When your neighbour has a noisy dog that disturbs your enjoyment of sleep the first step might be to ask him to deal with the problem. The second step would be for you to complain to Council for them to deal with it under the Public Health and Nuisance Act.

Council acts on all such complaints by using a section of the Act that gives them 4 choices.

Bald Hills Wind Farm Takes South Gippsland Council to Supreme Court

When your neighbour has a noisy dog that disturbs your enjoyment of sleep the first step might be to ask him to deal with the problem. The second step would be for you to complain to Council for them to deal with it under the Public Health and Nuisance Act.

Council acts on all such complaints by using a section of the Act that gives them 4 choices. Section 62 says they can 

a) Do nothing and say there is no nuisance (no barking problem),
b) Agree an issue exists and fines the owner of the dog,
c) Issues a notice for the dog owner to fix the problem, or
d) ask the two parties to mediate the problem between themselves.
Council determined that the two parties should mediate amongst themselves.

Losing Sleep to a Barking Dog?

Yesterday in the Supreme Court we heard day one of the proceedings brought about by Bald Hills Wind Farm against such a decision of South Gippsland Council of March and April 2019 where the Council found that their was a rather large “noisy dog” called “wind turbines” that was disturbing the sleep of 6 residents from the surrounding area in South Gippsland.

The Court action appears to be attempting to have the Council decision quashed. Argument put forward by the defending side says that once Council made the decisions in March and April that the process for Council was finished. A mention was made that if the decisions were quashed that the “case” would come back to Council for further deliberation.

An interesting off the cuff remark for Council’s lawyer in response to that idea was that he was “not sure (Council) was a deliberation body at the moment”, a possible reference to having no Councillors and where the administrators have apparently shown no ability to disagree with each other in the slightest since they turned up.

Further breaking news will be published at the end of today.