Prejudicial Enforcement in Planning and Building Matters & Mismanagement of Disputation

9.1: Core Grievance

The City of Melville operational administration demonstrates a pattern of prejudicial and biased application of rules, standards, and laws, particularly within its planning and building compliance frameworks. Rather than enforcing regulatory codes equitably, the administration applies standards selectively, leaving some ratepayers facing aggressive compliance actions while other significant planning breaches are ignored or insulated from enforcement. This structural bias is protected by a refusal to utilize independent mediation for conflict resolution. Instead, the administration relies on high-cost external legal consultants and punitive prosecutions to bully, intimidate, and financially exhaust community members who flag municipal errors or non-compliance.

9.2: Statutory & Regulatory Triggers

Local Government Act 1995 (WA) – Section 3.1: Establishes that the general function of a local government is to provide for the good government of persons in its district. Biased enforcement and the weaponisation of legal resources violate the requirement of good governance.

Planning and Development Act 2005 (WA) – Part 13: Outlines the enforcement powers given to local governments to police local planning schemes. These powers are granted to protect community standards and must be executed in accordance with principles of equity, administrative fairness, and natural justice.

Building Act 2011 (WA): Mandates that local government permit authorities enforce building standards uniformly to protect public safety and amenity, leaving no lawful room for arbitrary or preferential administrative exemptions.

9.3: Evidence Base (Triangulated Public Data)

Weir Legal Review (2021): The independent evaluation conducted by Bronwyn Weir, titled Review of Complaints (Building and Planning), explicitly documented significant structural deficiencies, delays, and mistakes in how the City managed planning and building disputation. The report highlighted a heavy-handed, combative legal posture where the administration acted unreasonably, causing unnecessary friction with the community.

DLGSC Authorised Inquiry Report (2019): Confirmed a history of disproportionate administrative actions and selective application of enforcement measures. The State inquiry detailed instances where the City bypassed internal procedures, resulting in unreasonable restrictions and an over-reliance on aggressive legal posturing rather than early-stage dispute resolution.

Misuse of Public Funds for Legal Retainers: A review of public council expenditures reveals that the administration consistently utilizes expensive external legal panel consultants to handle building and planning disputes. The costs associated with these ad-hoc legal prosecutions and structural filtering mechanisms are estimated to cost ratepayers between $6 and $10 per capita, buried under general corporate overheads to obscure the financial scale of municipal litigation from public scrutiny.

9.4: Governance Impact

By substituting independent mediation with aggressive, adversarial legal action, the executive administration inflicts severe financial harm on the municipality. Choosing to litigate rather than mediate drives up external legal expenses, draining funds that should be directed into public infrastructure. Furthermore, because these disputes are handled via closed administrative processes or handled by external legal retainers, the elected Council is kept in the dark regarding recurring regulatory errors. This prevents Councillors from identifying systemic operational vulnerabilities within the Planning and Building Directorate, leaving the city exposed to long-term liability.

9.5: Impact on Community, State System, & Regulatory Integrity

Community Impact: Ratepayers are denied a level playing field. A resident attempting to navigate planning laws faces a complex, un-mediated bureaucracy that applies rules punitively against individual homeowners while seemingly ignoring significant compliance breaches by favoured entities. When residents speak up, they face the full financial weight of the City’s legal machinery, resulting in severe psychological distress, civic isolation, and financial exhaustion for families trying to protect their properties.

Sector & State Systemic Impact: This case study highlights how a metropolitan local government can exploit regulatory gaps to run a closed system of planning enforcement, neutralizing the democratic oversight role of Elected Members. It actively undermines the State Government’s Planning and Development (Local Planning Schemes) Regulations 2015, which demand transparency and consistency across the sector.

9.6: Institutional Performance Assessment:

WALGA: Has failed to provide member councils with standard, mandatory frameworks that require early-stage independent mediation for planning and building disputes. By defaulting to generic legal panels, WALGA’s models support an expensive, litigation-first environment that protects administrative decisions from objective third-party review. This framework directly violates the community participation mandates of Section 1.3(2) of the Act by actively supporting a corporate environment that weaponizes litigation to suppress public scrutiny and participation.

DLGSC / Inspectorate: Despite receiving numerous detailed community notifications and witnessing the damning findings of the 2019 DLGSC Inquiry and 2021 Weir Legal reviews, this State regulator has consistently failed to audit Melville’s selective compliance practices. By treating these structural enforcement biases as “isolated operational matters,” the DLGSC permits the City to maintain an uneven regulatory environment without consequence. This systemic failure is directly enabled by the DLGSC’s refusal to audit the internal operational procedure manuals used by municipal enforcement officers, which allows broad sub-delegations of coercive planning and building powers to be executed arbitrarily against ratepayers without an independent State check on operational uniformity. Crucially, this regulatory passivity adds significant weight to the earlier employee close proximity implications identified in Entry 3. Because the personnel operating within the State oversight agencies, recruitment firms, and municipal executive teams are drawn from the same recycled, insular professional pool, there is a structural disincentive for State regulators to aggressively police local administrative failures. This close professional proximity fosters a protective industry culture that prioritizes executive insulation over public accountability, actively abdicating its statutory duty to enforce the true intent of the Act, and stripping the community of its legislated right to direct democratic oversight.

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