This is the second report in a series, Monitoring Victoria’s Environmental Laws, to be published by us.
This report investigates how effectively the Minister for Planning and DPCD are implementing and enforcing the Environment Effects Act 1978 (Vic) through the environment effects statement process.
For many years the EE Act has been criticised as weak, discretionary, politicised, slow and cumbersome. This report shows that very few projects are assessed annually; that the EES process is incredibly protracted with assessments often taking 2 years to complete; and that in practice the process does not prevent significant negative environmental impacts from occurring. The report makes recommendations for improvement.
View report Rigour or Rubber Stamp? (PDF, 475KB)
The Monitoring Victoria’s Environmental Laws reports examine the extent and effectiveness of government’s implementation and enforcement of key environmental laws in Victoria.
We have witnessed how Victoria’s environmental laws are implemented and enforced for over 20 years through our advice to and representation of the community on environmental law issues. Over that time we have become aware of countless environmental laws that are in force but are not effectively used by government to protect or improve the environment. These reports use all publicly available data on each Act to expose the lack of implementation and enforcement of key environmental laws.
The first report, Walking the Talk?, reviewed the Environment Protection Act. The third report Where's the Guarantee? examines the Flora & Fauna Guarantee Act and the Wildlife Act. The final report A Framework for Action? is on the native vegetation framework under the Environment and Planning Act.
View report #1: Walking the Talk? (PDF, 446KB)
View report #3: Where's the Guarantee? (PDF, 550KB)
View report #4: A Framework for Action? (PDF, 823KB)
Read our Director of Advocacy and Research’s blog post on the motivation behind these reports and the difficulties the EDO had in accessing data from the government to compile the reports.