THE PRACTITIONER’S COMPANION
WHAT ON EARTH IS UNDER US?
HISTORICAL PROPERTY CONTAMINATION RISKS UNCOVERED
A CAPTAIN AND A GREAT COACH
Trent Taylor, CEO of Victoria’s Skilled Conveyancing, practices what he preached in his former career as a business coach. Caring and energetic, Trent is enjoying the growth that has come from his involvement.
Page 4
WHAT ON EARTH IS BENEATH US?
Discovery of contaminants in playground garden mulch and forever chemicals in water supply highlights an unwanted legacy created by onceunregulated land use. Australian company Lotsearch has developed telling data on every land lot in the country. It raises red flags for developers and homebuyers.
Special Report: 8-33
SYDNEYSIDERS SET IN THE WEST
Settling for the open spaces of the west? The Data Dashboard shows how prolific these outer suburbs have become.
Page 34
COPYRIGHT
© Copyright 2023 triSearch Services Pty Ltd. triSearch and its licensors are the sole and exclusive owners of all rights, title and interest (including intellectual property rights) of this publication including all data, information, images, commentary and content (content). All rights reserved.
Rates veto power must stay: Greens issue RBA demands
By POPPY JOHNSTON in Canberra
Fizzling Reserve Bank reforms could be revived if the federal government is prepared to keep its veto power over interest rate decisions and meet other demands from the Greens.
The minor party also wants the RBA to maintain its ability to direct lending activity for banks in the hope funds could be funnelled into clean energy down the line.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the opposition had dealt in the Greens and the Senate crossbench by rejecting his sweetened deal.
The reforms stem from an independent review of the central bank intended to strengthen and modernise the key economic institution.
Top of that list was a dual board set-up, one for setting interest rates and another for governance.
Despite Chalmers’ efforts to allay opposition fears of Labor-aligned appointments by promising existing board members would go on to the interest rate board – unless
they chose not to – the coalition was unsatisfied.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said the door was still ajar for a “sack and stack strategy” and the treasurer had failed to meet his demands.
Asked if he would change his mind if all board members went onto the interest rate board with no exceptions, Taylor said it was time to let the RBA get on with its job.
Chalmers slammed the position, arguing he had negotiated with the opposition in good faith and “put a premium on bipartisanship”.
“The Reserve Bank reforms are all about making the RBA more independent, not less independent, and the position that the coalition has taken shows that it has absolutely no idea and absolutely no economic credibility,” he said.
Potential appointees had been run by the shadow treasurer and Chalmers said Taylor was not genuinely worried about the board make up but rather “playing politics”.
Concessions had already been made on another controversial change to scrap the veto rule to override interest rate decisions, a move opposed by the Greens.
Under the revisions put to the opposition in a letter last month, parliament would maintain the override
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.
power but it would have new caveats limiting it to emergency circumstances only. Greens economic justice spokesperson Nick McKim called on the government to not only keep the power but to act on it.
“Dr Chalmers has the power to reduce interest rates, and he must act before more damage is done,” he said.
McKim also wanted the RBA to maintain the ability to direct bank funds, a rule the reviewers wanted scrapped.
“Section 36 allows the RBA to direct funds to productive areas of the economy like clean energy, rather than just the continued pumping of money into housing speculation,” he said.
Hiring go-slow ongoing as RBA keeps sights on inflation
By POPPY JOHNSTON in Canberra
Demand for labour will need to taper off further to tame inflation, with Australia’s central bank expecting firms to trim staff hours and keep the handbrake on new hiring.
Reserve Bank assistant governor Sarah Hunter said Australia’s labour market was still tight relative to what is known as “full employment”.
The RBA says this is the maximum level of employment consistent with low and stable inflation.
“Conditions in the labour market have eased since late 2022, but our assessment is that the labour market is still tight relative to full employment,” Hunter said at the Barrenjoey Economic Forum in Sydney.
“We expect the demand for labour to grow at a slower pace relative to the supply of labour in the coming quarters, gradually bringing the labour market into better balance.”
Some of this slowing demand is likely to be felt in falling average hours as well as population growth outpacing increases in employment, the RBA said.
A softer jobs market and higher unemployment are expected consequences of interest rate hikes designed to weaken the economy and beat inflation.
Consumers are becoming more worried about the state of the jobs market, surveys suggest, in line with a string of weak economic growth reports.
Hunter said the first thing firms do when the economy began to soften was pull back on hiring.
“That is, they recruit less intensely and put out fewer new job adverts, and cancel pre-existing vacancies,” she said.
RBA governor Michele Bullock.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers: Reform is about RBA independence.
FACE-TO-FACE
With TRENT TAYLOR CEO, Skilled Conveyancing
THE CAPTAIN-COACH
Trent Taylor is the managing director and chief executive of fast-growing Victoriabased Skilled Conveyancing, having taken over the family-run business in 2023. Entering the sector after more than a decade running a successful business coaching and training organisation, Taylor brings a unique perspective to leading the company.
Photos: AARON FRANCES
Story: SAM McKEITH
Since Trent took the reins, Skilled Conveyancing has notched impressive growth. Australian Conveyancer sat down with the highly motivated leader for his take on growing a conveyancing business and what he sees as the challenges and opportunities in the sector.
AUSTRALIAN CONVEYANCER: How did you get into conveyancing?
TRENT TAYLOR: I bought Skilled Conveyancing from Dawn Barry, a legend in the Victorian Conveyancing industry – she also happens to be my mother.
Before taking the helm at Skilled Conveyancing, I was in the business coaching and mentoring businesses since 2004. I’ve bought and sold other businesses along the way.
On taking over Skilled Conveyancing, I actually had never thought of buying Dawn’s business as it was entirely her thing, but I came to see how much she loved it and realised that she was interested in creating a family legacy. That really appealed to me.
So the idea of continuing the legacy, keeping it in the family was there – it enamoured me –and that’s what I’ve done. I took over in January 2023 and we had three employees at that time. We now have a team of around 10.
AC: What was the focus of your coaching work?
TT: I specialised in working with the accounting industry. Predominantly what it became was about helping them with how to communicate, structure, and organise businesses.
At the same time, during that period I had a bit of a life epiphany. Me and my family sold, threw out or gave everything in our life away, bought a car and caravan and travelled Australia for two years. We were exploring simplicity and just had an amazing time.
Even so, my business grew 13 per cent every year and I inspired so many other people. I also discovered the ‘triple three’ lifestyle which is to work three days a week,
33 weeks a year and make $333,000 after tax. I then help other people generate that type of lifestyle.
AC: Coming from coaching, what key principles have you brought to conveyancing?
TT: One key thing is that people tend to make business too personal. We fall in love with our own business – it’s why a lot of people find it hard to retire from business. In essence, people often over identify themselves with the business and lose their objectivity.
It’s why I emphasise not getting too personal with a business and always trying to keep an objective perspective on it. Here, an attitude of kaizen – a Japanese business principle – can help. The term means constant and never-ending improvement. You’re never going to get perfection so focus on progression, just get better at something every week.
Another factor is business owners are often like shadow boxers, jumping at shadows without actually knowing what the real problem is. You’ve got to make things transparent because it’s problematic if you can’t see what the real facts are. Always test and measure, don’t just use your gut feel – sometimes our feelings get in the way of the facts.
Also remember, there are only three levers in a business that we can control. There are people – who we hire and what we get them to do, technology – what we subscribe to and how we use it, and systems – which is the underlying element for both people and technology.
If you focus on those areas – people, technology, systems – and you keep improving kaizen, and make them transparent so you can test and measure, you’ll win the game.
