New laws to protect communities from environmental impacts

• The Miles Government has today introduced legislation into State Parliament to strengthen the powers of the independent environmental regulator to deal with environmental harm.
• The Environmental Protection (Powers and Penalties) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 finalises the Government's response to the review of the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) undertaken in 2022.
• The Bill will strengthen the environmental regulator’s power to ensure operators are actively preventing harm to the community, punish those breaking the law, and force them to take faster clean-up action.

Environment Minister Leanne Linard has today introduced new legislation into State Parliament which will provide stronger protections for communities impacted by environmental issues.

The Environmental Protection (Powers and Penalties) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 will give the environmental regulator additional tools to prevent environmental harm before it occurs.

The changes will ensure there is appropriate emphasis on human health, wellbeing and safety in Queensland’s environmental laws and shifts the focus to proactive prevention of environmental impacts.

The Bill will also clarify that environmental ‘nuisance’ can be considered ‘serious or material environmental harm’.

This enables a greater range of enforcement tools and stronger penalties for persistent issues, such as odour, that are more proportionate to the impact on the community.

The Bill also:

• combines a number of existing compliance notices into a new tool called an Environmental Enforcement Order (EEO), that can be used to require operators to improve on-site processes causing unacceptable environmental harm, such as persistent offensive odour.
• introduces a new ‘General Environmental Duty’ offence which can be applied if someone fails to take reasonably practicable action to prevent or minimise material or serious environmental harm, and
• introduces a ‘duty to restore environmental harm’ requiring operators to restore the environment to the condition it was in prior to an incident involving contamination.

The Bill implements the Government’s response to the review of the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) undertaken by retired Judge Richard Jones and Barrister Susan Hedge in 2022.

The review, which looked into the powers and penalties under the Environmental Protection Act, was initiated in part due to the significant odour nuisance issues that have arisen in communities in the vicinity of existing waste management activities, most notably in Ipswich.

The review found that the Act generally had an adequate range of powers and penalties to enforce environmental obligations and reduce the risk of environmental harm.

However, 18 recommendations were made to update the Act to better protect the community and environment. The government supported or supported in-principle all recommendations made.

Several of the recommendations have already been delivered through the Environmental Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2023 which was passed by the Queensland Parliament in March 2023.

The Environmental Protection (Powers and Penalties) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 finalises the government’s response to the recommendations.

Quotes attributable to Environment Minister, Leanne Linard:

“We are a government which listens to the community and acts.

“We initiated a review of the Environmental Protection Act 1994 due to the significant odour nuisance issues in the Swanbank industrial area and surrounds, but the changes we will implement through this legislation will have broad and positive impacts for all Queensland communities.

“In recent years, environmental impacts from a number of industries have presented increasingly complex regulatory challenges.

“These issues are often linked to new housing on land in close proximity to existing industrial activities.

“The Miles Government’s response to the review of powers and penalties by Mr Jones and Ms Hedge will help ensure the state’s environmental laws are modern and fit for purpose to meet the needs of the community.

“We will also consider what further changes may be needed to ensure licence conditions remain contemporary and fit for purpose.

“A strengthened Environmental Protection Act benefits everyone.”

ENDS

Media contact: Scott Chandler – (07) 3719 7339