Method and approach
3.4 Interviews and information sources Interview data
The techniques or materials used in the research differed from case study to case study, depending on the availability of materials and the approaches that would best fulfil the goal of a full social and legal understanding of the cases. The goal was to collect sufficient data to study the cases broadly – covering the law, context and personality.102 Obtaining a
breadth of data was prioritised over using uniform sources for each case study. Interviews were especially important across the three case studies, however. I conducted 15 interviews for the Port Phillip Channel Deepening Project, 13 for the Wielangta Forest conflict and 20 for the Orange Waste Project. The interviews were semi-structured and ranged in duration from half an hour to many hours over a series of sittings. Other than one, all interviews were conducted in person in a location chosen by the interviewee. The interview subjects were mostly objectors and supporters who contributed to the environmental assessment of the Channel Deepening Project case; mostly lawyers and expert witnesses for the Wielangta
98 David Thacher, ‘The normative case study’ (2006) 111 American Journal of Sociology 1631.
99 Holder and Donald McGillivray, above n 29, 195 explain that collective case studies can help to understand
and critique the law.
100 Thacher, above n 98.
101 George and Bennett, above n 77, 159. 102 Morgera and Parks, above n 80, 20.
case; and, for the Orange Waste Project case, included a mix of people from both of these groups as well as a number of government officials. The differences in actors can be
explained by the nature of the environmental or planning process the projects were subject to: the Channel Deepening Project was assessed over months in two environmental
assessment panels before venturing to court; the Wielangta Forest conflict was mostly confined to the courts; and the Orange Waste Project processes saw the debate move from court to assessment hearings to the NSW Department of Planning offices. I identified interviewees generally in advance or based on discussions I had with central figures in the environmental conflicts early in my research. The unavailability of some key protagonists meant that I supplemented interviews with publicly available material from which I could decipher positions, values and perspectives.
There was a dual purpose to some of the interviews. The interviews with those people conventionally understood and presented as experts, both legal and non-legal (for example, scientists and environmental consultants), were an avenue to collect expert opinion,
reflection and analysis on the particular case and those cases similar to it, and a means of collecting empirical data insofar as the interviewee was willing to retrace their involvement and offer their impressions of the environmental conflict in which they were involved.103
These interviews proved especially useful to pinpoint what the technicians understood and pursued as the most important matters in the dispute. As will be seen in chapter 6, Forestry Tasmania’s scientific witnesses were in a unique situation – as experts presented as
independent from their employer but at the same time employed to represent the interests of Forestry Tasmania. Among all my interviewees, Forestry Tasmania personnel included some of the most generous people with their time and insights.
By and large, the purpose of the interviews was to allow the interviewees to narrate their experience. A narrative can be powerful and deeply illustrative.104 Rather than a focus on
questions, letting the narrator lead the discussion seeks to find answers to a complex
103 A discussion of interview techniques such as those employed in this research is in Christel Hopf, ‘Qualitative
interviews: An overview’ tr Bryan Jenner in Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardorff and Ines Steinke (eds), A Companion to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2004) 203.
problem. When speaking with interviewees, I considered my role was to ‘mobilize their memories’.105 I attempted to maintain a naivety,106 only offering my own preliminary
findings to progress the dialogue. I had a list of leading questions. I asked interviewees about why they got involved in the environmental dispute, how they contributed to the case, about their feelings at key moments and their perceptions of pivotal points. Most interviews were structured chronologically. I invited interviewees to offer comparisons to cases they knew, about past experiences or to how they expected the law and process to work. I encouraged interviewees to reflect on what they saw as fair or unfair. I avoided using the term ‘justice’, though all the participants knew this was a theoretical framework that I was using to analyse the cases. I listened carefully for a discourse of justice, but did not pursue interviewees when that discourse became apparent. I was particularly conscious not to cross-examine the interviewees. As lawyers know, parties involved in legal disputes are very often aggrieved at not being able to tell their story in court. It appeared that, for many of the protagonist interviewees, the experience of meeting with me was an opportunity to record experiences in their words, on their terms. I was content to facilitate this by offering time and passivity on my part. Some interviewees were guarded and disinclined to share their experiences. On these occasions the interviews became more structured, though questions remained open-ended.
Complementary documentary data
This interview material was interposed and correlated with documentary evidence. I did not attempt to code the interviews.107 Given the objects of the research generally and the
purpose of the interviews especially, I was reluctant to aggregate or analyse the data in this way. In some respects my role resembled that of a judge: to weigh up the spoken word with the documentary evidence; to check accuracy of reflections, some of which may have
105 Hopf, above n 103, 206.
106 Harry Hermanns, ‘Interviewing as an activity’ tr Bryan Jenner in Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardorff and Ines
Steinke (eds), A Companion to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2004) 209, 213.
107 In this aspect I disagree with an implication in the suggestion by King, Keohane and Verba,above n 46, 45
that valid conclusions can only be drawn from comparative case studies when standards and procedures are followed that interview data ought be treated as quantitative material.
faded.108 The interview setting was helpful in this regard because it served a reflective
purpose. I spoke with participants within two or three years of the event, whereas the documents I reviewed were all produced contemporaneously. The passage of time and distance from the thrust of the conflict meant that the interviewees were able to better distinguish between the most critical and the more trivial aspects of the case.
The types of documents that I could analyse were dictated by their availability. The
submissions and assessments and reports of the inquiry into the Channel Deepening Project were a rich source for that case. I sat in on one day of the hearing presided by North J of the Federal Court.109 The transcripts and documents, including expert evidence, made available
by the Federal Court in Hobart offered a depth of data that I had not expected to be able to access for the Wielangta Forest conflict case and, together with the documents posted on the internet by Senator Brown,110 provided a near-complete record of the trial court case for
the dispute. Unfortunately, these types of documents were not available for the Orange Waste Project. The New South Wales Land and Environment Court had returned, rather than retained, most documents on its file. In that case, the local print news media111 was a
rich source of data, as were the documents prepared for, and submitted to, the Part 3A assessment of the project. What I had achieved was to unearth vast amounts of
information.112 The challenge remained to find a fit between this data, the research
108 Stephan Wolff, ‘Analysis of documents and records’ tr Bryan Jenner in Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardorff and
Ines Steinke (eds), A Companion to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2004) 284.
109 This hearing culminated in the decision of North J in Blue Wedges Inc v Minister for the Environment,
Heritage and the Arts (2008) 167 FCR 463. Because I was able to involve myself in this case, at least for part of this case study, I was able to engage in a form of prospective case study analysis, testing my hypothesis in the midst of the case: see, eg, Alex Bitektine, ‘Prospective case study design: Qualitative method for deductive theory testing’ (2008) 11 Organizational Research Methods 160 for a discussion on prospective case studies. It was apparent from this day that North J was frustrated with the case argued by Blue Wedges as well as the strictures of his decision-making function, which is clear in his written judgment: see more in chapter 5.
110 Bob Brown, Wielangta Forest Landmark Trial (2005)
<https://web.archive.org/web/20131126071555/http://www.on-trial.info/>.
111 I am grateful to two members of the Hub Action Group for allowing me to review and scan copies of boxes
of many years’ worth of newspaper clippings and pamphlets relating to the Orange Waste Project, and to the staff at the Molong Express who provided me with copies of otherwise hard-to-find archived editions of that newspaper.
questions and the theory that had been chosen to link and analyse the cases.113 I will return
to some of the connecting themes, below.