What it does
The Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic) is Victoria's principal environmental protection statute. It replaced the Environment Protection Act 1970 and came into full operation on 1 July 2021 after a substantial three-year transition period following Royal Assent in 2017. The Act is a comprehensive, modern framework that reorganises environmental regulation in Victoria around a duty-based model rather than a purely prescriptive licensing model.
The Act's central innovation is the general environmental duty (s 25): all persons engaging in activities that may give rise to risks of harm to human health or the environment from pollution or waste must minimise those risks, so far as reasonably practicable. This duty applies to everyone, not just licensed operators, and functions as both a criminal offence and a civil penalty provision.
The Act establishes EPA Victoria (the Environment Protection Authority) with a new governance structure including a Governing Board (Chapter 12), sets binding environment protection principles (Chapter 2), creates a permissions regime for high-risk activities (Chapter 4), manages waste at all levels from litter to priority waste (Chapter 6), provides for authorised officer powers and notices (Chapters 9-10), and creates dual enforcement pathways through criminal and civil proceedings (Chapter 11).