AC: How can you embed these principles into the daily operations of the business?
TT: My number one key performance indicator as CEO at Skilled Conveyancing is to grow the people. So I need
“We fall in love with our own business – it’s why a lot of people find it
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
to understand what I need my team to do, document it, communicate it, and provide the infrastructure for them to best succeed.
On this front, staff become team when a leader does three things – acknowledge them, include them and appreciate them – which is what we do in our weekly meets and our monthly performance reviews. We look for what they’re doing that’s great and identify one area to focus on improvement.
How this looked in practice, when I took over Skilled Conveyancing, is that I broke my first 18 months into three blocks. First, I had to look inside the business, understand it from the roots up, clean up any holes and enhance our strengths.
Second, it was necessary to look outside the business and understand “who is who in the zoo” – what are others doing well, who we need to build relationships with and learn from. Third, we looked to entities we can expand with and make a transition ahead with them.
You’ve grown quickly since entering the industry, what do you put your success down to?
While I don’t have decades of experience as a conveyancer, I do have fresh eyes on the sector, as well as more than 20 years working with other professional
The way I see it is, fundamentally, the biggest factor is right under my nose – our team and our client base. I love my team and I truly understand I cannot achieve anything without their amazing commitment and work ethic.
So I’m always looking for ways I can do things better as a leader for them – what tools we can introduce or enhance to make their job easier and where I can provide opportunities to build their confidence.
I believe “confidence is king and cashflow is queen”. They’re married, so to speak, but cash does not flow sustainably without a confident and cared-for team.
On the client-side, our clients, like most conveyancers, come back to us and where I see opportunity is, how do we show gratitude for this? How do we recognise their contribution to our business apart from doing a great job? How can we
have their friends to come to us, and who else do they know that can support our vision for the future.
AC: What do you see as major challenges for your peers in the sector?
TT: What I see as the challenge at many conveyancing firms is that they’re not running their businesses as a business, they’ve in effect bought themselves a job.
What I mean by that is they’re so busy doing conveyancing work they don’t time to do the things I’ve talked about – they haven’t got time to look at the numbers, understand what’s going on with people and marketing, or look at whether they’re using technology efficiently.
Critically, many operators are just holding on. They’re doing the work and they don’t have time to lead the business. For me, I’m not a conveyancer, I don’t know how to do that work, but I have time to look into the people, into the technology and to systemise the business.
Another problem I see in the industry is that there seems to be a scarcity mentality that’s widespread. That means operators are making decisions and taking action based on a belief that there’s not enough work – in essence it’s a fear mentality.
By contrast, you’ll find successful businesses have an abundance mentality. There’s so much work for everybody and if we collaborate, as opposed to compete, I think we’ll have a much stronger industry as there’s a lot of wisdom there.
AC: Given the challenges, what advice do you have for others in the sector?
TT: For conveyancing firms to be run more effectively, owners can’t work in them 100 per cent of the time. They need to have time off and leverage through stronger structure and team balance. Otherwise you get reactionbased management versus proactive leadership.
If owners can learn how to run a business, even if they can get themselves back five hours a week away from doing the conveyancing, that will make a difference.
I also advocate a model or way we can work with real estate agents and mortgage brokers as a true “trilogy”. The strongest shape on the planet is a triangle, and businesses and industries that embrace this worldly truism always succeed.
Under this model, we value and respect each other’s role in our clients transaction, stick to our strengths and
have faith the other parties will do their part. I know It’s fanciful that this will happen Australia-wide with every conveyancer, but it’d be great to have this happen at least with 20 per cent of our conveyancing businesses.
Also, embrace tech and look to work with companies like triSearch to improve what we do every day. I challenge them to stop my team having to double-touch parts of a file, to stop us having to do work-arounds and to make it simpler to integrate other software.
AC: What macro issues should be on the radar for conveyancers right now?
TT: I think we should be keeping the wisdom of the more experienced operators in the industry as a priority, as well as boosting our ability to bring young workers in.
Many firms find it so difficult to find new staff or team, so we need to improve our education system for young people wanting to enter our industry with real practical solutions, and graduates ready to impact their employing business from the get-go.
There’s also consolidation to consider. It’s been happening across all industries for the last two decades in a serious way, including in conveyancing. When larger players outside this industry infiltrate our industry, there’s a danger the personal touch and care is not as valued, and the pricing of our services becomes a race to the bottom as they chase scale.
We need conveyancing businesses to value themselves – not just as service providers, but as confident people who charge what they’re worth. This may not be headline news but it’s foundational for this industry to continue to be an amazing and sustainable one to be in.
AC: What does the future look like at your firm?
TT: We’re looking to expand and recently bought a great little firm and took on the principal and their owner – it’s just gone awesomely well. I’m working on a model where people can merge with us and be part of our family.
Looking ahead, the whole focus is just to build the business. I want to serve those regional communities, I’m regionally based so I would like to do more of serving the local people. I want to build the business, serve the local communities and grow the value of owners’ shares while working together – the better we do, the better everyone wins.
* The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity
SPECIAL REPORT
THE RISKS UNDERFOOT
WHAT ON EARTH IS UNDER US?
The recent detection of elevated levels of PFAS chemicals in Sydney’s drinking water catchments has again highlighted the contamination risks Australians face as we deal with the legacy of our industrial and chemical past.
Special Report by LEIGH REINHOLD
With Australia’s long history of mining, agriculture and manufacturing, our wide brown land has been affected by soil, water and air contamination since the arrival of the First Fleet.
From polluting gas works to leaching landfills; toxic industrial plants to unregulated dry cleaners; and leaking petrol stations to cancer-causing PFAS chemicals in our waterways – the impacts of the country’s contamination history run deep.
“We are dealing with a legacy of an industrial past and that past is now often situated on land where the towns and cities are growing,” says risk-mapping expert Howard Waldron, co-founder of spatial intelligence firm Lotsearch.
“It’s marginal land and generally subject to some sort of potential issue or hazard – whether it’s in a flood zone or a potential fire zone or if it’s a contamination hotspot.
“And, if it’s a contamination hotspot, the contamination isn’t necessarily restricted to a particular site; it could be migrating through the soil or surface and ground water to other sites close by.”
The first prominent cases of soil contamination in Australia came to light in the 1980s when elevated lead levels were found in the bloodstreams of children living near South Australia’s Port Pirie lead smelter. Around the same time, in Queensland and NSW, cattle tick dip sites were of concern due to elevated DDT and arsenic detected in the soil.
In the ’90s, industrial sites in cities were earmarked for residential redevelopment and a clearer picture emerged of the extent of countrywide contamination as audits on industrial land identified thousands of contaminated sites.
>> Howard Waldron, co-founder of Lotsearch.
“We’ve already seen worrying instances of cancer clusters with suspected links to PFAS chemicals.”
Lidia Thorpe
9
Today, around the country, new contamination sites continue to surface. Last month, WaterNSW took the precautionary measure of disconnecting Medlow Dam in Sydney’s Blue Mountains from the water supply when PFAS chemicals were found in levels exceeding the Australian guidelines. Further contamination was found in water samples from other nearby sites not considered to be PFAS hotspots, leading WaterNSW to presume the chemicals – which can travel far in creeks and waterways – may have migrated from elsewhere.
As community concerns about these “forever chemicals” grows, the federal government has announced a wide-ranging national inquiry into PFAS, chaired by Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe, who describes PFAS as “the asbestos of the 21st century”.
“We’ve already seen worrying instances of cancer clusters with suspected links to PFAS chemicals,” says Thorpe. “We cannot take them seriously enough.”
