Australia
The Australian Criminal Code Act 1995 defines absolute liability in Division 6, subsection 2:
(1) If a law that creates an offence provides that the offence is an offence of absolute liability:
- (a) there are no fault elements for any of the physical elements of the offence; and
- (b) the defence of mistake of fact under section 9.2 is unavailable.
Regulatory bodies tend to favour the approach of declaring offences to be strict or absolute liability, because it makes it easier to prosecute people: there is no longer a requirement to demonstrate that the defendant was deliberately intending to commit an offence. Jurists consider such a mechanism to be a blunt instrument, and recommend its use only in limited circumstances:
Absolute liability is used for certain regulatory offences in which it is necessary for individuals engaged in potentially hazardous or harmful activity to exercise extreme, and not merely reasonable, care. Such offences as exceeding 60 kilometres per hour in a 60 kilometre zone, causing pollution to waters, selling alcohol to underage persons, refusing or failing to submit to breath testing and publishing a name in breach of a suppression order. In these cases, the courts accepted that the benefits to the community overrode any potential negative impact on the accused person.
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