The President’s report in the September 2003 Australian AOPA magazine discusses the issue of strict liability under the Australian 1988 Regulations. The AOPA President states among other things:
[The Civil Aviation Amendment Regulations have] the effect of deeming the entirety of the [1988] regulations (insofar as offence provisions are concerned) subject to the doctrine of strict liability. The argument which I note has been put forward by some ill-informed web-site scribes is that, because the preamble says the action is necessary to conform with the Criminal Code (Commonwealth), then it is unavoidable, and in any event, innocuous.
Alas, such comments show little understanding either of the Code or our justice system. I have examined the existing regulations, and have found that very few were designated as strict liability offences. However, there are a substantial number of them which would, if challenged, properly be found to be offences of strict liability by a court, and to those being the subject of the deeming amendment, I have no objection.
However, there are others which ought not be rounded up and dumped into this category, simply for administrative and prosecutorial convenience. …
Unfortunately, the President does not provide any particulars of the “web-site” or the “ill-informed scribes” to whom the President refers, as I too would like to take to task any one silly enough to put the Criminal Code cart before the strict liability horse.
I note - and am comforted by the fact that - the President agrees with me and the drafters of the amending regulations, at least in relation to the “substantial number” of old regulation offences which the President believes “would…properly be found to be offences of strict liability by a court….”. That, I assume, is the President’s long way of saying that in her opinion it was strict liability under at least “a substantial number” of the old regulations. The President therefore has “no objection” to those offences
remaining strict liability. (Note the name of this thread.) Up until the relevant President’s report, I was not aware that AOPA’s objection to strict liability related only to a limited number of, rather than all, offences under the regulations.
Also unfortunately, the President does not provide any particulars of the “very few” offences she found that were “designated” as strict liability under the old regulations. So far as I could tell,
none of them was “designated” or otherwise labeled as
any category of offence, the question being left to the usual rules of interpretation. Presumably it was the application of those rules that led the President to form the view that “a substantial number” of offences were strict liability, notwithstanding that “very view” were “designated” as such.
Most unfortunately, the President does not identify the specific offences which in her opinion were
not strict liability under the old regulations. No doubt the drafters of the amending regulations will explain to the President (via the Minister’s office) what the weight of expert opinion and any relevant judicial decisions say about the nature of those offences.
[edited for typos and dislexicos!]