Plaintiff v Defendant

For the reasons which follow, I am satisfied that the denial of leave would not impermissibly impinge upon the right to object.

30 Turning first to the emphasised passage of the submissions of the Taxpayer, just as it is not for this Court to depart from a relevantly indistinguishable decision of the Court of Appeal, it is also not for this Court to evaluate the likelihood of the Court of Appeal or the High Court departing from previous authority, whether that authority be fresh or well-established. Thus, given the absence of a mechanism to distinguish between meritorious and unmeritorious attempts to re-agitate the correctness of decisions which are binding on this Court, it cannot be that the right to object under section 96 of the TAA transcends the orthodox interpretation of section 148 of the VCAT Act in the manner suggested by the Taxpayer. To hold otherwise would render the leave requirement under section 148 of the VCAT Act unworkable. It is also convenient to note that, while it is appropriate that paragraphs 25-98 of the Taxpayer's written submissions (being those paragraphs which seek to re-agitate the matters decided in CSR v Burgess) have been put,[64] this Court need not consider their veracity other than to reject them entirely because they are premised on CSR v Burgess being open to doubt, a premise which this Court must, and does, reject. Importantly, on no view does this approach deny the Taxpayer the substantive and substantially unconstrained right to object to the assessment in accordance with Part 10 of the TAA because the Taxpayer may still ventilate the issues decided in before the Court of Appeal and, in due course, the High Court, in seeking leave to appeal to those Courts.