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Link: https://www.queenslandjudgments.com.au/caselaw/qsc/2025/194
Tipler & Ors v Moreton Bay City Council [2025] QSC 194
Court: Supreme Court of Queensland, Trial Division Judge: Smith J Date: 15 August 2025 (ex tempore) Citation: [2025] QSC 194 File: BS 2741/25
Parties
Eleven applicants — all homeless men and women sleeping rough at 99 Goodfellows Road, Kallangur — versus Moreton Bay City Council as respondent.
The applicants were represented by Mr M. Hickey OAM KC, Mr H. Clift and Mr N. Miranda, instructed by Basic Rights Queensland. The council was represented by Mr S. McLeod KC and Ms F. Nagorcka, instructed by Clayton Utz.
Background
The applicants were homeless and had been camping on public land controlled by the council. Until February 2025, a council framework called the Persons Experiencing Homelessness Framework permitted homeless people to camp on council land, made under the Local Government Act 2009 (Qld).
After receiving complaints from residents, on 26 February 2025 the council announced it would repeal the framework, effective 12 March 2025.
On 9 and 10 April 2025, council officers attended Eddie Hyland Park — where some of the applicants had been living — and issued decision and compliance notices requiring them to stop storing goods and stop camping there, with very short timeframes to comply. On 24 April 2025, council employees returned with heavy machinery and disposed of several of the applicants’ belongings. The applicants disputed the council’s characterisation that this was merely waste removal.
Some of the applicants moved to Goodfellows Road around 10 May 2025 and had been sleeping there since. Despite separate statutory review proceedings being commenced on 22 May 2025, on 18 June 2025 council employees attended Goodfellows Road, told the applicants they had two weeks to move, and stated that prior notices from Eddie Hyland Park still applied. The applicants’ solicitors wrote to the council asking it not to take further action given proceedings were on foot. No substantive response was received.
By consent order on 2 July 2025, the council was temporarily restrained. The substantive hearing was listed for November 2025. The present application was for an interlocutory injunction to maintain the status quo until that hearing.
The Legal Issues
The applicants sought judicial review under the Judicial Review Act 1991 (Qld) on the basis that the council’s decisions were incompatible with the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld) (HRA), particularly section 58, which makes it unlawful for a public entity to act or make a decision incompatibly with human rights, or to fail to give proper consideration to a relevant human right in making a decision.
The specific human rights invoked were:
- The right to life (s 16 HRA);
- The right not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhumane or degrading way (s 17 HRA);
- The right not to have privacy, family, home or correspondence unlawfully or arbitrarily interfered with (s 25(a) HRA);
- The protection of families as the fundamental unit of society (s 26(1) HRA).
The court also noted that human rights can be limited under s 13 of the HRA — but only to the extent demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom, assessed by a proportionality test.
The Council’s Position
The council argued no injunction was needed because it had stated in a letter dated 21 July 2025 that it did not intend to enforce the existing notices. It submitted the camping was in contravention of the Camping on Public Land Local Law 2023 and that the applicants’ challenges to specific decisions could not immunise them from enforcement of the law more broadly. It also pointed to accommodation offers from the Department of Housing that the applicants had declined.
Smith J’s Reasoning
On prima facie case, Smith J was satisfied there was no evidence that the council had given proper consideration to the applicants’ human rights before making its decisions. The relevant Human Rights Act standard — as articulated in Johnston v Carroll [2024] QSC 2 — requires a decision-maker to identify which rights may be affected, understand how those rights will be interfered with, turn their mind seriously to the impact, identify countervailing interests, and balance them. The court found there was a reasonable argument that this had not occurred, and that real questions existed about whether the council’s actions were proportionate under section 13 of the HRA.
On the balance of convenience, Smith J found that without an undertaking or court order, there was a real risk the council would seize and destroy the applicants’ shelters and belongings as it had done previously at Eddie Hyland Park. The council’s letter of 21 July 2025 stated it did not intend to enforce existing notices but reserved the right to issue new ones. That was not an undertaking to the court. The judge noted evidence that council employees may have acted in a high-handed way — without making a finding on that question — but said it raised concerns.
The judge observed that removal of shelter from vulnerable homeless people in the middle of winter would expose them to immediate risk of serious physical harm. The applicants had no means to give an undertaking as to damages, but that was not a significant concern in a public law case.
The Order
The council was restrained, until further order, from taking any action to enforce the notices issued under the Camping on Public Land Local Law 2023, the Alteration of Public Land Local Law 2023, or any other local law given to the applicants.
Notable Aspects
This is a marked by the Queensland Judgments database as a Notable Unreported Decision.
It is a direct application of the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld) in the context of local government action against homeless people. The court confirmed the standard from Johnston v Carroll [2024] QSC 2 — a case already in this series — for what “proper consideration” of human rights requires from a public decision-maker.
The outcome is significant in the context of this series on local government accountability. The council, as a statutory body, was required to demonstrate that its decisions gave proper consideration to the human rights of those affected. When it could not, and when it declined to offer a court undertaking, the interlocutory injunction was granted to preserve the position until a full hearing.
Smith J’s closing observation is pointed: “I consider it would be wrong not to protect vulnerable applicants from the potential loss of their homes in the midst of winter.”
Salus populi suprema lex — the welfare of the people is the supreme law.
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