Behind the façade, the infant Environmental Protection Authority Victoria (EPA) was nothing like the single-minded organisation its leaders would have liked.
There were many different undercurrents as the organisation was the first of its kind in Australia and rare, at that time, in the world.
Governance, legal tools and purpose were to be established, and even a decade after its founding, prosecutions were few, hampered by a lack of legal staff, and lenient court assessments of environmental crimes meant fines averaged a tenth of those imposed in NSW.
Chief among the progressives guiding the organisation through its early years was Dr Brian Robinson, who died in 2004, aged 63.
A vivid personality and an influential figure, Dr Robinson was associated with EPA Victoria for 30 years, including 16 years as chairman.
His personal passion for the environment pushed the regulator to ‘reconcile industry with excellence in applied science’. At a valedictory celebration of his achievements held in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, 1200 people attended, including politicians of every persuasion who sang his praises.
From Dr Robinson’s obituary by Phillips Jones, The Age, 22 May 2004:
‘Bureaucrats and captains of industry spoke of his capabilities. All were unanimous in their appreciation of his capability and his charm
‘His sheer niceness, it seems, oiled the machinery he had constructed to reconcile warring interests. Robinson worked what miracles he could for the environment and people's quality of life.’
Dr Robinson had joined EPA as its laboratory services coordinator at its 1975 inception, and by 1986 was its chairman, managing the young regulator on about a third the funds enjoyed by its NSW counterpart with trademark drive.
He established the Victorian ‘airshed’ a network of air monitoring studies over Melbourne and the Latrobe Valley, and he personally ensured the end of the practice of dumping industrial waste at Corio Bay, at the southwestern Port Phillip Bay.
In the years before his 2002 retirement from EPA, Dr Robinson became concerned by the control of diesel exhaust emissions through standards and regulation, ‘in Australia they are of Third World standard,’ he lamented.