At the bottom of a slope leading towards the inner-city Brisbane suburb of Red Hill is a tin and timber house described, even by its owner, as a modest little cottage. It is an unlikely ground zero for a legal stoush whose outcome will shake councils around the country.
It began one day in 2020 when an electronic advertising billboard – more than 11 metres high and 42.4 sq metres in area – suddenly and unexpectedly appeared right in front of that humble home on Musgrave Road, a key thoroughfare to the CBD.
Its owner, Richard Leahy, was unaware that Brisbane city council had approved the billboard that “terribly infringes” on the city view from his veranda – one of the main reasons he bought the place. Leahy felt the council was obliged, under local law, to at least let him object to the billboard’s approval.
Queensland’s supreme court agreed with Leahy after he sued for being denied procedural fairness in September 2022. So did the appeal court in June after the council disputed the decision.
So Leahy was surprised when, a few weeks later, he was served with notice that the council was taking the matter to the high court.
With echoes of the classic comedy The Castle, the case of the aggrieved homeowner protecting his patch against the ruthless march of development generated headlines in Brisbane – and Leahy says he became “a bit of a lightning rod” for people disaffected by council decisions. Although, being a litigation solicitor by trade, Leahy is no Darryl Kerrigan. And he has, he says, “absolutely no problem” with electronic billboards.
“I have no problem with most development,” he tells Guardian Australia.
Still, University of Queensland urban and social planning researcher Laurel Johnson says the saga struck a nerve for a number of reasons.
First is the location. Red Hill is a neighbourhood in which zoning restricts what landowners can do to their properties in a bid to protect its “uniquely Brisbane” character. This sacrifice of property rights is one Johnson says most are happy to make.
Yet “curiously”, she says, the council did not seem to require the same sacrifices from both the owners of the sign and the property on which it’s housed, a commercial lot with several small businesses.
“If that billboard was a private structure, such as a car port, there is no way that would have been allowed at that height, at that bulk, on that site,” Johnson says. “It just wouldn’t have got through our town planning regulations. This would not pass go.”
Ultimately, the court did not rule on the legality of the billboard but on the council’s failure to consult with, or consider its impact on, surrounding residents, something Johnson says other people could relate to.
“We do have ongoing issues around consultation in areas that are facing dramatic change from development,” she says.
“We have an articulate, knowledgable community, but it is not until the bulldozers come in next door that people become alarmed and motivated [to make submissions] but by then it is just too late.
“So this is a bit of a bellwether moment, this billboard in Red Hill, because there is a sense that, ‘Oh, this could happen to me’.”
Whether it does prove a bellwether for the general public, Queensland University of Technology administrative law expert Liz O’Connor says the case will have local governments around Australia scrambling to review their own billboard approvals.
Last month, weeks after launching proceedings, Brisbane city council quietly discontinued its high court appeal.
In doing so, it finally accepted that its planning laws required it to have taken into consideration the impact of the billboard upon neighbouring properties and to consult with them.
Which, O’Connor says, was more than just a “slam dunk win” for Leahy.
“The implications are much bigger for all councils around Australia,” she says, adding that many other local governments behave similarly.
“That is going to apply to anyone, everywhere where they’re putting in those great big signs.”
O’Connor says councils will now be reviewing past billboard approvals – and that Musgrave Road is unlikely to be the only contentious electronic sign in Australia.
Councils will also need to change how they process future billboard applications, considering their impacts upon neighbours more fully and consulting more widely.
Leahy’s win may inspire others to do a Darryl Kerrigan.
“Increasingly, we’ve seen these signs going up around our communities … and they’ve just gotten bigger and bigger,” O’Connor says. “And most people don’t realise that, in these sorts of circumstances, they might have a right to review a government’s decisions; that they do have a right to make sure the decision was made properly.”
A Brisbane city council spokesperson said its high court appeal was discontinued after “an agreement with the sign owner on a process about how the court decision may be addressed”.
“An application for the relocation of the sign will be lodged by the sign owner and then assessed by council.”
As of Thursday, the billboard still stood on Musgrave Road. Among the ads for luxury cars, designer sneakers and streaming services was one plugging Brisbane city council’s green bins. In it, a man stands in front of a classic old Queenslander, smiling triumphantly.
“This is Brisbetter,” the ad reads.
