Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 05/1997 by Stewart Smith
Page Content
- This paper presents a brief history of pollution control
enforcement and the development of public welfare offences (pages 3-5).
- Section 2.1 describes some modern approaches to pollution
control, including command backed by threat, long stop and fundamental values.
The long stop regime is typical in regard to environmental offences. This
regime acts within a system of administrative regulation which relies on
licences or permits to pollute. Enforcement agencies are able to issue
directions to individual licence holders and in consultation with licence
holders establish the pollution licence limits. Within this administrative
complex, prosecution and sanctioning are rarely used tools, commonly used as a
last resort (page 6).
- In 1991 the Protection of the Environment Administration Act
heralded the beginning of a new era of environment protection. The State
Pollution Control Commission, which tended to focus on end of pipe' pollution
control strategies, was replaced by a revamped and more powerful Environment
Protection Authority (page 7).
- The reform of pollution control in NSW was to be done in two
stages. The first was the creation of the EPA, the second was the reform of the
State's pollution control legislation. This became known as the EPA Stage II
legislation, and a draft exposure bill was released by the government in
December 1996.
- The Protection of the Environment Operations Bill replaces the
Clean Air Act 1961, Pollution Control Act 1970, Noise Control Act 1975 and the
Environmental Offences and Penalties Act 1989 (page 8).
- The Bill includes protection of the environment policies (pages
9-12), reforms pollution licensing (pages 12-14 ), continues provisions for
environment protection notices (page 15), reforms and introduces new
environment protection offences (pages 15-22 ), introduces a new section on
environmental auditing (page 22 ), reforms pollution control enforcement
procedures (page 23) and attempts to integrate the pollution licensing process
with the development assessment process (page 25).
- Whilst all commentators agree that the reform of pollution
control legislation is necessary, there have been both positive and negative
comments about aspects of the Bill. However, the introduction of the proposed
reforms is likely to lead to a greatly enhanced ability for the EPA to protect
our environment. Comments on the draft exposure bill are invited until
mid-April, and it is expected that the government will present a final bill to
Parliament in the second half of 1997.
