The Queensland Court of Appeal held that the Planning and Environment Court's reasons for approving a development application involving a building height increase above the overlay map limit were adequate, notwithstanding their relative brevity. The Court emphasised that where the judicial task is evaluative in nature — involving imprecisely expressed planning criteria such as 'reinforced local identity and sense of place' and 'excellent standard of appearance' — the obligation to give reasons must recognise that it may not be practicable to provide detailed articulation of how conflicting factors were weighed, and that reasons should be read as a whole rather than by isolating individual paragraphs. The Court also declined to grant leave on a ground alleging failure to determine 'reasonable amenity expectations of nearby residents' where that issue had not been raised as a discrete issue at trial.
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