Legal and Social Expectations for a Farmer's Duty of Care

Abstract

The term 'duty of care' conceals a conflict of multiple meanings and unresolved debate about norms of environmental protection for farmers. This complexity makes clear definition of its practical meaning difficult. Despite this, a statutory duty of care is used in several Australian jurisdictions to define the environmental protection responsibilities of farmers. Such generally defined statutory duties in legislation with the lofty (and equally general) goals of achieving ecologically sustainable development are likely to lead to dispute when their practical meaning needs to be defined. In the absence of direct legal precedent it is likely that a common law interpretation of a duty of care will be utilised to give clear meaning. Dispute over interpretation of statutory duties is likely since their enforcement will probably impact the proprietary or economic interests of farmers. When this occurs it is expected that courts will become involved, and a tension will be exposed between the minimum accountability of 'reasonable care' under a common law interpretation of a duty of care, and the virtuous expectations of performance embodied within the statutory duties. This thesis uses a moot court experiment to test whether a common law interpretation will by necessity be used by courts to interpret practical meaning for a poorly defined statutory duty of care for environmental protection, and to identify what this might mean for the development of statutory duties of care for the environment.