Most state-based environmental protection authorities, the Victoria Unearthed platform and the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation in Queensland now maintain and update land registers and lists of priority sites which are deemed contaminated, or are potentially contaminated and under investigation.
However, according to Howard Waldron, the lack of historical knowledge of particular lots and the onus on self-reporting of suspected contaminated sites means
CONTAMINATION: The key legal risks
Environment and planning lawyer Gabrielle Guthrie from Guthrie Legal advises Australian Conveyancer readers of the need for due diligence when it comes to contamination risks and prospective property sales and purchases, because of these possible key implications:
• The “polluter pays” principle does not always protect innocent parties.
• The statutory liability for contamination, including notices to investigate, manage and remediate.
• Requirements to notify environmental regulators.
• Inclusion on public registers and the potential for devaluation.
• The potential for claims and the risk of embroilment in claims.
• Constraints for site development and associated delays and costs.
• Difficulties selling or leasing and the requirements for vendor/lessor disclosures.
The lead smelter in Port Pirie South Australia: concerns over lead contamination affecting nearby residents in the 1980s.
there are holes in the various systems, which should be of concern for conveyancers and property lawyers when advising their clients.
“What governments know about and publish on registers are still very few sites in comparison to what the actual potential is,” says Waldron.
“Because sites have to go through a rigorous testing and investigation phase, a vast number of sites we have identified have not been tested and therefore remain potential sites of contamination.”
Waldron says in most cases it is also down to the individual landholder to report contamination to the relevant authorities.
“There are duties to notify regulators but some individuals might not realise that obligation and so the whole process leaves gaps. Huge gaps,” says Waldron, whose team at Lotsearch has uncovered 260,000 potentially affected lots across the country. “We try and identify, through historical data, where those contaminating activities have been taking place so that people can then do further investigations if they need to.”
While remediation of affected land can be costly and take considerable time, developing and living on land once it’s cleared of contamination is becoming increasingly common.
Just ask the 12,000-strong population residing on Sydney’s Rhodes Peninsula – previously the toxic birthplace of the country’s chemical industry and home of Union Carbide – which was successfully remediated in 2011. The NSW EPA continues to monitor the site and residents are advised to use raised garden beds and imported soil if they want to grow vegetables.
Likewise, expensive harbourside land in Hunter’s Hill on the old Radium Hill processing plant site was remediated and last month deemed safe for residential redevelopment, 100 years after the initial contamination, which included nuclear waste.
“Once a site has been remediated, you can live with any remaining low levels of contamination,” says Waldron, “but it depends on your own feelings and views on whether you are willing to take that risk.”
The new national EPA – a nature positive plan
The federal government is in the process of establishing Australia’s first independent national environmental protection agency, Environment Protection Australia (EPA) – although progress of the bill through Parliament is facing pushback from the Coalition and the Greens.
According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the new EPA is designed to “streamline regulatory decision-making and restore public trust in our national environmental law”.
“Environment Protection Australia will administer Australia’s environmental protection laws to better protect nature while supporting sustainable development,” says the department. “This will include stronger powers to ensure effective compliance and enforcement.”
Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek says “making sure that we’ve got a strong environmental cop on the beat is a really very important element of our law reform”.
“Through our Nature Positive Plan, we are doing more than ever to protect our natural world and fix more of what’s been damaged, while also supporting sensible development and good local jobs.”
Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek.
PHOTO: MICK TSIKAS
Going to ground: Lotsearch maps Australia’s contamination hot spots
Ten years ago Lotsearch founders Howard Waldron and Peter Rodgers set themselves a “ginormous task” to uncover Australia’s hidden and forgotten sites affected by soil and water contamination.
Accessing historical telephone books and trade directories from every town and city across the country, the spatial intelligence and risk mapping experts pinpointed millions of individual businesses which may have contributed to a lot’s soil and water contamination and identified over 260,000 known and potential lots of concern.
“We have created maps of historic polluting companies Australia-wide based on their old addresses,” Waldron tells Australian Conveyancer magazine of the painstaking work which uses optimal character recognition software, a type of AI.
“The old phone books list their activities, so whether they were a service station or a dry cleaners, for example, and all of these other potential contamination sources as well.”
Combining data from the phone directories along with 50,000 historical maps, three million historical aerial photographs, and known data from government and other agencies, Lotsearch is now Australia’s leading provider of environmental risk reports with a specific focus on contamination.
So we have basically pioneered the development of environmental information and insights here in Australia.
“And we have identified over 260,000 known and potentially contaminated sites across the country. That’s not to say that they are all contaminated, of course, but they have been used for an activity in the past that may have caused contamination.”
Using their historical data, Lotsearch can provide conveyancers and property lawyers with a Lotsearch Environmental – Contaminated Land Screening Report which includes a bespoke assessment of the potential for both historic and more recent contamination to affect a site.
“We are dealing with a legacy of an industrial past and that’s now often where the towns and cities are growing,” says Waldron. “So this is where our research is invaluable – identifying the risk hotspots so environmental consultants can then carry out the appropriate testing and assessments of a site.”
Waldron says if a Lotsearch report comes back with red flags on a particular site he would recommend further investigation.
“We say if you’re a lawyer or a conveyancer, working on behalf of a property purchaser or vendor, we would suggest the next steps would be to see if the property is on an EPA register or ask for more information,” he says.
Lotsearch co-founders Howard Waldron, left, and Peter Rodgers. Painstaking research has pinpointed the areas underground that are worth a closer look.
PHOTO: JULIAN ANDREWS
“We have scanned, extracted and digitised all that information to provide high-level statistics on the known and potential contamination issues across Australia,” says Waldron.
“It was a ginormous task considering the sheer geographical size of the country.
“Our research helps to fill the gap between what is known and reported by environmental regulators, and what is not known and is potentially contaminated.
“If the client also wants to get another expert opinion, then an environmental consultant would be able to do a preliminary site investigation, and then possibly a detailed site investigation which would involve testing of the site.
“And, once you’ve done the testing and got the results – dependant on what you’re testing for – the consultant can then say what it means for the vendor, the purchaser and the property.”
“We are dealing with a legacy of an industrial past and that’s now often where the towns and cities are growing.”
Howard Waldron
Gasworks
Beginning in the late 1800s, gasworks were built to produce town gas for heating, lighting and cooking, with extensive sites located in the heart of our growing cities like Sydney’s Barangaroo, the South Melbourne Gasworks and the Newstead Gasworks in Brisbane.
In NSW, the state’s EPA says the operation of over 60 former gasworks sites throughout the state has left a legacy of soil and groundwater contamination which should be addressed before the land is reused.
“Some of these contaminants are carcinogenic to humans and toxic to aquatic ecosystems and so may pose a risk to human health and the environment,” says the NSW EPA. “As a result, many former gasworks sites will require remediation before they will be suitable for sensitive land uses, such as housing.”
The NSW Department of Environment and Conservation says gasworks were typically located “near waterways or train lines for easy delivery of coal. They were often also close to the centre of the city”.
In Melbourne, the former Fitzroy Gasworks – just two kilometres from the CBD – was known as one of the city’s most contaminated sites. But, after four years of
rehabilitation, completed in 2022, the land is now slated for development of 1200 apartments.
Risk-mapping expert Howard Waldron from Lotsearch says, like most former gasworks, the Barangaroo site in Sydney proved challenging for the developers of Crown Sydney and the surrounding skyscrapers.
“Where you have a contamination problem it may not necessarily be a risk until that contamination issue is exposed, like in the case of Barangaroo,” says Waldron of the site once home to the former Australian Gas Light Company.
