MONOGRAPH 40 volume 1

54 Transparent and consistent sentencing in the Land and Environment Court of NSW: orders for costs as an aspect of punishment Judicial Commission of NSW Figure 5: Objective seriousness of environmental planning and protection offences in the LEC — 2000 to 2015 (principal offence only; “Top 10” offence categories) 0 20 40 60 80 100 All other offences Erect building w/o consent Air pollution Native veg offences Harm flora/fauna/ecology Discharge from ship s 125 offences Waste offences Contravene licence Development w/o consent Pollute waters Tier 1 offences ALL OFFENCES 54 37 9 44 56 59 36 5 62 33 5 55 42 4 33 43 24 68 30 3 87 8 5 30 48 22 29 54 17 30 70 78 22 51 43 6 Per cent Medium Low High In general, offences against environmental planning laws are characterised by little, if any, environmental damage. For instance, all cases of “Erect building without consent” offences under the EPA Act involved either no environmental harm (78%) or low environmental harm (22%). Similarly, 80% of “Offend against direction or prohibition” offences under s 125 of the EPA Act , hereafter referred to as “s 125 offences”, involved low levels of harm or no actual environmental harm. The most common breaches of environmental planning laws before the LEC, namely “Carry out development without consent/not in accordance with consent” also recorded notably small levels of “low” harm (40%) or “no” harm (40%). Nonetheless, one in every five (20%) cases within this offence category did cause medium or serious levels of harm to the environment. 2.2.4 Objective seriousness by offence type Given that environmental harm is a major consideration for the LEC in assessing the objective seriousness of an environmental offence, it is not a surprise to see a high degree of concordance between these two factors, especially once the type of environmental offence is taken into account ( Figure 5 ). For “Tier 1 offences”, “Waste offences”, and “Harm flora/fauna/ecology offences”, the percentage of offences rated as being of high objective seriousness directly reflected the proportion of offences (within those offence types) that were assessed by the LEC as having resulted in serious environmental harm. Low objective seriousness was a feature of environmental planning offences.