Page 3859 - Week 12 - Thursday, 30 October 2014
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in schedule 3. Previously applicants could only get a review of any decision through ACAT. The internal review process provides an additional mechanism to review a decision prior to or in place of taking a review to ACAT. Internal reviews must be completed within 28 days and do not prevent the operation of the initial decision. One useful feature of this process is that reviews can be sought by the entity that made the application or by any other person whose interests are affected. This adds a layer of scrutiny to the process that means that a member of the public could seek an internal review of a decision in the public interest, and I think this is a very welcome addition to the legislation.
A significant change to the act, as Ms Lawder mentioned, is to ensure that the territory is liable for an offence under the act without exceptions. Previously the territory was immune from criminal liability. I agree this is a good change. There is no reason that we, as the government, should not be as accountable to the law on environmental protection as business and industry. Governments should not be in the business of setting laws for other people that do not apply to themselves, particularly when they are engaging in comparable businesses. We have a responsibility to show leadership, especially in the area of environmental protection.
The bill also has amendments that will see the extraterritorial application of the act, which for a jurisdiction of our size and with our geography is particularly pertinent. This will mean that environmental incidents that occur wholly outside the ACT but have an impact on the ACT, such as water pollution from interstate, will be captured by the legislation.
There are also some administrative changes to streamline operation of the act. Changes to public notification of the granting of authorisation remove the requirement for this to be advertised in a daily newspaper, which I agree is a little quaint these days. However, I was surprised to note there was no replacement provision in this part of the act nor any other part of the act that require the notifications to be published on the EPA website. Of all the documents produced by the EPA, only environmental authorisations and environmental protection agreements are accessible on the website.
Noting this removal of the provision to publish in a daily paper in this clause triggered a look at other reports and documents that do not have requirements for them to be published online. Currently a range of documents, including environmental improvement plans, emergency plans, environment protection orders and results of reviews of an environmental authorisation are not readily available online, and they probably should be considering that that internet is now the public space where documents are generally viewed. As this can be a resourcing issue for agencies, I have not moved an amendment in this regard today. However, I understand that the EPA’s intention is to upload documents to their website to make them publicly available. As technology improves and resources are available, more documents will be available online. At present I believe, due to the complexity of sampling results and audits, the majority of people view the instruments in person at the EPA offices. I note there are a number of scrutiny committee concerns around strict liability, and, again, I understand that Mr Corbell will be moving amendments in response to their concerns.
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