Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church for the Archdiocese of Canberra And Goulburn v ACT Heritage Council and Ors (Administrative Review)

The case before the court was between the Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church for the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn and the ACT Heritage Council, along with other respondents. The Trustees challenged the Council’s decision to provisionally register St Patrick’s Church, located in Braddon, under the Heritage Act. The Trustees argued that the church did not meet the criteria for heritage significance as outlined in the Act and sought to have the decision overturned.

The legal issues at the heart of the case involved whether the church met the criteria for heritage significance as stipulated in the Heritage Act. Specifically, the court needed to determine if the church satisfied any of the criteria set out in section 10 of the Act, which includes, among others, having strong or special associations with a person, group, event, development, or cultural phase in local or national history, and being important as evidence of a distinctive way of life, taste, tradition, religion, land use, custom, process, design, or function that is no longer practised, is in danger of being lost, or is of exceptional interest. The court also had to consider whether the Council’s decision to provisionally register the church was made in accordance with the law.

The court found that the Council had not adequately assessed the heritage significance of the church against the criteria in the Act. While the church had historical importance and was significant to the Catholic community, the Council had failed to properly consider the church's heritage value against the criteria, particularly criterion (d) which pertains to strong or special religious, spiritual, cultural, educational, or social associations. The court emphasised that the Council’s decision-making process was flawed because it did not provide a detailed analysis of the church's heritage value in relation to the criteria. As a result, the court held that the Council's decision to provisionally register the church was not supported by the evidence and was therefore unreasonable.

In light of these findings, the court set aside the Council's decision to provisionally register the church and substituted it with a decision not to register the church. The court ordered that the church should not be registered on the Heritage Register, and the provisional registration was to be removed. This decision effectively upheld the Trustees' challenge to the Council's decision.