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The Legal Framework and Enforcement Experience of Marine Protected Areas in Tasmania, New South Wales, and Commonwealth Waters

Warwick Gullett

Australian Maritime College, LAUNCESTON, AUSTRALIA

Theme: TH3

With the exception of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, there have been no prosecutions for offences within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Australia at the Commonwealth level, nor in Tasmania and New South Wales. However, it cannot be assumed that effective compliance methods are responsible for this lack of prosecutorial activity. Rather, in some cases, enforcement officers prosecute offences under more general provisions found in fisheries legislation than under provisions for specific offences created in MPAs. In other cases, legislative arrangements are inadequate to ensure that inappropriate activities are prohibited or regulated within MPAs. For example, MPA regimes may fail to give adequate legal support to the environmental objectives they seek to achieve within specific marine areas. Likewise, they may fail to prohibit inappropriate activities from taking place immediately adjacent to MPAs, despite the transboundary nature of environmental effects. This contribution examines the legal regimes that exist to establish MPAs in Tasmania, New South Wales and areas under Commonwealth jurisdiction and the offences created to ensure the protection of ecological values within MPAs. Analysis is given to regimes set up under 'umbrella' MPA Acts (such as the Marine Parks Act 1997 (NSW)), site-specific Acts (such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 (Cth)) and other legislative arrangements for MPAs utilising existing fisheries or marine resource management legislation (such as the Living Marine Resources Management Act 1995 (Tas)). Focus is also placed on the challenges presented by the Commonwealth-State jurisdictional border at three nautical miles offshore.