Part 6.3Part 6.3 Voluntary environmental audits
180 Nature of voluntary environmental audit
(1) A voluntary environmental audit is an environmental audit commissioned or carried out or being carried out voluntarily, whether or not in relation to activities licensed under this Act.(2) An environmental audit is not voluntary if there is a contemporaneous requirement for a mandatory environmental audit in relation to the same or substantially the same activity.
(1) Documents prepared for the sole purpose of a voluntary environmental audit are protected documents for the purposes of this Act.(2) Such documents include the final report of the audit and any documents prepared during the course of the audit, so long as the documents are prepared for the sole purpose of the audit.(3) Without affecting the generality of the above, documents are not protected if they are prepared wholly or partly in connection with monitoring that is required by any conditions attached to a licence or by an environment protection notice.
(1) A protected document:(a) is not admissible in evidence against any person in any proceedings connected with the administration or enforcement of the environment protection legislation, and(b) may not be inspected, copied, seized or otherwise obtained by the EPA, any other regulatory authority, any authorised officer or any other person for any purpose connected with the administration or enforcement of the environment protection legislation,and the EPA or any such authority, officer or other person may not, for any such purpose, require a person to answer any question or provide any information about the existence of the document or about what it contains.(2) The onus of establishing that a document is a protected document lies on the person asserting that it is protected.(3) A court may inspect any document that is claimed to be a protected document for the purpose of determining whether it is or is not a protected document.(4) The regulations may prescribe procedures for making and determining claims that a document is a protected document.
(1) Documents prepared in relation to a voluntary environmental audit cease to be protected if the person asserting or relying on the protection uses or relies on (or attempts to use or rely on) the whole or any part of one or more of the documents, whether directly or indirectly, in any proceedings connected with the administration or enforcement of the environment protection legislation.(2) This section does not apply where the person is using or relying on (or attempting to use or rely on) a document for the purpose of establishing that the document is protected.