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[2011] WASAT 48
General information, not legal advice.
State Administrative Tribunal (WA)
2011-03-17
Original judgment source is linked above.
I certify that this and the preceding [71] paragraphs comprise the reasons for decision of the State Administrative Tribunal.
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Attwell and City of Albany [2009] WASAT 38
Australian Native Landscapes Pty Ltd v Warringah Shire Council [1989] NSWLEC 3
It is common ground that if such manufacture can properly be designated as "rural industry" the Council had the power to grant the development application; if it cannot, the Council did not. Bannon J held that it was manifestly wrong to classify the process as a "rural industry".
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The end product, mushroom compost, consists of a mixture of water, stable straw (and therefore often mixed with horses' faeces and urine), poultry manure, cotton seed husks, cotton seed meal and natural gypsum. This mixture is allowed partially to decompose, and it is aerated and watered from time to time to achieve that result. At a later stage mushroom spore are introduced. The final product is laid out on a surface to allow the fungi to grow to the point where they are fit for human consumption.
It is apparent that the Council considered that each ingredient in the mixture was a "primary product", and therefore the manufacture of the compost consisted of the "processing" or primary products. It was the unenviable task of the respondents to demonstrate that this view was "devoid of plausible justification"[,] not merely that it was wrong: see Hope v Bathurst City Council [1980] HCA 16; (1980) 144 CLR 1 at 79; [1980] HCA 16; 41 LGRA 262 at 226268. Despite the learned trial judge's expression of opinion, I do not think they discharged that task.
In my view the Council's view was not only "justifiable", it was probably correct. Each individual item in the mixture seems to me to be classifiable as a "primary product": straw, for example, is simply part of a crop. The fact that the end result (the compost itself) is different from each of the ingredients a point stressed heavily by Mr T Robertson does not seem to me to alter this fact. Indeed, it may well be that the compost itself is a "primary product". Cheese is a different product from milk, and yet I should have thought that the manufacture of cheese was a rural industry. (Emphasis in bold added)
(1998) 97 LGERA 333
(1980) 144 CLR 1