We begin with the rule of law, and this is a very important point. Chair, the member's question allows me to underscore this. Parliament chooses which laws it makes and which laws it doesn't. In this case Parliament has chosen to create 44 rules and to put them in statutes. They're not guidelines or policies. Parliament voted to put them in statutes, 25 prohibitions and 19 mandatory obligations. It's open to Parliament to repeal them.
In the case of every other law that I know of enacted by Parliament, that is, the laws affecting common folk, there are penalties for those breaches, and then a lot of the considerations the member has asked about are dealt with in the judicial process. In many statutes due diligence is a defence. In many statutes there's a requirement of both a mens rea and an actus reus, that is, a mental element giving rise to the offence, and the actual activity giving rise to the offence. We trust the judicial process.
The member is correct that there are sensitivities in balancing considerations, but for common folk, we don't say that because it's very difficult to look at whether a law was broken or not there are no penalties. Ordinary people are subject to fines. They're prosecuted. What we think is a matter of rule of law.... Actually, it's absolutely utterly incompatible with the rule of law for those who write the law to say, “Well, because of these considerations, for us there are no penalties.”