How can you possibly function each day without involving yourself in those minutia? Are you not frozen in fear by all that strict liability and all those impenetrable rules used by government bully boys to repress you?
Very easily, thank you for enquiring. I keep myself safe and therefore my passengers as well. A by-product of that is that I keep myself within the regulations as well. But the safety comes first. Shock, horror.
They weren’t prosecuted for a strict liability offence. They were prosecuted for reckless operation of an aircraft, endangering life. “Reckless” is a fault element. (As an aside, others have suggested that stalling tactics were used by Qantas, resulting in the matter being dismissed. Also as an aside, I wonder what all the “take me to court rather than take administrative action” brigade thought about the judge’s comment. The judge said disciplinary action against the pilots, such as suspension or retraining, “might have provided a more effective response to the needs of public interest and safety than a prosecution some six years later".)
Thank you for clearing that up. So strict liability does not extend to breaches of the Civil Aviation Act for that is what they were charged under. I can't comment about stalling tactics by QANTAS but the original charges were summarily dismissed and the matter went to trial only after CASA/DPP took it to a Court of Appeal. Because the charges was under the Act, it could not be dealt with by administrative action.
From my memory of what evidence I did read of there was a very strong presumption that the lights may have been improperly re-activated during the last 10 minutes of the PAL cycle and the lights extinguished during the take-off roll.
My imperfect memory is that strict liability offences were brought down during one of the Howard government's time and was basically mandated by the Justice Department as was the prescription that offences were to be prosecuted. It was all to do with cost recovery and making the Commonwealth public service more cost neutral. Hah - fat chance!
I do, however, agree with your basic premise that strict liability has hardly opened the floodgates with a rush to court. There are far more grievous sins out there in regulatory land than that.
