Environmental crime and enforcement in Australia

Environmental crime is a rapidly growing area of criminal law in Australia. In the last decade, there has been a plethora of legislation providing criminal sanctions for actions causing harm to the environment. This legislation extends to diverse areas such as pollution, waste disposal, ozone offences, native vegetation clearing, threats to flora, fauna and biodiversity, illegal fishing, illegal logging and water theft.1 The legislation not only targets individual offenders, but also makes provision for corporate liability and some form of personal liability for directors and managers. This has necessitated changes to our perceptions of criminality. It has also required modification of the traditional common law principles of criminal liability. In addition, it poses a considerable challenge to legislators to develop innovative sentencing mechanisms to target corporations and directors. These aspects will be examined in this article.