EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
(Issued by Authority of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts)
Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Act 1989
Proclamation
The Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Act 1989 (the Act) controls the import, export and manufacture of ozone depleting substances and synthetic greenhouses gases used as replacements to ozone depleting substances. The Act also gives the Commonwealth power to create controls over the end uses of ozone depleting substances and synthetic greenhouse gases.
Section 45B was inserted into the Act by the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Legislation Amendment Act 2003; it creates a strict liability offence for the venting of scheduled substances to the atmosphere except as allowed by the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Regulations 1995 (the Principal Regulations). Subsection 45B(1) of the Act provides that it is an offence for a person to engage in conduct, which occurs on or after the startup date and which results in the discharge of a scheduled substance that is not in accordance with the regulations. These arrangements have not yet taken effect: subsection 45B(4) of the Act provides that the ‘startup date’ will be a date fixed by Proclamation for the purposes of section 45B.
The purpose of the Proclamation is to fix 1 January 2009 as the startup date for the purposes of subsection 45B(4) of the Act.
Consultation was undertaken with relevant Commonwealth and State Government agencies and industry stakeholders during the development of amendments to the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Regulations 1995 (the Regulations) in 2007, which, amongst other things, specified the conditions under which a person may discharge a scheduled substance under section 45B (now regulation 400). The Department received a positive response from industry to the proposed regulation amendments and the proposal to proclaim section 45 as together these were the first phase in the development of measures to control non-essential uses of scheduled substances.
The Proclamation is a legislative instrument for the purposes of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003.