The Great Barrier Reef is a vast area of enormous biological, including human, importance. In recent years the significance of the Great Barrier Reef has been growing because of the increased interest in global climate change and the role of the reef as a potential predictor of the impact of climate change, especially upon the marine environment. The Great Barrier Reef has also legally been important because of its status as a marine park and World Heritage site. To that end, the Great Barrier Reef has specifically been regulated by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (‘GBRMPA‘) in accordance with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 (Cth). Those parts of the reef within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (‘Marine Park’) have particular protections under the Act and activities within those parts ordinarily require permission from GBRMPA. Activities authorised by GBRMPA are exempt from the environmental assessment provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (‘EPBC Act’), the Commonwealth’s principal environmental legislation.

Public awareness of the consequences of international law for Australians was highlighted during the battle in the 1980s to save the Franklin River in south-west Tasmania. That battle, which eventually resulted in the Commonwealth Parliament relying upon the provisions of the 1972 Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage to enact the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983 (Cth), was finally resolved when the High Court of Australia in the Tasmanian Dain case upheld the validity of the legislation on the basis of the Constitution, s 51(xxix), the Commonwealth's external affairs power. This decision set off a sequence of events which resulted in subsequent High Court decisions that gave further scope to the external affairs power and which also gave the Hawke ALP government great confidence as to its ability to rely upon conventions and treaties, both bilateral and multilateral, as a source of legislative power.

Dispute settlement is entrenched in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) through the Part XV compulsory mechanisms. It is also reflected in UNCLOS's indication that delimitation of the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf is to be by way of agreement between coastal states. While maritime boundary delimitation may be viewed as dominated by judicialization, that is not reflected in UNCLOS. The maritime boundary delimitation project unleashed by UNCLOS gave primacy to delimitation by agreement, with third party settlement under Part XV the secondary mechanism. The 2018 Australia/Timor-Leste maritime boundary settlement highlights how, even when Part XV third party mechanisms were used, the coastal states were able to reach agreement on a maritime boundary by negotiation, without recourse to judicialization.