EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
World Heritage Properties Conservation Regulations (Amendment)
STATUTORY RULES 1988, NO. 389
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.
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 World Heritage Properties Conservation Regulations as in force on 14 December 1988 (the Principal Regulations) conferred 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.
The Governor-General made a Proclamation pursuant to subsection 6(3) of the Act on 15 December 1988 (which was published in Special Gazette No. S387), declaring the property as inscribed in the World Heritage List to be property to which section 9 of the Act applies.
World Heritage Properties Conservation Regulations made on 15 December 1988 (Statutory Rules 1988 No. 337) purported to extend to the ‘Wet Tropics of Queensland’, within the new boundaries described in the Regulations, the same protections as applied to the property described as the ‘Wet Tropical Rainforests of North-East Australia’ under the original boundaries. However, these Regulations are arguably invalid, as they were made before the publication of the above Proclamation.
Further Regulations (Statutory Rules No. 338 of 1988), also made on 15 December 1988, validly repealed Regulations 3A and 3B of, and Schedule 2A to, the World Heritage Properties Conservation Regulations, as in force on 14 December 1988.
These Regulations are identical to those purportedly made on 15 December 1988, except that they also repeal those invalid Statutory Rules.
Regulation 1 defines the term ‘Principal Regulations’.
Regulation 2 purports to amend regulation 3B of the Principal Regulations, which was repealed on 15 December 1988.
Regulation 3 inserts new Regulations 3C and 3D into the Principal Regulations. These extend to the ‘Wet Tropics’ the prohibitions on
- commercial forestry operations (former regulation 3A, new regulation 3C), and
- the construction of the road described above (former regulation 3B, new regulation 3D).
Regulation 4 inserts new Schedule 2B, which describes the property protected by Regulations 3C and 3D.
Regulation 5 repeals Statutory Rules 1988 No. 337.
Authorised by the Minister for the Arts and Territories