By Automated Environmental · Last reviewed July 2026. General information for Victorian businesses — not legal advice.
Under Victoria's Environment Protection Act 2017 (the EP Act), your state of knowledge is what you know, or ought reasonably to know, about your risks of harm and the ways of eliminating or reducing those risks. It is one of the factors that determines what "reasonably practicable" requires under the general environmental duty — and because knowledge accumulates, the standard rises with it. EPA expects duty holders to regularly seek up-to-date knowledge about their risks and controls, so a control that was acceptable a few years ago is not automatically acceptable today.
This article covers where that knowledge comes from, why the bar keeps rising, and what it means for licence holders and organisations running more than one site.
The general environmental duty (GED), section 25 of the EP Act, requires every business to eliminate or otherwise reduce risks of harm to human health and the environment from pollution and waste so far as reasonably practicable. EPA's guidance on that test (Publication 1856) says working it out means weighing the likelihood of harm, the degree of harm that could occur, what you know or ought reasonably to know about the harm and the ways of eliminating or reducing the risk, and the availability, suitability and cost of those ways. We walk through the whole test in our explainer on reasonably practicable and Publication 1856.
The knowledge factor is assessed against two criteria together: what you actually know, and what someone in your circumstances should reasonably know about the risks. EPA calls these two criteria the state of knowledge. The second does most of the work — your obligations are not limited by what you happened to have read.
EPA's guidance points duty holders to several sources at once:
This breadth is why "we didn't know" rarely holds. If a risk and its controls are covered by industry guidance or well-established practice, you are measured against that knowledge whether or not you had it. Not knowing does not lower the bar — it just means your actual knowledge lags the standard you are assessed against. EPA states the expectation plainly: know the impact of your activities, know how to eliminate or reduce your risks, and regularly seek up-to-date knowledge about both.
Because the state of knowledge is not yours alone — it is the pool of what is known, and the pool only grows. EPA's guidance gives the reasons to review knowledge and controls regularly: your risks can change over time; reputable industry knowledge, guidance and science-based information change as everyone learns more; and technology changes, making more acceptable or effective controls available.
The consequence is a ratchet. A control that represented good practice when the EP Act's duties commenced in July 2021 may sit below well-established practice in 2026 — not because your site changed, but because the state of knowledge did. When reasonably practicable is assessed, it is assessed against today's knowledge.
That is by design, not drift. EPA's Compliance and Enforcement Policy (publication 1798) defines compliance as an ongoing process in which businesses "need to regularly assess their risk and seek to improve their methods for eliminating or minimising those risks". Continuous improvement is built into the duty. The same policy says EPA's decision-making considers risk and a duty holder's behaviour and motivations — an organisation that can show a live, documented review cycle is in a very different conversation than one whose plan has not been touched since it was written.
The GED applies to licence holders like everyone else — EPA's implementation guide for the duty is written for them — and there are significant penalties for businesses that do not meet it. That matters for the risk management and monitoring program (RMMP) that certain permission conditions require: an RMMP records how you propose to minimise risks in accordance with the duty, and the duty is assessed against the current state of knowledge, not the knowledge that existed when the licence was granted or the program first written. A monitoring regime that reflected available knowledge at grant can quietly fall behind what has since become well-established. The standard your RMMP is measured against is today's — which is why RMMP development and review should track current guidance rather than reproduce last cycle's document.
Yes. The duty attaches to the conduct of your activities, so it follows the organisation rather than a premises — and your state of knowledge travels with it. An incident at one site, an audit finding, an officer's comment, a notice: once the organisation knows it, it knows it everywhere the same activity runs. "We didn't know at site B" is difficult to sustain when site A's records show the organisation did. In our work with multi-site operators, the file that matters is increasingly the organisation's, not the individual site's. If a notice has landed at one site, see why a notice at one site is a question about all of your sites.
You cannot freeze the standard, but you can build the mechanism that absorbs it. In an environmental management plan (EMP), that mechanism is the review clause. A robust plan is reviewed on three triggers: after any incident or near-miss (your own new knowledge); on change — new equipment, changed activities or neighbours (new risk); and on a schedule regardless (the outside world's new knowledge: updated guidance, new standards, better controls). The scheduled review is the one that catches the rising bar: it asks what the state of knowledge has done since you last looked, even when nothing on site has changed.
None of this requires a consultant. An EHS manager with time, a sound risk register and the habit of reading EPA and industry guidance can run the cycle in-house, and any qualified environmental consultant can support it where capacity is the constraint. What matters is that the cycle exists, is documented, and actually runs — a review clause that never fires is its own kind of evidence. If you are not sure your operation needs a documented plan at all, start with Do I need an EMP?
Where the discipline gets hardest is portfolios: many sites, one moving standard, and a review cycle that has to reach all of them. Automated Environmental builds multi-site EMP programs around exactly that — one framework, reviewed once, applied across every site. A scoping conversation about a multi-site EMP program — or a note via our contact page — is a low-pressure way to work out what your portfolio actually needs.
It is the combination of what a duty holder actually knows and what someone in their circumstances should reasonably know about their risks of harm and the ways of eliminating or reducing those risks. EPA assesses 'so far as reasonably practicable' against both criteria together, so the standard is not limited by what a business happened to have read.
Rarely with success. The test includes what a duty holder ought reasonably to know, so if a risk and its controls are covered in industry guidance, regulator publications or well-established practice, the duty holder is measured against that knowledge whether or not they had it. EPA expects duty holders to regularly seek up-to-date knowledge about their risks and controls.
Yes. EPA's guidance says industry knowledge, science-based information and technology all change over time, which can make more effective controls available and acceptable. A control that represented good practice several years ago may fall below well-established practice today, because the test is assessed against current knowledge.
A robust approach reviews the plan after any incident or near-miss, whenever activities or equipment change, and on a fixed schedule even if nothing has changed. The scheduled review is what keeps the plan aligned with the current state of knowledge — updated guidance, new standards and newly available controls.
Related reading: Reasonably practicable: EPA Publication 1856 explained · An EPA notice at one site is a question about all your sites · Do I need an EMP? · RMMP development (Victoria)
This article is general information, not legal advice. Notices carry hard deadlines — if you've received one, get advice specific to your situation promptly.