Following the public threats to “get rid of” our Secretary at last week’s hearing on the Westmere helicopter consent made by Chair of the Independent Commissioners Panel Kitt Littlejohn, The Tree Council has this weekend received an email apology from Mr Littlejohn personally addressed to our Secretary Dr Mels Barton.

Whilst The Tree Council has acknowledged and accepted this private apology, we feel strongly that at the very least a public apology is required from Mr Littlejohn in order to restore faith and confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the consent hearing process.

“It is a challenging enough environment to have to enter as a lay person giving a submission at a public hearing, without the fear of being dismissed for presenting something the Commissioner has predetermined to be “irrelevant”, or being threatened with removal from the hearing for trying to defend the relevance of your submission” said The Tree Council’s Secretary Dr Mels Barton. “I’m a tough cookie, but someone less experienced being confronted with that behaviour could have been put off from completing their submission, and that’s not giving them a fair hearing.”

The Westmere helicopter case is probably going to be the largest and most high profile consent hearing of the year, being widely reported in the media, and with huge pressure and scrutiny on all the 1500 submitters who have taken considerable time and effort to have their say.

The Tree Council understands how difficult it is for lay people to have the confidence to participate in the public hearings process, especially if they have little or no experience of doing this kind of thing. Putting barriers in the way and making it feel like an unsafe environment for their views to be heard is very bad for the credibility of all the Independent Commissioners used by councils around the country and for the integrity of the democratic process itself.

The Tree Council’s Chair Sean Freeman says “Everyone participating in a consent hearing process has a right to be heard fairly, patiently and without predetermined judgement of the relevance of their submission. In our view far too few consents are publicly notified as it is, enabling any input from submitters. Therefore, it is so important that external public scrutiny and participation is encouraged, not discouraged or suppressed in any way, and that the principles of natural justice are always applied.”

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