“It was a very old facility and they buried the tar-like material under the ground and capped it with concrete. So the material was there and very contaminated but it wasn’t exposed to the general public in any way.
“But as soon as they started to redevelop and build the casino and all those towers, they technically were going to have to cut through the concrete and expose the contamination,” he adds. “And, when that happens, then there is a source pathway and receptors in play and that’s when consultants are needed to determine if there is an actual risk.”
The Fitzroy Gasworks was once know as the Melbourne’s most contaminated sites.
THE POLLUTANTS Service stations
Crisscrossing the nation, underground petroleum storage systems (UPSS) are one of the most common sources of both land and groundwater contamination in Australia – and pose a real danger of contaminating neighbouring land.
According to the West Australian Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, service stations can pose contamination risks to water resources through the “leakage of fuel, and the spillage of engine coolant, hydraulic fluid, lubricants and solvents, along with the inappropriate containment or disposal of wastes such as car parts, batteries and tyres”.
The Victorian EPA says: “UPSS have the potential to leak, leading to expensive clean-up costs, damage to the environment and risks to human health.”
In NSW, with more than 7000 historic sites and around 2500 modern sites (Lotsearch data), leaks from underground fuel tanks and pipework at service stations are a common source of soil and groundwater contamination, according to the EPA.
“Service stations make up the single largest sector of contaminated sites in NSW,” says the state’s environmental agency, “and proper assessment of service station sites is crucial to making sure human health and the environment are protected from potential
impacts of contamination. Of the many thousands of decommissioned service station sites in NSW, there may be some with elevated concentrations of petroleum product in soil and groundwater.”
Using old telephone books to map the locations of historic service stations, Lotsearch has identified more than 22,000 sites where service stations once operated countrywide, along with nearly 7000 modern sites.
For the owners of affected neighbouring properties, financial compensation can be difficult to come by. In August this year, David Harris, the member for Wyong in NSW, called on the owners of a Kanwal service station, which was declared “significantly contaminated” by the EPA in 2018, to shut down until petrol storage tanks contaminating the site and nearby properties were fixed.
Harris said a clean-up order, issued by the NSW EPA in 2020, had been ignored by the service station owners, Zoya Investments P/L, and more than 3000 litres of petrol could have leaked from the underground storage tanks and into adjacent properties.
One neighbouring property owner is owed $8.45 million in damages from the service station proprietors, who, according to Harris, declared no assets in April 2024 “to avoid responsibility to clean up the petrol station site”.
THE POLLUTANTS Dry cleaners
Unregulated dry cleaning businesses used to use toxic chemicals such as Perchloroethylene (PERC).
Before 1991 dry cleaners in Australia were unregulated with many historical sites left unchecked and capable of leaching toxic solvents, like perchloroethylene (PERC) and trichloroethene (TCE), into surrounding soil and waterways.
Linked to increased cancer risks, PERC can also lead to air pollution through volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. While exposure to the potentially carcinogenic TCE can happen through air, water or skin contact, and can affect a person’s central nervous system.
In 2016 the Department of Veterans’ Affairs formally recognised exposure to TCE as a cause of Navy veteran Keith Bailey’s Parkinson’s disease. Bailey had been exposed to the chemical for up to 12 hours a day in his job cleaning motor parts onboard Navy ships.
Across the country, Lotsearch has identified around 5000 sites which have the potential to be affected by historical dry cleaner activities and could pose a risk to health and land values.
US-based company EnviroForensics says PERC is one of the more expensive contaminants to remedy. And the clean-up of a contaminated dry cleaning site is often more complicated than a clean-up of a contaminated petrol station because petroleum products will float on
water while PERC is heavier than water and will sink down past groundwater tables until it hits bedrock.
“When a release of PERC to the ground occurs and it reaches down to the groundwater table, it will continue to sink until it hits a layer of dense material, like clay,” says the environmental consultancy group. “It will sit there and continue to dissolve for a long time, which can cause a long groundwater contamination plume.”
According to SA Health, when these long-lasting chemicals like PERC and TCE contaminate soil and water supplies, they can spread far from the original source of contamination and be difficult to remediate.
“In some cases contaminated groundwater and soil vapour can move off industrial sites and may be present under residential properties,” the government department states.
This was the case in 2003 in Brunswick, Victoria, when buyers of 49 recently completed units, located next door to a former Spotless dry cleaners, could not move into their apartments after the EPA discovered soil contamination. The developer was unaware the site was contaminated and had to cancel the sales and pay the construction costs of the building, forcing them into administration. In 2007, a judge ordered Spotless to pay $7 million for remediation of the site.
THE POLLUTANTS
PFAS
Known as “forever chemicals”, PFAS have been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent months with the detection of elevated concentrations of these potentially toxic substances found in Sydney’s water catchments.
The Medlow Dam in the Blue Mountains, which provides water to 41,000 residents, was closed as a “precautionary measure” after tests last month revealed elevated levels of PFOA, one of the forever chemicals.
Described as the “next asbestos” PFAS – a group of nearly 4700 synthetic chemicals – have been used in a variety of products including non-stick cookware, Scotchgard, fire-fighting foam, sunscreens, fitness wear and cosmetics. They are bio-accumulative, which means they accumulate over time in living organisms including humans.
In Australia, historical use of fire-fighting foam has resulted in increased levels of PFAS being found at sites including defence bases and airports. And, in May 2023, the Commonwealth settled a $132.7 million class action over PFAS contamination affecting 30,000 residents across seven sites around Australia, located close to defence bases.
Lotsearch has mapped the PFAS investigation areas related to these defence sites and airports, affecting over
45,000 lots, and includes this information in their reports.
According to the Australian government’s PFAS Taskforce, the properties that make some PFAS chemicals useful in many industrial applications and particularly in fire-fighting foams, are the same properties which make them problematic in the environment.
“The PFAS of greatest concern are highly mobile in water, which means they travel long distances from their source-point; they do not fully break down naturally in the environment; and they are toxic to a range of animals,” says the taskforce.
“While understanding about the human health effects of long-term PFAS exposure is still developing, there is global concern about the persistence and mobility of these chemicals in the environment.
“Many countries have discontinued, or are progressively phasing out, their use. The Australian government has worked since 2002 to reduce the use of certain PFAS.”
Environmental group Friends of the Earth says the Australian government needs to do more to protect citizens.
“PFAS chemicals have been linked to a number of diseases,” says the group, “yet the Australian government stubbornly refuses to end the use of PFAS chemicals in Australia, even after they have been banned overseas.”
Forever Chemicals closed Medlow Dam in Sydney’s Blue Mountains earlier in 2024.
THE POLLUTANTS
Landfill
Historic landfill sites – going way back to the First Fleet – were often located in quarries and gullies with little engineering and no lining to prevent leaching of contaminants into the soil and groundwater.
According to the NSW Environmental Protection Authority, landfills have the potential to produce a number of pollution streams, including leachate, stormwater runoff, landfill gas, offensive odours, dust, noise and litter.
“These pollutants can degrade the quality of surrounding surface-water bodies, groundwater, soil and air,” says the environmental agency. “Landfilling activities have the potential to adversely affect local amenity, and they may also affect threatened species of flora and fauna, native vegetation and items of Aboriginal heritage.”
In their Sydney University research paper, A History of Solid Waste Management in Sydney, authors Ranasinghe, Withford, and Withnall say the historic haulage of waste was expensive and so the “numerous bays and inlets of Port Jackson, Parramatta River, Cooks River and Georges River are dotted with parks and reserves that were all once disposal sites. Similarly, many of Sydney’s sporting fields were once waste dumps.”
