Sustainable Tourism Law

368 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW claim that might have arisen in the relevant time period has not yet been the subject of proceedings (which in general terms may be issued at any time prior to six years from the cause of the action arising). A significant recent development was the passing of the Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA). This Act is not well known and has not been tested before the courts, however, it can potentially have an enormous bearing on the conduct of adventure tourism activities. The Act was introduced by the Gallop Government in 2012 and was further strengthened by amendments in 2013 and 2014. These tort law reforms were introduced largely in response to a crisis of cost escalation for insurance premiums. The impact is yet to be determined seeing as the legislation has not been tested in court (another indication of the lack of legal actions related to adventure tourism activities) and because the changes are not well known. The core principle of this reform was the introduction of the principle of voluntary assumption of risk. That is, participants should assume a degree of risk when engaging in recreational services. The major provisions include making risk warnings and waivers legally enforceable (except for safety laws and deliberate harm or recklessness), a legal presumption that people are aware of obvious risks, therefore limiting liability for any harm from obvious risks. As far as warnings are concerned, they can be verbal, a signature or printed as part of a ticket, and they only have to be given in a way which results in people being reasonably warned of the risk. There is no requirement to prove that the warning was understood. The net result is to partly shift the onus of responsibility from the provider to the client and this law is applicable to businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Whilst the intention of the Act is clearly to introduce a kind of common sense approach to customers assuming some risk, it is not a license for providers to turn a blind eye to risk. The application of this law needs to be balanced with greater attention to risk management and it is evident, after sampling the web sites of many adventure activity organizations, that they are increasingly developing publicly available risk management strategies. This may need to be better incorporated into various licensing requirements. Different conditions apply to children under the age of 16 and this is reflected in the substantial work being undertaken by the Western Australian Department of Education and Training to update all of its policies and guidelines for outdoor education and recreation activities.This will have some impact on tourism activities (in terms of raising awareness and standards) because many of the commercial tour operators also provide services to schools and other educational institutions.