It is with great sadness that we write to inform you of the passing of Professor Emeritus Alan Fogg, the well-respected author of Planning and Development Law Queensland. An authority on Planning and Environment Law within the legal profession, Professor Fogg was also the author of three earlier books on planning law – Australian Town Planning Law: Uniformity and Change (2nd ed, 1982); Process, Procedures and Plans (1980); and Land Development Law in Queensland (Law Book Company, 1987).

Thomson Reuters offers sincere condolences to the Fogg family and we leave you with a beautiful tribute from David Nicholls, one of the current authors of Planning and Development Law Queensland, in honour of the memory of Professor Fogg.

Vale Professor Emeritus Alan Fogg

On the 14th of April 2020, Queensland lost a distinguished and highly respected planning lawyer with the passing of Professor Emeritus Alan Fogg. Alan held the degrees of MA from Oxford University, and PhD from the University of Queensland, the latter based upon a thesis on Queensland’s planning laws, which later underpinned his magnum opus Land Development Law in Queensland (Law Book Company, 1987). Alan’s textbook was universally acknowledged as the bible on planning law in Queensland, reflected in the many references to it by the Local Government Court and later, the Planning and Environment Court. The work is comprehensive and accurately reflects the state of planning law at the time of its publication. However, its intelligent analysis and organisation of the fundamental principles underpinning planning law means that it remains relevant today despite the substantive legislative reforms that have occurred since it was written.

When planning law was fundamentally reformed with the commencement of the Integrated Planning Act 1997, Alan initiated the looseleaf commentary on that Act, Planning and Development Law Queensland, now published by Thomson Reuters, which was co-authored by Rosanne Meurling and Ian Hodgetts. Alan carried the burden of the majority of the authorship of that publication until 2015 when he asked the writer to take on that role. They were very big shoes to fill, such was Alan’s intellect, prodigious work ethic and legal scholarship.

Alan was generous with his time, regularly corresponding with and encouraging his post graduate students, incorporating references to practitioners’ research papers in Planning and Development Law Queensland, and in preparing and delivering papers at seminars organized by QELA. His Oxford education was reflected, delightfully, in the fluidity of his writing and his regular use of terms from classical Greek and Roman literature to illustrate his points. When he presented papers at seminars, his wife Penny usually accompanied him, having assisted him in researching and writing the paper. They were partners in every sense. In the foreword to his textbook, he wrote of Penny “My wife not only encouraged the writing of this book and made it possible, she made it necessary.”

If there was one constant theme in Alan’s writing on Queensland’s planning laws, it was his concern about the incessant legislative changes, and its consequent complexity. He wrote in the foreword to his textbook:

The flotsam of frequent amendments and the jetsam of redundant provisions combine to confuse the accuracy of a picture of crucially important laws in an area which has always been a political football.

Six years after the commencement of the IPA, he wrote:

To borrow from Winston Churchill, material change is a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma. More than half a century of English case law has improved on initial puzzlement, but has by no means totally removed it. The concept has proved particularly difficult to apply in practice …” concluding that “The IPA definition of development was deliberately made wide in order to accommodate future role ins of other land related applications. In doing so, it has destabilised simplicities under repealed planning legislation.

(Material Change of Use After the Fox Case QELA Seminar Paper 27 October 2003).

The transition from the IPA to the SPA did not lessen these concerns, and I am sure that despite some positive advances with the Planning Act 2016, Alan would today have the same concerns about the complexity of the law, especially under the current generation of planning schemes.

We who practice in the professions of planning lawyers and town planners owe Alan Fogg a great debt of gratitude for his diligent contributions to the teaching and dissemination of commentary on Queensland’s planning laws. Many of us will miss a kind and generous mentor.

David Nicholls
1 May 2020