An Overview of Environmental Noise Legislation throughout Australia

摘要

Australia is made up of a number of different states and territories. Each of these have their own governments which administer environmental noise policy. Historically there has been very little coordination or collaboration between the states to ensure a consistency of approach to such issues. For many years there was a group made up of environmental officers from most of the states that met on a regular basis. This group did achieve some good results in terms of rationalising research and the labelling of noisy equipment such as air conditioners, however it was disbanded just at the time when it was about to get stuck into the issues of uniformity between the states. As a result we have a situation where environmental noise is assessed in many different ways and by different agencies within each state or territory. Most states or territories are currently in the process of reviewing their noise policies. There has been much greater consultation between the states and territories during the development of their new policies than there ever was in the development of the original policies. Despite this however there will still be many significant differences between the policies when they have all been finishied and become operational.