This proceeding concerned an appeal from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The Tribunal had held that s 62(1A) of the Environment Protection Act 1970 (Vic) ousted the requirements of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 (Vic) such that, to the extent that works were required to be completed by reason of a clean up notice issued by the Environment Protection Authority, those works were not subject to any requirement for a planning permit under the Planning and Environment Act. The central issue of contention was whether the works proposed to be undertaken by the respondent were works that were required to be undertaken by reason of a clean up notice. The Tribunal held that they were and that it was unnecessary for the clean up notice to state, with specificity and particularity, the exact works required to be undertaken to comply.
Garde J determined that the Tribunal had erred, holding that the terms of s 62(1A) required that the exact works be “specified” in a clean up notice before that provision would operate to oust the requirements of the Planning and Environment Act. Given that, in the relevant circumstances, the clean up notice was drafted with a degree of generality, it could not be said that the works proposed to be undertaken by the respondent were works ‘specified’ by the clean up notice and, therefore, s 62(1A) did not operate to oust the requirements of the Planning and Environment Act 1987.