Lotsearch research shows that in Victoria alone there are over 750 unique current and historical landfill sites, comprising over 35,000 lots.
Victorian environment and planning law firm Kellehers Australia says that “old landfills pose a significant danger to the use and development of land. This danger is not restricted to the land on the landfill itself. Neighbouring land can also be at risk of contamination.
“Landowners need to be cautious when using land that could be near an old tip. It can be difficult to even know their location. Some were never lined and pose a considerable risk of off-site contamination. The management of these landfills also raises difficult challenges for current owners, operators and authorities.
“Buffers are needed because of the potential for “gas migration”, a process by which gases escape and rise through the soil. Gas migration can lead to the contamination of nearby land with dangerous or explosive vapours.”
The South Australian EPA says landfill gas is generated by decomposing material in landfills and includes methane.
“If not properly controlled, the gas can travel underground and present an explosive and asphyxiation hazard at neighbouring properties,” says the authority. “The extent of the risk depends on the size and age of the landfill, the type of waste deposited there, the presence of water, and geological conditions.”
Landfill sites creating a legacy for the future.
THE POLLUTANTS
Groundwater
Contaminated groundwater can pose significant risks to human health and to our ecological systems and is an expensive and tricky problem to manage and remediate.
Often the legacy of human activities – including leaking industrial storage tanks, manufacturing discharge, agricultural runoff and improper waste disposal – groundwater contaminants can include pesticides and toxic chemicals and metals.
According to Geoscience Australia, groundwater – the water below the land’s surface – makes up approximately 17 per cent of our accessible water resources and accounts for over 30 per cent of our total water consumption.
“Groundwater is a major source of water for many urban and rural communities as well as industry and agriculture,” says the Bureau of Meteorology. “In some places it is the only water available. Groundwater also sustains many rivers and wetlands during dry periods.”
In Australia, groundwater contamination sites of note
include areas across Adelaide affecting Edwardstown, Clovelly Park and Glenelg East; the Albion Explosives factory site in the Melbourne suburb of Cairnlea; and The Botany Sand Beds Aquifer that extends north from Botany Bay to Surry Hills and Centennial Park in Sydney.
In South Australia, environmental mapping company Lotsearch has identified over 30,000 lots impacted by groundwater contamination while, in Victoria, the company has pinpointed over 17,000 lots of concern.
The Victorian Department of Health says: “Some groundwater supplies in Victoria have been found to contain high levels of chemical contaminants, such as arsenic, which can cause illness in people who drink the water.”
And the Victorian EPA concedes the problem of groundwater contamination is not easily resolved.
“Once contaminated, groundwater is very difficult to clean up and usually becomes a long-term environmental legacy,” warns the agency.
Eastwood brickworks before, in 1943, and in 2018.
THE POLLUTANTS Surface water
As Australia’s metropolitan centres grow and spread, our rivers and waterways are under increasing pressure from urbanisation and the legacy of past industry and other polluting land use.
A research paper for the Australian Parliament by Bill McCormick from the Department of Science, Technology, Environment and Resources says, “Australia’s climate and landscape, coupled with the demands of agriculture and a growing urban population, can make water supply a difficult matter”.
“In terms of rainfall, Australia is the driest inhabited continent, and the amount of rainwater that enters rivers is also very low. On average, only 12 per cent of rainfall flows into rivers in Australia … in addition, our rainfall is often highly variable: “droughts and flooding rains” is an apt description of the natural condition in much of the continent.
“The growth of urban centres puts pressure on existing water supplies both directly (more homes) and indirectly (more food consumption and industrial use).”
Contaminants from industrial and agricultural runoff; disease-causing microorganisms from humans, livestock and other animals; bushfires and floods that introduce chemicals and debris into waterways; plastics and other rubbish; algal blooms; and PFAS chemicals all play their parts in surface water contamination. Heavy metals like
arsenic, cadmium and lead are often introduced to rivers and other waterways through industrial processes and corroded plumbing.
“Our water resources are of major environmental, social and economic value … and when water is polluted the value of the resource can be reduced,” says the NSW EPA. “Water pollution can be caused by both point source (such as industrial and treated sewage discharges) and diffuse sources (such as stormwater runoff from agriculture and urban areas).”
In the past, NSW has experienced a number of surface water contamination scares, including fish consumption warnings in the Shoalhaven River and the secret dumping of 100,000 tonnes of toxic waste, including asbestos, on an illegal dumping site near Wheeny Creek in the Hawkesbury region.
Chemicals found in surface water can cause health problems like cardiovascular disease, cancer and gut health issues.
“Contamination can become a risk to human health when … there are ways the contamination can reach people,” says the Victorian EPA. “Contamination from land can make its way into groundwater, rivers and creeks. People may use these waterways for drinking water and irrigation, or for recreational activities. For example, fishing and swimming.”
What is our contamination legacy?
Throughout the country, the most common contaminants found in toxic land and water pollution typically come from historical industrial, agricultural, and commercial activities.
SOIL CONTAMINANTS
• Petroleum hydrocarbons: found at sites like service stations and oil refineries, these contaminants result from leaks or spills of fuel and oil products.
• Heavy metals: industrial sites like smelters and scrapyards often have soil contaminated with heavy metals, including lead and cadmium. Arsenic can be the legacy of agriculture where arsenic-based pesticides were used, or in industrial settings like tanneries.
• Persistent organic pollutants: including substances like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins, were banned from import to Australia in 1986. Found in industrial products, including sealing and caulking compounds, inks and paint additives.
• Asbestos: found in older industrial sites or buildings, asbestos contamination requires careful handling and disposal due to its health risks.
• Persistent pesticides and herbicides: residues from chemicals like DDT used in agricultural areas can present long-lasting soil contamination.
• BTEX compounds: including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes, typically originate from petroleum products and are found at service stations and oil refineries.
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs): the result of incomplete combustion of organic matter, PAHs are found in areas used for gasworks or where coal tar was used.
• PFAS chemicals: these forever chemicals can be found in soil, water, air and dust surrounding sites where fire fighting foams were previously used.
GROUND AND SURFACE WATER CONTAMINANTS
• Nutrients: nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff can lead to excessive richness of nutrients in water bodies.
• Heavy metals: contaminants like lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury are prevalent in mining sites and affect both urban and remote areas. These metals can cause neurological damage and organ failure.
• Persistent organic pollutants (POPs): like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins are resistant to degradation and can accumulate in waterways.
• Pathogens: sewage and animal waste can contaminate water sources with bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
• Hydrocarbons: oil spills and leaks from industrial sites can introduce hydrocarbons into water systems.
• Microplastics and plastics: widespread in our waterways, they can affect aquatic life and human health through the food chain.
• Herbicides and pesticides: water run off from agricultural sites can lead to toxic effects in humans.
• Radioactive elements: areas contaminated with radioactive substances pose long-term health risks such as cancer.
• PFAS chemicals: found in drinking water catchments countrywide, PFAS contamination is spread, primarily due to historical use of PFAS-containing firefighting foams and other industrial applications.
CASE STUDY
Gasworks
• Once an historic landfill and also contaminated with toxic coal tar from a gas works, Barangaroo in Millers Point, Sydney, was declared successfully remediated in 2020 and is now a waterside precinct of high rise residences and high-end hospitality.
• In 2001, Camden High School, in north-west Sydney, was closed due to contamination from a former gas works, raising fears of a cancer cluster. The site was remediated and Camden Council has since approved the development of a nursing home on the site.
• In 2023, affected residents homes were demolished at the Waratah Gas Works site in suburban Newcastle so remediation works could take place and be completed by mid-2025.
