Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand

You are here: Home > About > Divisions & Chapters > South East Queensland > Past Events

May 2010 - Face to Face: An afternoon with the Directors General

The EIANZ-SEQ held a forum with the key Directors General involved in the assessment and approval of major developments in Queensland with a particular focus on the role that environmental professionals play in those processes.

It was a unique opportunity for Environmental Professionals to examine and contrast the perspectives and visions of the Directors-General of government agencies with responsibilities in the environmental and natural resource sectors.

Speakers included Mr John Bradley, Director General for the Department of Environment and Resource Management as well as Mr Colin Jensen, Director General for the Department of Intrastructure and Planning.

At the forum, the Directors-General addresses a range of current issues and future directions in environmental and natural resource regulations in Queensland, including:

• The structural changes made in the Department of Infrastructure and Planning to better integrate or streamline service delivery with respect to sustainable planning and project approvals.
• The models of service delivery that are being developed or are in place to ensure that decision making is streamlined without compromising the need for careful, science based environmental assessment of the sustainability of development plans and projects.
• The opportunities that exist to streamline legislation to simplify approvals processes, better integrate decision making by avoiding duplication, ensure that approvals of operational activities are not complicated by issues relating to overall land use approvals, and making approval processes more consistent across jurisdictions.
• The opportunities for certification of planning and performance documentation by environmental professionals to be accepted as satisfying both assessment and reporting requirements that form part of the regulatory environment. Certifications by registered engineers have been accepted in regulatory approvals for a very long time; and private building certification has been enshrined in legislation in Qld for over a decade.
• Other changes in the overall direction of public administrationthat will impact on the role of environmental professionals in the future, and opportunities that there may be for the EIANZ to work with your organisation, perhaps by developing a number of pilot evaluations of different practices, to enhance the role of environmental professionals in environmental planning and assessment.