Environmental Protection Authority chairman Tom Hatton says the resources boom could have contributed to the complex policy system that led to the successful legal challenge of Roe 8 in the Supreme Court.
The Save Beeliar Wetlands group took the State Government to court in December, arguing the EPA did not take its own policies into account when it assessed the project.
Following the successful challenge, environment and planning barrister Peter Quinlan reviewed the authority’s policy framework.
The findings, released last month, said the current policy structure was ‘inadequate’ and there were too many instruments that were poorly organised.
Dr Hatton welcomed the chance to perform a ‘root and branch’ restructure of the authority’s policy framework.
When asked how the EPA could have reached the point where its policy framework contributed to the successful legal challenge of the Roe Highway extension he said staff were caught up in resources boom projects.
“I don’t know, it was before my time but if I had to say in any business or institution you have that tension between running the business and improving the business,” he said.
“And with the boom and so many large and complex proposals coming through the EPA, I suspect people were up to their necks in running the business and didn’t have the capacity to improve it.
“When you have lots and lots of policies and if a judge rules that you have to intellectually engage with every one of those and you have to show in your report your advice that you engaged intellectually with every one of those, well obviously there’s always a risk that you haven’t shown that you’ve done that.”
Dr Hatton said one of the intents of the policy framework reform was to reduce the likelihood of a Roe 8-type legal challenge in the future.
Shadow environment minister Chris Tallentire criticised the review and said it didn’t look into the actual content of the EPA’s policies.
“Really we’ve just got a weighty report that just talks about the structure of environmental policies, what we really need to be focusing on is the content of these polices,” he said.
Dr Hatton said reviewing the policy framework was of much greater value to the authority.
The State Government is awaiting a response from the Court of Appeals whether it would be able to appeal the Supreme Court’s decision.
It was also awaiting environmental reassessment of the Roe Highway extension.
