Criminal law of Australia

This division is due to the Commonwealth Parliament's limited legislative powers under Australian constitutional law.

The code states of Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania have wholly replaced the system of judge-made criminal law inherited from England with legislative instruments that exhaustively define the criminal law within those states.

The Australian legal system inherits from that of the United Kingdom, due to Australia's colonisation by the British Empire.

This is due to Australia's constitutional arrangements in which the Commonwealth has been granted only a limited and exhaustive list of subjects upon which it can validly enact legislation.

For instance, the Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994[7] overrode sodomy laws in Tasmania.

[Note 3] The Criminal Code Act 1995 has been amended many times, including for purposes of national security and counter-terrorism.

[8] In February 2025, federal hate crime legislation was implemented within Australia with explicit “mandatory sentencing of up to 7 years imprisonment”.

[24] Most crimes in South Australia are codified in the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA).

The act is sometimes referred to as the 'Griffith Code', named for Sir Samuel Griffith, who was responsible for its production.

The Griffith Code was later adopted by other jurisdictions, including Western Australia, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.

Section 4 in appendix B of the Criminal Code Act Compilation Act 1913 (WA) provides that:[27]"No person shall be liable to be tried or punished in Western Australia as for an offence, except under the express provisions of the Code, or some other statute law of Western Australia, or under the express provisions of some statute of the Commonwealth of Australia..."The effect of this provision is that no person can be tried for offences that are not explicitly provided for in legislation, abolishing offences at common law.

The Northern Territory has also exhaustively codified its criminal laws in a manner similar to Queensland and Western Australia.