Criminal law of Australia

The criminal law of Australia is generally administered by individual jurisdictions in the Commonwealth of Australia. These jurisdictions include the six states, the Commonwealth, and the self-governing territories. It is in large part a matter for the states, with only a small subset of criminal activities reserved for Commonwealth government to prosecute.Common Law and Code Jurisdictions Australian criminal law was originally received from the English common law, which continued to evolve in Australian courts. Although all states also have some legislation on the criminal law, in some states criminal law has been codified whereas in other the bulk of the law is based on the common law. These may be referred to as ‘common law jurisdictions’ and ‘code jurisdictions’.New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria are common law jurisdictions. These States have Crimes Acts which list the most common offence and fix their penalties, but do not always exhaustively define the elements of the offence e.g. Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). It is settled law in the common law jurisdictions that only Parliaments, not the courts, can create new offence.The “code jurisdictions” are the Commonwealth, the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia. In these jurisdictions a statutory code has been introduced to be a comprehensive statement of criminal law, and are interpreted to replace the common law except in cases of ambiguity. Codification in some cases involved a simple enactment of the common law into a statutory instrument. In other cases the changes were greater as the code was based on legislative instruments from other jurisdictions.Legislation (including the criminal codes) is further refined by the method of judicial precedent and interpretation.