Publications

Operation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999

• Download the Annual Report as a PDF file
• Introduction
• Overview
• 1. Protecting the environment
• 2. Conserving biodiversity
• 3. Monitoring and compliance
• 4. Reporting
• 5. Ongoing and future developments
• Appendix 1 - Statistics on the Operation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
• Appendix 2 - Publications
• Appendix 3 - Functions and membership of Advisory Committees established under the Act
• Appendix 4 - Compliance with timeframes in the Act
• Appendix 5 - ANAO Report Recommendations

Introduction

This is the third report on the operation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and describes its operation from 1 July 2002 to 30 June 2003.

As in previous years, this report follows a format allowing examination of the operation of the Act against the key priorities in implementing the Act. These priorities are:

• ensuring a clear role for the Commonwealth in protecting matters of national environmental significance (addressed in Part 1.1 of this report);
• providing more effective protection of the environment in proposals involving the Commonwealth (addressed in Part 1.2);
• increasing intergovernmental cooperation and reducing duplication (addressed in Part 1.3);
• providing a more efficient, timely and effective assessment and approval process with greater certainty (addressed in Part 1.4);
• increasing transparency and public awareness (addressed in Part 1.5);
• taking an integrated approach to conserving biodiversity (addressed in Part 2); and
• developing an improved monitoring and compliance regime (addressed in Part 3).