EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
World Heritage Properties Conservation Regulations (Amendment)
STATUTORY RULES 1988, NO. 337
Subsection 21(1) of the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983 (the Act) empowers the Governor-General to make regulations, inter alia, prescribing matters permitted by the Act to be prescribed.
In December 1987, the Commonwealth Government submitted a property under the name ‘Wet Tropical Rainforests of North-East Australia’ to the World Heritage Committee, for inscription on the World Heritage List maintained by the Committee under the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The property became ‘identified property’ under the Act by virtue of this nomination. The World Heritage Properties Conservation Regulations as now in force (the Principal Regulations) confer protection on the property from
- commercial forestry operations, and
- the construction of a road, in an area northwest of Cairns, which involved serious damage to world heritage values.
On 9 December 1988, the World Heritage Committee inscribed the property, with minor boundary changes which the Commonwealth Government had proposed and under the name ‘Wet Tropics of Queensland’, in the World Heritage List.
The purpose of the present amendment to the Principal Regulations is to extend to the ‘Wet Tropics of Queensland’, within the new boundaries described in the amendment, the same protections as apply to the property described as the ‘Wet Tropical Rainforests of North-East Australia’ under the original boundaries.
Regulation 1 defines the term ‘Principal Regulations’.
Regulation 2 amends regulation 3B of the Principal Regulations, which prohibits the construction of a certain road through the property. The road is defined by reference to two Parishes in Queensland, Dulanban and Garioch, through which it passes. As the road in fact passes for a short distance through the Parish of Mona Mona, the name of that Parish is added to the definition.
Regulation 3 inserts new Regulations 3C and 3D into the Principal Regulations. These extend to the ‘Wet Tropics’ the prohibitions on
- commercial forestry operations (current regulation 3A, new regulation 3C), and
- the construction of the road described above (current regulation 3B, new regulation 3D).
Authorised by the Minister for the Arts and Territories