Legal responses to the problem of soil contamination — the Australian experience

Abstract

This observation, which was made by the Director of the Victorian Environment Protection Authority, suggests that there is a need for better responses to the problem of land contamination in Australia. Although the problem now is widely regarded as a matter of serious environmental concern, effective legal responses are still being developed. The Federal constitutional system in Australia, under which environmental management functions are performed primarily by State and Territory governments (Chapter 14), has produced a variety of approaches to the management of contaminated land. The role of the Commonwealth government has been limited to a contribution to the production of National Guidelines for the Assessment and Management of Contaminated Sites and a Position Paper on Financial Liability for Contaminated Site Remediation. Only three States (New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland) have developed legislation which is directed specifically at the subject of contaminated land. For the other States and Territories, the problem is addressed to varying degrees through their general environment protection legislation.

‘A look at the current state of practice in contaminated site management cannot help but arouse some grave doubts as to whether we are any more able to deal with the complexity of evaluating environmental impacts of chemical contaminants theory than we were thirty years ago’.

(Robinson and Shoebridge, 1993)