❓ A parliamentary question regarding the management of contaminated Crown land, following up on an Auditor General's report. The Minister provides limited information, citing resource constraints and ongoing database development.
AnsweredQoN 1818Legislative Council
QuestionView source ↗
I refer to the Western Australian Auditor General's Report 13 of June 2018: Management of Crown Land Site Contamination , and ask: (a) why was the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety not part of the audit; (b) will the Minister please provide a list of all State agencies that own or manage land that is contaminated, including: (i) the location of the site; (ii) the contaminate or substance; and (iii) the dates in which it was reported to be potentially contaminated, investigated and remediated; and (c) to date, how many sites remain to be inspected?
AnswerView source ↗
Answered
19 March 2019
Responded by
Minister for Environment representing the Minister for Lands
Response time
9 days
(a) The Auditor General is an independent integrity officer of the Parliament and has discretion in choosing what and who to audit. Therefore questions such as this should be answered directly by the Auditor General. However, in the interests of streamlining this particular information request, the Auditor General has helpfully informed my Office that this audit focused on unallocated Crown land and unmanaged reserves, which make up over one third of the State’s total land area. DMIRS does not hold any responsibility for these sites. Any Crown land leased by DMIRS is no longer ‘unallocated’ and did not fit within the parameters of this particular audit.
(b)(i-iii) Given the high volume of records that would need to be individually interrogated, it is not considered a reasonable or appropriate use of government resources to answer this question.
Should the member have a question regarding a particular site, I would encourage him to ask a more specific question.
(c) The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage is reviewing the way it assesses the risks posed by contaminated sites on Crown Land, including the development of a new database. This work will be completed by 30 June 2019, as per the Office of the Auditor General report. The information regarding the number of sites that remain to be inspected will be available at this time.
(b)(i-iii) Given the high volume of records that would need to be individually interrogated, it is not considered a reasonable or appropriate use of government resources to answer this question.
Should the member have a question regarding a particular site, I would encourage him to ask a more specific question.
(c) The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage is reviewing the way it assesses the risks posed by contaminated sites on Crown Land, including the development of a new database. This work will be completed by 30 June 2019, as per the Office of the Auditor General report. The information regarding the number of sites that remain to be inspected will be available at this time.
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