• The remediation of Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gas Works began in 2018 and the site is now an urban precinct combining housing, community facilities and open spaces.
• Remediation continues at Victoria’s Bendigo Gas Works, which is aiming to preserve historic buildings while cleaning up 100 tonnes of asbestoscontaminated soil. The land will eventually be used for public amenities.
• Planning was granted in 2008 for the Newstead Gas Works site in inner-city Brisbane to be transformed from industrial to a commercial, residential and retail mix.
• Marred by controversy in 2020 when the government valued the East Perth Gas Works land at $1 due to substantial restoration costs, most of the site has now been successfully remediated and is considered suitable for a wide range of potential new uses.
• In 2019, The City of Launceston approved an art gallery, café and workshop at the remediated site of the Launceston Gas Works.
• The old Brompton Gas Works in Adelaide’s thriving Bowden district is set to be a master-planned village with townhouses, apartments, hotel, commercial hub and affordable housing.
CASE STUDY
Dry cleaners
former dry cleaners in Adelaide’s Glenege was associated with ground water pollution.
• Covering two hectares in a densely populated CBD location, contamination from Lawrence Dry Cleaners in Sydney’s Waterloo affected a range of adjacent commercial buildings and also disrupted works on the Sydney Metro.
• Owners of 49 units next door to a Spotless Dry Cleaners in Melbourne’s Brunswick were unable to move into their properties because of soil contamination. The developers said they had no idea of the high levels of white spirit, perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene in the ground.
The
The former gasworks in East Perth.
• In 2017, tetrachloroethene vapour –identified during a site investigation at a nearby premises – revealed Karl Chehade Dry Cleaners in the Adelaide suburb of Brighton had failed to clean up hazardous chemicals and had breached a Site Contamination Assessment Order.
• The former Glenelg Dry Cleaners in Adelaide’s Glenelg East has been associated with groundwater and soil vapour contamination and is under assessment by EPA South Australia.
CASE STUDY
Service stations
• Concerns were first raised in 1996 about the Sutherland Service Station in NSW, which was leaking benzene thought to be coming from leaky pipes, run off from car-part cleaning and a pile of mechanical waste dumped on site. In 2010, the site was declared significantly contaminated by the NSW EPA.
• In 2016, the 200 residents of Woolomin, near Tamworth in NSW, had to rely on water trucked into their town when 400 litres of the general store’s petrol spilled into groundwater. All residents were asked not to draw on their groundwater in case they helped spread the contamination.
• The former Albany Highway Service Station in Gosnells, Western Australia, was contaminated with hydrocarbons from fuel products. Remediation efforts started in 2014 to treat soil and groundwater contamination, with monitoring continuing to assess the site’s safety for potential future use.
• Cleanup was stalled at two properties on Blackburn Road, in the Melbourne suburb of Blackburn, for nearly two decades when neighbours Caltex and J&J Dynamotive could not agree on who caused the contamination to groundwater.
• Leaking petrol storage tanks on a Kanwal property on the NSW Central Coast have been seeping into soil and groundwater for eight years. In 2018, the EPA declared all of the service station property and part of an adjoining property “significantly contaminated”.
Wreck Bay on the NSW south coast: PFAS chemical has affected land, waterways and cultural activities in the community.
• The Wreck Bay community on the NSW South Coast has been severely impacted by PFAS from the use of firefighting foam. It has impacted the land, water and cultural practices of the community.
• In June this year, the EPA began doorknocking 68 properties in Mullumbimby on the NSW Far North Coast advising them to avoid using bore water after PFAS was found in groundwater near the local fire station.
• PFAS has been found in the soil, surface water and groundwater in and surrounding the RAAF Base Wagga, in Forest Hill, NSW. The Department of Defence is working to remediate the area and stop the migration of the PFAS, which was found close to Wagga Wagga’s water supply borefield.
• Local wildlife, including fish and ducks living close to the RAAF Base in East Sale, Victoria, have been found to contain elevated levels of PFAS after the water and land was contaminated with firefighting foam containing the forever chemicals.
Landfills
• In 2023, owners of 50 bush blocks in Busselton in south-west Western Australia were told the groundwater on their properties is poisoned by toxic sludge from the town’s old landfill site. The owners must now add the contaminated land status to their title deeds.
• In 2020, the NSW EPA declared sports ground Foxglove Oval in Sydney’s Mount Colah a “significantly contaminate site” due to its previous use as a landfill. Monitoring of two homes adjacent to the oval showed elevated levels of landfill gas. Work to reduce off-site migration of ground gas was completed last year.
• A secret dumping ground containing building rubble, including asbestos, was discovered in Wheeny Creek in the Hawkesbury region. This year the Sydney MorningHerald reported the site is still not remediated – four years after its discovery – and is now leaking contaminated waste into a protected wetland.
• Residents in Ipswich are concerned emissions from the commercial Swanbank landfill site are affecting their health. Despite measures to mitigate contamination – including fully lined cells and a leachate management system –the community is still concerned about health impacts, particularly from hydrogen sulphide gas.
• In 2008, a housing estate planned for land near a former tip in Ballarat’s Black Hill was halted when large amounts of waste and landfill gas were found. Ballarat Council was forced to buy the contaminated land back from the developer because the site was unsuitable for residential development.
CASE STUDY
Ground and surface water
• The Botany Bay groundwater plume, a legacy of the old ICI site which manufactured paints, plastics and industrial chemicals, is one of the country’s most severe cases of groundwater pollution. Some chemical levels detected in the aquifer are 5000 times over safe levels. The clean-up effort is expected to last decades.
• Department Victoria (formerly VicUrban) developed Melbourne’s Cairnlea Housing Estate on the old Albion Explosives Factory site, which produced explosives and munitions for the Department of Defence. It affected soil and groundwater. Some contamination remains but the EPA has cleared residential areas with a certificate of environmental audit.
• Nine suburbs of Adelaide are affected by groundwater contamination, the legacy of industrial solvents and degreasers. The EPA South Australia has established a Groundwater Prohibition Area (GPA), banning the use of bore water for drinking, showering or irrigation to mitigate health risks.
• In 2019, the NSW EPA cautioned residents to limit their consumption of fish caught in the Shoalhaven River after up to 100,000 litres of PFAS-contaminated wastewater were allegedly discharged into the Shoalhaven sewer system and river.
• Sediments in Lake Macquarie, an estuary near Newcastle, have some of Australia’s highest concentrations of contamination courtesy of industrial activity in the area since the 1890s.
HOW AUSTRALIA BUILT A
1788
The first landfills in Australia emerged as a response to waste management challenges that began with European settlement. Waste was also dumped into rivers and the sea.
1799
The country’s first coal mine opened in Newcastle on the Hunter River in NSW. Coal was discovered there in the 1790s and mining operations began in the early 1800s. Burning coal emits toxic and carcinogenic substances affecting the air, water and land.
1837
The Australian Gas Light Company built the first gasworks in Sydney’s Millers Point, now the site of Barangaroo. Gasworks sites produced toxic tars, oils, hydrocarbon sludges and spent oxide wastes, often historically left on-site and capped with concrete.
1846
The first gold mine was established in 1846 at the Victoria Mine near Castambul, South Australia, preceding the 1851 gold rushes in NSW and Victoria. Toxic gold mine waste contains dangerous chemicals such as arsenic, lead, mercury, and cyanide.
1885
The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited began silver, lead and zinc mining in Broken Hill, NSW. BHP Billiton is now the world’s largest mining company by market capitalisation.
