Procuring Industrial Pollution Control The South Australian Case 1836-L97 5 Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of History, Adelaide University, December 200L Matthew Jordan Acknowledgements From my father asking: 'Are you going to do a doctorate, then?', I am indebted to So many academics, family, friends and acquaintances for advice and encouragement. I have been most blessed with such active supervisors as A.H. Denholm, V. Brodsky, ril. Gammage and W. Prest, who all provided invaluable and timely advice. Thanks are well and truly due to the Australian taxpayers, without whose adequate generosity I would never have been able to complete this thesis, and to the Department of Social Security and Centrelink for permitting me to devote up to twenty-four hours per week on this task. Thanks, too, are due to the librarians at the Barr Smith and State Libraries for their help and maintenance of the collections housed therein. The staff of the Cafe Shh at the State Library are well deserving of a special mention, the fine coffee from whom often revitalized my capacity to resume foraging through the Parliamentary Papers. Since commencing this thesis part-time in 1991, I have incurred numerous commitments. The most delightful of these has been finding the love of Susan Hall, her three children, Jenna-Belle, Benjamin and Bonnie-Sue and producing our now four-year old daughter Jade. Jade's needs required me to become a sole parent three months into her wondrous life and, together with occasional employment, to intermit for the total permissible time. This thesis would have endured further delays if not for the extraordinary ability of my brother, Jim, to fix the many crashes suffered by my computer. To my long-suffering, thesis-weary family and friends, thank you for your patience. This thesis is an expression of my gratitude to you all. Abbreviations Broken Hill Associated Smelters BHAS Broken Hill Proprietary BHP Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization CSIRO Council for Scientific and Industrial Research CSIR Department of Engineering and'Water Supply E&WS International Labour Organization ILo National Health and Medical Research Council NHMRC Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD United Trades and Labour Council UTLC World Health Organization wHo Footnotes: Australian Parliamentary Pap ers APP South Australian Legislative Council Papers LCP South Australian Parliamentary Papers SAPP South Australian Parliamentary D ebat es SAP Debates Note to the reader To avoid voluminous footnotes, I have condensed the titles of by-laws, petitions, regulations and reports from Parliamentary Papers. The years included in these abbreviated footnotes relate to the volumes of Parliamentary Papers in which the by-laws, petitions, regulations and reports of the committees, commissions and inquiries appear. The year appearing in the condensed title of the annual reports of agencies correlates to the year being covered by that report. I have used parentheses to signify the title of a parliamentary paper and to distinguish the year being reported on, or the volume in which it resides, from the page number on which it occurred. I have always denoted Commonwealth parliamentary sources either in the authorship or ascribed volume of Australian Parliamentary Papers, whereas South Australian parliamentary sources are discernible by this omission. For instance, the by-laws of the Kensington and Norwood Council that were published in South Australian Parliamentary Papers 1862 are footnoted as 'Kensington and Norwood By-Laws, 1862', while the annual reports on the work performed by the Central Board of Health and Commonwealth Department of Health during 1966 are footnoted as Central Board of Health, 'Report, 1966' and Commonwealth Department of Health Reports: '1965166' and'1966167' . The sources for all these papers can be found either under these headings or the titles of the various agencies, commissions and parliamentary committees in the Bibliography. I have always cited secondary sources according to the usual conventions. Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations ii Note to the Reader iii List of Tables vi Abstract vii Declaration of Authenticity ix 1 Why and How 1 Methodology and Evidence 8 2: Working for the Company 12 3: Drain, Drain, Drain 1840-1960 T9 Natural to Local Drainage: 1840-1857 19 Sanitation for Livelihood: 1857-I9I4 23 Drainage for Industrialization: 1914-1960 32 4: Councils By Law andZone 1861-1960 38 By-laws: 1861-1885 39 D-epressed Regulation and Municipal Socialism: 1885-1918 49 Zoning: 1918-1960 57 5: Central Board of Health 1874-1960 67 Too Committed: 1874-1892 68 Outcast: 1892-1932 76 Recalled: 1933-1946 82 Expansion: 1946-1960 88 6: Department of Mines 1886-1960 100 Unenforced Regulation: 1845-1886 101 Employing Regulators: 1886-1916 108 Reforms: 1916-1934 115 Industrialization: 1934-t960 r23 Factory Inspectors 1895-1960 135 Acknowledging Occupational Pollution: 1836-1895 135 Employing Regulators: 1895-1918 143 Seeing Red: 1918-1933 153 Doing it for Industrialization: 1933-7960 159 8: Commonwealth Intervention 1901-1960 1 70 Finding a Role: 190l-1914 1 70 Inspiration Dimmed: 1914-1929 1 76 Only What Pays: 1929-1945 1 83 ILO No, Bombs Ho: 1945-1960 1 90 9: One Environment 1960-1975 199 Set Practices: 1960-1975 r99 Differences on Occupational Pollution: 1960-1970 2t0 Air and V/ater Pollution Inquiries: 1969-1972 218 A Human Environment: 1972-1975 229 10: What'Works 240 The Getting of Government Intervention 240 Effective Prevention 242 Community Significance 2sl Bibliography 253 Acts of Parliament 253 Official Publications 253 Printed Books, Maps and Newspapers 254 Australian Parliamentary Papers 255 South Australian Parliamentary Papers 26r Secondary Sources 274 List of Tables 2.1 Polluting industrial enterprises in South Australia, 1850-1870 18 4.1 Fines under council pollution-controlling by-laws and Acts, 1857-1884. 46 4.2: Fines under council pollution-controlling by-laws and Acts, 1889-1909. 51 4.3: Fines under council pollution-controlling by-laws and Acts, r909-t929130. 6l 4.4: Fines under council pollution-controlling by-laws and Acts, 1939140-1959160. 64 5.1: Fines levied by the Central Board of Health, 1879-1_930- 81 5.2: Fines levied by the Central Board of Health, 1933-1945. 84 5.3: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, 1946-1960. 89 5.4: Fines levied by the Central Board of Health, t949-196O 9I 7.1: Regulatory preferences of Labor and Liberal governments between 1919 and 1,928. 156 7 .2: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, t946-1960. t63 7.3: Use of proscription by factory inspectors, 1946-1958. 165 9.I: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, 196l-1964. 2tt 9.2: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, 1965-1967. 212 9.3: Fines levied by health and factory inspectors under state governments per annum, 1960-1970. 214 9.4: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, 1968-1969. 217 9.5: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, 1969-1972. 227 9.6: Industrial disputes of more than ten days in South Australia, r97t-1975. 235 Abstract The South Australian case shows that economic development is both the cause of industrial pollution and the key to achieving sustained government regulation, Only when debt was avoided would governors yield to the desire of colonists to form councils to drain wastes and dispose of garbage from highly polluting trades from 1840-1857. Leaving individual local councils to control pollution from economicatly significant industries from 1861 helped create highly polluting industrial suburbs and towns, a process which was formalized by town planning from the I92Os. Parliamentarians, seeking to avoid the high cost of building sewers, formed the British-inspired Central Board of Health in 1874 to curb industrial pollution in order to protect polluting industrialists from the enterprise- threatening law suits launched by the affluent. On protecting industrialists from litigation by providing sewers and pollution havens in manufacturing districts from 1882, South Australian governments limited the Board to controlling small-scale environmental industrial pollution, poison usage and the purity of food by 1892, South Australian governments opted to control industrial pollution by employing mining and factory inspectors from 1886 and 1895, respectively, in order to make mining more attractive to private landowners and curb strikes and the appeal of anarchism and communism to workers. State governments tailored support for these inspectors to control occupational industrial pollution according to the needs of industrial polluters, the level of strikes and working-class militancy. Commonwealth governments, confined by the states retaining the constitutional powers to control industrial pollution, could only reduce industrial pollution in order to free inter-state trade ftom I9I2, minimize expenditure, replace imports and improve production from 1916, and stem working-class militancy from 1919. In order to further economic growth, these governments co-opted industrialists to set Abstract v1l1 emission standards from 1963, restricted environmental industrial pollution according to international covenants from 1969 and established environmental agencies to co-ordinate regulators from 1972. As economic development is the key to government control of industrial pollution and no form of control has proved perfect,