For more than four decades, Denis McLeod has been the man local councils facing legal trouble have turned to for advice.
Mr McLeod, who founded Claremont-based law firm McLeods Lawyers, plans to retire on December 31 after more than 50 years in the legal profession, about 45 years of which have been practising in planning law.
The firm has represented local governments in numerous significant legal proceedings, including for the Shire of Mundaring as the interested party in Satterley Property Group’s dispute with the Western Australian Planning Commission, and acting for the City of Subiaco in its legal fight with developer Sanur.
Initially aspiring to be a doctor, Mr McLeod was persuaded as a young boy to become a lawyer when his friend’s mum heard he wanted to become a medical professional for financial reasons.
“She said, ‘Well, if that’s the case, you’d want to be a lawyer. They make buckets full of money. They drive around in big flash car and sit around all day with their feet up on the desk’,” Mr McLeod recounted.
“I was sold. The important thing for me then was the big flash car.
“But I never achieved any of those early aspirations, and more worthy things claimed my loyalty to the legal profession.”
In the 1970s, Mr McLeod became a partner at a legal firm in Fremantle, running a general practice.
While finishing off the second of his three degrees at The University of Western Australia, Mr McLeod went out on his own to establish his first legal firm, in 1972, which operated until 1979.
At both his firm and that in Fremantle, Mr McLeod took up matters in family law, criminal law and motor vehicle insurance claims.
He said his entry into local government and planning matters wasn’t intentional.
“The divorce practice led to me getting into local government, because a person I’d acted for in a divorce had a property in a local government area, for which he wanted to get planning approval for a truck stop,” Mr McLeod told Business News.
“That was, in fact, the first appeal to the Town Planning Court, commenced in 1973, even though the court had been set up in 1970.
“I withdrew the case from the Town Planning Court but, having come to the attention of the local government that I’d been pitted against in that appeal, they started giving me legal work to do for them.
“They had a fairly big case in the Supreme Court on a town planning law issue coming up, which I don’t think I was very well equipped for at that time, but I went in and I made a good fist of it.
“It was a hard-fought case, but I didn’t win.
“From then on, that local government kept on giving me work and I’m still acting for them now, more than 50 years later.
“My entry to planning law was practically accidental, but from that time I regularly was exposed to planning law and local government. I took to it like a duck to water.”
At the time, Mr McLeod was one of only a handful of practitioners in Perth working on local government and planning law.
“I started a new firm in January 1980, specialising in planning law and local government,” he said.
“In that new firm, the business of acting for local governments grew rapidly.
“That was a problem, in a way, in that by the early 1980s I’d also developed a practice of acting for developers.”
Over time, Mr McLeod said, he recognised he could no longer act for developers because of the conflict of interest with his local government work.
What started as a one-man show grew to a 14-strong team today.
Mr McLeod was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours for his service to the law, to urban planning, and to the WA community.
He’s also an honorary fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia.
Source: State Administrative Tribunal decisions
During his career, Mr McLeod helped form the Local Government Planners Association in WA, of which he is a life member.
Mr McLeod, who will turn 83 next year, said enthusiasm and commitment were essential in his line of work.
He hopes to rely on those qualities in retirement, too, particularly in terms of spending more time on his Mundaring property to pursue creative writing and art.
Mr McLeod’s Mundaring property boasts about four hectares, including a small citrus orchard established in 1897.
“We also have an art gallery up there and I want to give more time to improving the property,” he said.
“Especially the garden and getting the garden to the point where my wife and family will be happy with it.
“But more importantly than that, I want to concentrate more on creative writing, and the art collection.”
Despite flagging his retirement, Mr McLeod said he would continue advocating for integrity in the state’s planning system.
“There seems to be a perception among persons associated with the planning and development decision-making processes that the politicians responsible ... see the development industry as major financial donors to the parties, especially at election time,” he said.
“No doubt developers can be seen as doing work that’s important to the economy of the state for social reasons, like providing housing and so on.
“But it seems obvious that the planning decision makers in the area of property development should be transparently independent of financial benefit from the persons standing to profit from their decisions.
“The issue of integrity in planning and development decision making is a point of great importance to me. Now that I am retiring, I’ll be giving a fair bit of attention to that issue.”
Mr McLeod said ensuring students understood the value of integrity in planning was among the key messages during his years teaching at WA universities.
“I taught planning law at Curtin University for 34 years, and I taught planning law at UWA for 16 years,” he said.
“I didn’t take any payment for my teaching services in the last 20 years, but I believe that Curtin University has put aside the unpaid teaching funds. That [money] may be available to provide financial support for the quest for integrity in the planning approval system.”
Mr McLeod suggested he or his firm had probably worked for most of the 139 local governments in WA.
“A lot of them don’t need much legal representation, probably because they don’t have significant legal issues, but more particularly because most of them carry on their task of local government in an effective and responsible way,” he said.
“In my opinion, local government is important in our democratic system, partly because of the fact it is the democratic process that is in most direct contact with the community.
“There’s no doubt that some local governments sometimes get unfavourable publicity.
“But the few local governments that come under scrutiny as to their process of governance are vastly outnumbered by those that do the difficult and demanding job of government effectively in the interest of their communities.”
