Its a pretty damming judgement. By the sounds of it the Chamber of Commerce's case relied a lot on emotion but had little substantive argument. That style of argument only worked for Dennis Denuto....
Regrettably, the Chamber’s written submissions did not address these contentions with the necessary rigour. Those submissions are not easy to understand and range well outside the nine points identified at the start of the hearing. I should say that my task of coming to grips with the Chamber’s arguments has been considerably assisted by the analysis undertaken in the Minister’s submissions. I am grateful for that assistance and that gained from the submissions for the Corporation.
and
What is apparent is that whilst the Chamber was represented by a solicitor, no independent professional judgement was brought to bear on the relevance of the content of the various witness statements. That deficiency continued with the Chamber’s written submissions – 93 pages of closely typed pages included a number devoted to a discussion (without any conclusion readily apparent) of the validity of the Airports Act. Ultimately, the Chamber’s solicitor, Mr Van Zyl, agreed that I need not concern myself with that particular issue.