Adjudication No. 516 (September 1991) [1991] APC 50

Adjudication No. 516 (September 1991)

The Press Council upheld a complaint about an article in the North Coast Issues. The article criticised the Ballina Shire Council and its President, Councillor Keith Johnson, over a development application which was successfully challenged in the NSW Land and Environment Court.

The front page article was a near-exact reproduction of a press release issued by the Ballina Environment Society. It had appealed against procedural shortcomings in the development application and been awarded costs following the Shire Council's decision to withdraw because of its assessment that its defence of the appeal could not succeed.

The judgment which provided the basis for the press release did not deal with the merits of the appeal on environmental grounds, but only with the sequence of events that led up to the Shire Council withdrawing from the litigation. The press release/article, however, was highly critical of the Shire and Councillor Johnson and their alleged treatment of local residents affected by the proposed development:-

• "Mr Webster (President of the Ballina Environment Society) said the judgement had shown Council to be contemptuous of ratepayers and Councillor Johnson had again misled ratepayers by being blatantly untruthful about the reasons for the collapse of Council's case."

• "Mr Webster said the judgment proved that Council's failure to fully reveal its development proposals was technically, legally and morally wrong".

Councillor Johnson maintains that statements in this vein which appeared throughout the article were inaccurate, and quite unwarranted as they could not reasonably be inferred from the judgment.

The paper, on the other hand, appears to have regarded the Ballina Environment Society's interpretation of the judgment as factual.

The paper says it made attempts to contact Councillor Johnson but was unable to reach him before the deadline. Councillor Johnson says he received no messages from the paper.

The Press Council cannot form an opinion as to whether the Ballina Shire Council sought deliberately to "keep local residents in the dark" about the development proposal as the Society claims, or whether it simply failed to observe the requirements of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act properly to inform residents of the proposal and of their rights to object.

The story was obviously controversial and the Press Council considers that the paper should have presented a more balanced account of the issues involved. The paper did make an effort several weeks after the original article appeared to publish an open letter from Councillor Johnson to Ballina ratepayers, explaining the Council's position. The paper suggested, however, that such a letter "could be seen by some a free advertising on behalf of the Council", and requested that it be inserted at normal advertising rates. An offer of this kind is hardly conducive, in the Press Council's view, to fair and balanced presentation of facts or opinion to the public.

However, the fact that Mr Johnson reacted to the article with a demand for a retraction, under the implied threat of legal action, goes some way to explaining, without excusing, the newspaper's attitude.