1901
Australia’s steel production began in a blast furnace at Eskbank near Lithgow, NSW. Fourteen years later, BHP opened its steel mill in Newcastle. The coke ovens used in steel production emit air pollution including the highly toxic naphthalene.
1913
The first dry cleaning service began in Australia with early dry cleaners using solvents made from petroleum-based chemicals like gasoline and kerosene that often leached into the groundwater.
1920
Founded in Winton, Queensland, Qantas is the world’s second oldest airline still in operation. Emissions from air travel contribute significantly to global air pollution.
CONTAMINATION LEGACY
1925
The Ford Motor Company kick-started car manufacturing in a disused wool store in Geelong. Other international automakers, General Motors and Chrysler, set up plants in Port Melbourne, impacting the environment through high carbon emissions and resource consumption.
1926
The first service stations were constructed in the Melbourne suburbs of Malvern and Prahran, marking the transition from selling petrol in tins to dedicated service stations with underground storage and pumping facilities, prone to leakages into soil and groundwater.
1937
Asbestos mining began at Wittenoom in Western Australia, a significant site for asbestos extraction until its 1996 closure due to unprofitability and health concerns. Inhaled asbestos fibres cause diseases including mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis.
1942
Orica, formerly ICI, commenced chemical manufacture in Botany Bay, resulting in soils and groundwater being severely contaminated. The site is now considered the world’s largest stockpile of the highly toxic and internationally banned chemical hexachlorobenzene.
1950s
Considered the “new asbestos”, PFAS or “forever chemicals” were first introduced to Australia in the 1950s. PFAS chemicals started being used for firefighting activities on Defence Force bases in the 1970s.
1951
Australia’s first air pollution monitoring in NSW.
1956
Britain conducted its first nuclear test at Maralinga, carrying out 12 major trials of nuclear devices across three sites in South Australia, poisoning the land with radioactive plutonium and rendering it uninhabitable.
1970
The first Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in Australia was established in Western Australia in 1971 under the Environmental Protection Act 1971. The Victorian EPA was established in the same year.
1989
The completion of the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on the North West Shelf in Western Australia marked the start of Australia selling gas abroad after previously consuming all production domestically. LNG produces significant emissions from gas extraction and processing.
2007
Australia’s first contaminated groundwater case was identified at the Busselton Waste Facility in Western Australia with toxic sludge affecting 50 properties. Ten years later the site, contaminated with heavy metals, hydrocarbons and PFAS, was classified as “contaminated – remediation required”.
2023
The Federal Court approved a $132.7 million class action payout to residents in Bullsbrook, Townsville, Darwin, Richmond, Wagga Wagga, Wodonga and Edinburgh whose lives were affected by PFAS contamination from fire fighting foam used by the Department of Defence.
2024
Sydney Water confirms PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ are found in Sydney’s waterways and drinking supplies. A federal parliamentary inquiry to be chaired by Senator Lidia Thorpe will examine the health, environmental, social, cultural, and economic impacts of PFAS, and how regulation can be strengthened.
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
SOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
NEW SOUTH WALES
This year, major reforms to the Protection of the Environment Operations Act (POEO Act), gave the NSW EPA new powers of investigation and the ability to issue public warnings and order clean-up actions.
The new Bill was passed in March, after election promises were made by the NSW Labor government to strengthen environmental protection, and in light of the recent distribution of asbestoscontaminated mulch across 340 sites within NSW.
The Bill grants the NSW EPA enhanced powers with the authority to issue and enforce environment protection notices, and gives the body stronger powers to investigate individuals and corporations accused of violating environmental law. In NSW, it is incumbent on the landowner to disclose to the EPA instances of contamination on their land and failure to do so can result in fines and other penalties.
It is also the responsibility of the landowner when selling their property to disclose any known contamination – failure to do so could constitute a breach of the vendor’s obligations under common and
“Close to 1500 environmental crimes have been prosecuted by the EPA … with very significant fines being imposed on some wrongdoers.”
Melinda Murray
consumer law. A purchaser may also claim the cost of remediating any contamination and any other losses as a result of any non-disclosure.
Meanwhile, the recent NSW Environment Protection Legislation Amendment (Stronger Regulation and Penalties) Act 2024 has doubled penalties for those found guilty of environmental crime and pollution offences, ensuring NSW has the toughest anti-pollution laws in Australia.
The maximum penalties for the most serious offences – where an offence is committed wilfully – has jumped to $10 million for corporations and $2 million for individuals.
Since the POEO Act was enacted in 1999, the NSW EPA has used its powers to bring polluters to task.
“Close to 1500 environmental crimes have been prosecuted by the EPA under the act and regulations since 1999, with very significant fines being imposed on some wrongdoers,” says the NSW EPA director of legislation and legal advice, Melinda Murray.
“In other cases, individuals have even been sentenced to imprisonment for breaking the law and polluting the environment.”
The states keeping contamination in check
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
SOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
In the west, the responsibility for the clean-up of contaminated land and water is governed by the Contaminated Sites Act 2003 – and there are tough penalties for failing to report known or suspected contamination within the prescribed timeframe, Individuals face fines of up to $250,000 with an additional daily penalty of $50,000 for continuing offences. While corporations are liable for a maximum fine of $1.25 million with daily charges of $250,000 for ongoing violations.
The act defines a contaminated site as containing hazardous material at levels posing a risk to the environment and human health.
According to Perth law firm, Lavan Legal, if the land is contaminated, “the act places responsibility for remediation on polluters, landowners, mortgagees in possession, occupiers, landholders seeking a change in land use, directors and related companies and the state.”
During property transactions, the Contaminated Sites Act may allow for the transfer of remediation responsibility, where the buyer may assume responsibility for remediation costs with the seller’s consent.
“From a buyer’s perspective, consideration of the cost of remediation should be a factor in negotiating the sale,” says Lavan Legal. “Remediation of sites can be a significant and ongoing financial burden.”
The Environmental Protection Act 1986 also has a role in environmental regulation in Western Australia, including contamination issues and the protection of air, water and land.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
In South Australia, environmental laws regarding site contamination are governed by the Environment Protection Act 1993, regulating land, air and water pollution and contamination.
Under the act, individuals and businesses must take all reasonable and practicable measures to ensure their activities minimise environmental impact.
“The original polluter has liability for contamination caused on and off the source site regardless of when
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
SOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
it was caused,” says the EPA South Australia. “This means the person who caused the site contamination is responsible for implementing and funding the assessment, meeting the costs of an independent site audit by an accredited site contamination auditor and any subsequent management, containment or cleanup of the site. This may also include meeting the costs of and undertaking communication with the affected community.”
In the case of historical contamination, if it is not possible to locate the original polluter, then liability passes to the site owner.
“However, the site owner’s liability may be limited to only the owner’s site itself (not off site),” adds the authority, “and liability is dependent on the owner’s knowledge of the site contamination at the time of purchase.
“The EPA will, in the first instance, negotiate with appropriate persons before taking action, with a view to gaining agreement on the appropriate way forward to manage known or suspected site contamination. This may end up in formal voluntary agreements being entered into between the parties or orders being issued to the appropriate person.”
In South Australia, a property seller must disclose any contamination to potential buyers. The buyer and seller can then negotiate who will undertake and finance the remediation of the site as part of the sale agreement.
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
SOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
NORTHERN TERRITORY
The Northern Territory EPA administers land, water and air contamination issues in the Top End under the Environment Protection Regulations 2020 and the Waste Management and Pollution Control Act 1998 (WMPC).
The WMPC includes a “duty to notify”, which obliges people to inform the EPA of potentially contaminated land as soon as practicable after becoming aware of the problem. Penalties for non-compliance can mean up to five years in jail.
