Court dismisses application to review decision on land group

THE Waigani Supreme Court has dismissed an application seeking a judicial review of a lower court’s decision to grant a judicial review application by an incorporated land group (ILG) who were appealing the decision of the registrar of ILGs to cancel their certificate of registration.
Justice Derek Hartshorn, sitting as a single Supreme Court judge on Friday, held that the registrar of ILGs Iruna Rogakila, Department of Lands and Physical Planning and the State had not made out an arguable case to warrant a review of the National Court decision that upheld a review application by the Sehazuha Land Group Incorporated.
Sehazuha Land Group Incorporated judicially reviewed amongst others the decision of Rogakila dated Jan 10, 2018, to cancel their certificate of registration. The primary judge upheld the judicial review application and made certain orders on March 14 2019.
The three applicants sought to review the decision on the proposed grounds that the trial of the judicial review application was held ex parte without their participation so they were not heard; the affidavit of Rogakila was not considered; the applicants lawyer was indisposed and their file had gone missing at the time of trial.
Justice Hartshorn considered the merits sought by the applicants and said that as to the first issue that the trial was held ex parte, the primary judge was entitled to proceed as he did because the parties had agreed for the hearing on March 13, 2019, but no lawyer appeared on behalf of the applicants that day during trial.