A group that wants to build a waste management facility in Fyshwick has taken the ACT's planning authority to court after the authority revoked a development approval 16 months after it was granted.
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Lawyers for Capital Recycling Solutions said that if the ACT Planning and Land Authority could reverse its decisions months after the fact it would undermine the whole planning regime.
But the planning authority has defended the claim and argued the application should never have been approved in the first place because it was prohibited by planning laws.
At the centre of the appeal, heard in the ACT Supreme Court on Wednesday, is a proposed concrete slab.
In April 2017, Capital Recycling Solutions was granted approval to build the slab on the Fyshwick site so that trucks could travel on it.
The slab was the first step in a proposal to build a waste management facility to sort and recycle material that would have ended up in landfill.
The group says its proposed facility could process 300,000 tonnes of waste per annum.
Critical to the proposal is a plan to use rail sidings and the existing railway to freight material out of Canberra.
But the planning authority said approval for the concrete slab should never have been granted because the development application was prohibited under Canberra's planning laws.
It reversed the decision in August this year, 16 months after the approval.
The recycling company immediately appealed in the ACT Supreme Court.
Lawyers for Capital Recycling said that if the authority could reverse its decisions months after the fact it would undermine the whole planning regime.
Tom Howard SC's arguments prompted a comment from Associate Justice Verity McWilliam that no one would build anything in the ACT if they could change the decision the next day.
Mr Howard also argued that once a development approval had been granted it could only be revoked in limited circumstances, such as if there was fraud involved, which in this case there was not.
If the planning authority was allowed to change its decision after the fact it would set a dangerous and undesirable precedent, he said.
Mr Howard also strongly disputed that the building of a concrete slab could be characterised as a prohibited development in relation to railway use - as the territory was arguing.
The company wants the authority's decision to revoke the approval to be ruled invalid.
In response, a barrister for the authority said if this was an ordinary development application on a person's or a company's land and the authority had simply changed its mind, they would not be in court.
The barrister, Philip Walker SC, said that the recycling company had not yet leased the land and the site remained with the territory government.
He said the approval never came into effect, because it was conditional on the granting of a lease.
Mr Walker also told the court that the development application should never have been made or approved, because railway use was banned on the site under the territory plan.
"Yet one was lodged and granted," Associate Justice McWilliam suggested.
Associate Justice McWilliam reserved her decision.