In the Northern Territory, the responsibility for cleaning up contamination falls on the polluter. However, if the original polluter cannot be identified, responsibility can shift to a landowner or occupier.
In property transactions, sellers are expected to disclose any known contamination issues to prospective buyers and failure to do so can be grounds for a buyer to terminate a contract before closing. Nevertheless, buyers are advised to conduct due diligence, including any contaminated land assessments, if they have concerns regarding a particular site.
VICTORIA
Individuals and businesses were put on notice after Victoria underwent a major overhaul of its environmental protection management when the Environment Protection Act 2017 came into effect in 2021.
The act says the responsibility for cleaning up contaminated land operates on the “polluter pays” principle and those who generate pollution and waste should bear the costs of containment, avoidance, and abatement. For serious offences, individuals can also face up to five years’ imprisonment.
In some cases – including if the original, polluter cannot be located or ascertained – it could be the current owner, occupier or mortgagee in possession of a site who bears the clean-up costs.
EPA Victoria says: “In applying this principle, EPA will consider the party or parties that directly allowed or caused the pollution.
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
SOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
QUEENSLAND
“EPA will also consider whether the current owner or occupier of the site is the most appropriate party to bear the cost, including whether the occupier’s actions – for example, negligence, lack of due diligence or acquiescence – have contributed to the pollution.
“For example, if the EPA requires clean-up, through a remedial notice, the polluter or owner would be required to bear the cost of complying with the notice … and if cleanup is related to site purchase/disposal then payment would often be as agreed in the sale/purchase documents.”
The new laws include the General Environmental Duty (GED), which mandates that all businesses and individuals take reasonable and practical steps to minimise risks to the environment and human health from their activities.
“The new laws change Victoria’s focus for environment protection and human health to a prevention-based approach,” says the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. “They are the most significant reforms to Victoria’s environment protection framework in two generations.”
Queensland’s new Property Law Act 2023 – which has passed the Parliament and is awaiting a confirmed commencement date – will impact all property vendors in the Sunshine State when it comes into effect. The new laws, bringing Queensland into line with other states, switches from a caveat emptor or “buyer beware” model to a proactive seller disclosure approach, with vendors who fail to come clean on any contamination issues facing significant consequences.
Under the new act, sellers must provide buyers with a completed and signed disclosure statement and the prescribed certificates before a buyer can execute a contract for sale.
The seller must disclose whether the property is recorded on either the Contaminated or Environmental Management Registers; and whether the property has any contamination and environmental protections, orders or applications made under the Neighbourhood Disputes (Dividing Fences and Trees) Act 2011 (Qld).
If a seller doesn’t provide the disclosure statement or fails to provide an accurate disclosure statement, the buyer will have the right to terminate the contract at any time prior to settlement.
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
SOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
Like other states, Queensland also works on the polluter pays principle but, if the polluter cannot be found, the onus to remediate the land may fall on the local government or council, or the landowner if the contamination occurred after the land was purchased by the current owner.
Furthermore a recent amendment to the Environmental Protection Powers and Penalties Act introduces a “duty to restore” component requiring that, if someone causes or allows unlawful environmental harm on their land through contamination, that person must take the necessary measures, as soon as is reasonably practicable, to rehabilitate or restore the environment.
Queensland is the only state in Australia without an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and state environmental groups like the Queensland Conservation Council continue to lobby for the establishment of “an independent agency with the authority needed to make the tough calls”.
n Known contaminated sites
n Potentially contaminated sites
TASMANIA
ESOURCE: Lotsearch Australia
nvironmental laws addressing contamination in Tasmania are generally governed by the Environmental Management and Pollution Control Act 1994 (EMPCA), which is part of the broader Resource Management and Planning System.
EPA Tasmania and local councils share responsibility to enforce the EMPCA, with recent amendments aiming to strengthen the independence of the EPA and enhance public access to environmental monitoring information.
In Tassie, the responsibility for remediation of contaminated land falls on the party responsible for the contamination, who is required to undertake and finance the clean-up of the site in question and other neighbouring lands affected. This includes obtaining the necessary approvals and implementing remediation under the guidance of professionals.
According to the Department of Public Health and Environment: “Where a Planning Authority or Permit Authority considers a development or building application in relation to potentially contaminated land, the applicant may be required to … undertake remediation or management measures to demonstrate the site is suitable for the intended use.”
Overseas investment
Buyers countries invested in the Australia property market for the first time in August 2024.
Western Sydney continues to dominate the property market, with seven out of the top 10 suburbs located in the west, including Campbelltown taking the top spot, followed by Westmead and St Marys.
First-home buyer activity has significantly decreased compared to the same time last year, with only 19 per cent of August buyers
being first-home buyers, down from 31 per cent in August 2023. This shows a shift toward existing home owners dominating the market, likely driven by rising interest rates and inflation.
Overseas investment remains consistent, with China and India still leading as the top investors.
First-home buyer activity
How many first-home buyers entered the market in August 2024, compared to same time last year.
Percentage of all properties sales recorded by triSearch.
Tarneit has returned to the top spot as the hottest suburb in August, pushing Werribee down to second after it briefly claimed the top position in July.
VICTORIA QUEENSLAND
Victorian land developer Satterley describes the westerly suburb as a “vibrant and rapidly evolving community” that is a hidden gem. It cites The Age’s
census data analysis that identified Tarneit as Melbourne’s happiest suburb.
Melbourne City holds strong in third place, showing continued demand month after month.
Point Cook climbs higher to fourth, while Traralgon and Clyde North both maintain their positions within the top 10.
Surfers Paradise has taken the top spot for August 2024, replacing Morayfield, which dropped to fourth place.
Australia’s favourite playground for holiday makers is now also a favourite for home buyers and property investors in Queensland.
Could it be that the place for vacations is the place for "staycations"?
Brisbane City and Southport come in at second and third respectively, showing strong buyer interest in urban areas
Surfers Paradise
Email marketing
The first email ever sent was by US computer engineer Ray Tomlinson in 1971. He later described the content of those test messages as “entirely forgettable”. Since then, emails have evolved to become much more useful and powerful. Email marketing has enabled businesses to build relationships, nurture leads and grow.
For conveyancers, email marketing enables you to share new services, deals and updates with your database. Building an effective email campaign can help you achieve your business goals and build a strong, loyal customer base. Consider these steps:
CHOOSE YOUR AUDIENCE
Choose the audience you want to directly target with personalised and relevant content. It may be prospects, industry stakeholders or clients. Your content or messaging will change, depending on the audience. It’s a good idea to create audience categories you can add new and existing contact information to.
CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT
Target your audience with relevant content. For potential customers, you might focus on a campaign highlighting your services and any new offers or deals they may benefit from when selling or buying their next property. For existing clients or agents, you could choose to promote your innovation or new employees to reflect your growth and brand success. No matter the audience, creating relevant, interesting, valuable and clickable content will get the best results.
CHOOSING THE SUBJECT LINE
The subject line is the first thing your reader will see when your email lands in their inbox. This must be short, sharp and clear about what the email is trying to convey. Take time to carefully craft this so it captures readers. Importantly, avoid spammy or misleading language.
MODERN EMAIL = PERSONALISATION
In today’s world, personalisation is key. Audiences are more receptive to emails with their name at the top and content tailored to their interests and preferences.
REVIEW AND ADJUST
Test and refine your email marketing campaigns so they are as effective as possible. Trying different subject lines, content formats and calls-toaction can help you assess what works best for your audience. Using analytics to track metrics like email opening and click-through rates can help you refine your campaigns over time.
