The activities offshore that attract their
own, and in many cases separate but overlapping laws, include offshore energy, criminal laws, shipping,
fisheries, defence, marine pollution regulation, salvage and wreck.
These two articles have endeavoured to cover the history and development of many of these areas of law and
in all cases they have endeavoured to describe, or at least indicate, the extent and complexity of the Australian
offshore laws. They have not provided a critical analysis, as that is for another day, beyond indicating that the
result is that Australia’s offshore laws are overly complex and in need of revision, starting with the OCS