My Analogy... imagine this happened to you!

Imagine you dreamed of subdividing your family farm one day for housing.

You have the development approval from all the right authorities to divide your block into 20 house lots.

Before you can start building new houses in the development, you are required to install bitumen roads, power, water and sewer. Another requirement is that you knock down the existing home on the property to make way for the new development.

As time goes by, you get quotes from civil companies to build the development. This cost is a lot higher than first anticipated.

You decide that you don’t want to go ahead with the development right now, instead stay in the family home and leave the property as a farm. In the future, if circumstances change, you may wish to develop it, so you don’t want to cancel the approval.

You let the authorities know your situation and your plan to stay living in the homestead and keep running the farm.

Time goes by, and one day you get a knock on the door! It’s the authorities... They demand you build the roads, put in the power, water and sewer, AND, knock down your family home – even though you don’t have any plans to go ahead with the development. Imagine you find yourself in this situation!

You remind them that you’re not planning on going ahead with the development anymore, so obviously those works relating to the development are no longer required.

They tell you they don’t care, they believe they can force you to install all those costly construction items that were needed if the full development was being built, even if you never plan to build a single house on the site.

With a glimmer in their eye and a smirk on their face, they tell you they are going to force you to knock down the family home you live in and shut the farm until you complete the work. They tell you they’ve spent months working with their legal team to find a way to make you do it. They tell you that your farm isn’t complying with regulations – but the regulations only apply if you develop the farm into a housing estate. You can’t see how this makes any sense.

You contact your solicitor. They assure you that the authorities have no legal right to shut down your farm. Your solicitor is blown away that they would even suggest it.

Your solicitor writes the authorities a detailed letter stating all of the legal reasons that prevent them from making such a ridiculous demand.

You request a meeting with the authorities to discuss the matter, but you get no reply.

Nevertheless, you get the farm in the best condition it’s ever been, making sure they are happy with the farming operation, and it complies with the regulations.

Five months go by, and you’ve heard nothing from the authorities. You assume that common sense has prevailed; they have realised they have no legal right or reason to demand you do all of those works for the housing subdivision.

Then, one Friday afternoon you get a phone call stating you must immediately close the farm and knock down the family homestead! They threaten if you don’t, you’ll face fines of up to a million dollars. They demand you stop at that very moment of the phone call, and they give you four weeks to have your farmhouse demolished and removed.

Furthermore, they demand you give them a $100,000 dollar security bond for the development that’s not happening, plus engineering reports on the development that’s not being built.

You are so worried. They’re the authority, they have so much power, you don’t want a million-dollar fine, so you close the farm and start clearing everything off.
You know they can’t legally do this, though you want to follow the correct process. You don’t want to do anything wrong.

You lodge an appeal with the Court to have them stopped, though quickly discover the Court process is going to take months if not years. All this time the farm is closed, you’ve lost your home and you’ve been forced to find somewhere else for the family to live. All this whilst you no longer have the farm to
bring in the income for your family.

Another couple of months pass and you receive an email from the authorities.

They are now threatening they are going to prosecute you as a criminal. Not because you didn’t close the farm and knock the house down, or for something illegal. No, they are going to criminally prosecute you for not knocking the house down within the 4 week period they demanded. Demolishing a house in 4 weeks is almost impossible – it took you 8 weeks – and even that was a pretty fast pace.

The house wasn’t doing any harm. But, because you didn’t do it within the 4-week deadline they decided, they are criminally prosecuting and fining you, for not complying with their demands.

You realise they have masterminded this plan to orchestrate a chain of events, to give them an opportunity to prosecute you. Not because you didn’t build the roads and other items, but because you didn’t knock your home down quickly enough for their liking.

Now, you look back at what has happened, all because you didn’t want to go ahead with your development plans... You’ve lost your dream to ever develop the property, you’ve lost your business, you’ve lost your income, you’ve lost your family home, you’ve lost what you’ve spent your life working for, and to really kick you while you’re down, you’re being prosecuted as a criminal and fined for not laying down and dying quick enough.

This closely mirrors what’s happened to us, though instead of roads, we’ve been demanded to upgrade our existing environmental management systems to elaborate new systems to the tune of millions of dollars, to support an operation 40 times our size. We’ve also had a demand to give the EPA a $100,000 security deposit for our ‘development’ even though we have no plans to expand.

Imagine how you would feel if this happened to you and there was nothing you could do.

How can these individuals in government positions do this to a small family business?

Does their behaviour and actions seem like they’re acting in the best interests of the public?

Why are these individuals not held accountable for their actions?

Who has the power to do anything about this?

What’s stopping them from doing this to anyone they choose?