primary way, as I suggest, to audit and add value to the sustainability policies that our countries and indeed the world increasingly will need to manage its ever increasing population and the environmental issues, including climate change, and the social issues that are its consequence.

45  At the same time, I make the point that it is one thing for planning and environment courts and tribunals to have a strong sense of their own role in the larger scheme of things, but they must also demonstrate directly to the community why they are important to the liberal democratic systems we espouse, and how they are responsive, accountable decision-makers that can act with efficiency. If these things are demonstrated, then I suspect the community will see planning and environment courts and tribunals as a natural depository in a fast-changing world, for the wider planning and environment audit processes that I have mentioned today.

46  This then, in drawing my address to a close, is what is behind the two thoughts that I said, at the outset, I would like to leave with you: first, that the circumstances of the human species on this planet are rapidly changing, as a consequence of which the jurisdiction your courts and tribunals currently exercise may soon require radical adjustment; second, that the jurisdiction currently exercised by your courts and tribunals is not entrenched or immutable, might be curtailed at any point in time and should not be taken for granted.

47  Ladies and gentlemen: as always, it is a pleasure to be part of your court and tribunal community, a community that thinks creatively about the future while regarding the challenges of the present. Thank you for inviting me in!