A WA parliamentary inquiry into lead contamination in Esperance says that failing to identify or prevent the pollution points to a lack of compliance culture within the state’s environment department.

The inquiry report recommends legislative changes and more funding and suggests state agencies might be too reliant on companies self-regulating.

The findings prompted a Labor member of the Legislative Assembly’s Education and Health Standing Committee to suggest raising licence fees for the state’s scheduled premises by up to 400%.

The report, tabled in state parliament today (see separate story), recommends authorities consider whether Magellan Metals Pty Ltd, Esperance Port Authority and transport company BIS Industrial Logistics breached their legal obligations.

It says failings by the WA Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) are not confined to Esperance alone and describes its regulation of industry generally as "grossly inadequate".

The committee says significant factors contributing to DEC's failures are:

• a lack of a compliance culture;
• a lack of continuity in organisational structures which has significantly limited corporate knowledge; and
• "a critical lack of resources which can only be justified if industry self-regulation is effective".

DEC acknowledged in its submission to the inquiry that it failed to come close to meeting its inspection targets for licensed premises because of resource constraints and the increased workload triggered by the state's resources boom.

The inquiry report says the reliance placed on company self-regulation and self-reporting by DEC and other agencies "was an ongoing concern to the committee in this inquiry". It also notes evidence given by Kim Taylor, DEC's Acting Deputy Director-General, that the problems at Esperance had prompted the department to question its general approach.

"We accept as a regulator that we cannot afford to rely on anybody now to inform us when issues arise and that we just have to be far more diligent and basically not trust or rely on other people," Taylor said. "We have to see things, identify things and investigate things first-hand ourselves rather than rely on other parties."

Cover the 'true cost' of regulation

The committee recommends funding DEC adequately to cover the "true cost" of industry regulation, either through full cost recovery or through an increased allocation from consolidated revenue. Licence fee increases of 50% over two years announced by the state government in May would not be sufficient to properly cover costs, it says.

It also recommends DEC review its procedures to ensure all commitments by a proponent are made in a manner which has legal force.

A Labor member of the committee, Martin Whitely, told parliament true cost recovery would involve a massive rise in licence fees.

"If we persist with it on a cost-recovery basis, fees will probably need to increase by 300% to 400%," he said. "If we do not want to impose that increase, we must agree to properly fund the regulatory functions from recurrent expenditure."

"The basic message that we need to take out of this inquiry is that DEC needs not only to be well resourced, but also to get real about its role as an environmental watchdog," he said.

The committee's report also recommends:

• introducing a legislative requirement for the Department of Health to conduct a health impact assessment as part of the environmental assessment process;
• making potential for public concern about likely environmental and health impacts a ground for requiring that project proponents carry out public consultation, augmenting the existing grounds of potential for serious environmental impact or significant additional impact; and
• requiring proponents to repeat public consultation processes if the information presented in an initial consultation phase is substantially superseded.

The committee says there are signs DEC’s efforts to implement the 2003 'Robinson Review' of enforcement and prosecution might be contributing to the adoption of a more robust regulatory approach.

Despite its criticism of DEC, the committee does not recommend major restructuring, saying constant restructuring has been "the major impediment" to effective industry regulation.

Inquiry Into The Cause And Extent Of Lead Pollution In The Esperance Area: Report No. 8 (06/09/2007, Education and Health Committee, Legislative Assembly) Inquiry Into The Cause And Extent Of Lead Pollution In The Esperance Area: Report No. 8: Appendices (06/09/2007, Education and Health Committee, Legislative Assembly)