3 There has been much conflict in the common law world on the issue of which is to have primacy, the basic principle that no person shall be criminally responsible for an act unless it is voluntary and intentional or the principle that, generally speaking, self induced intoxication does not negative criminal responsibility. Indeed, it is true to say that it has split the common law world right down the middle. And that is not surprising. In a real sense truly involuntary activity may be characterised as not the act of the accused. On that characterisation, that the act should be voluntary to ground criminal liability is, at common law, part of the actus reus and not the mens rea. If proof of voluntariness is lacking, according to this notion, at common law, the Crown has failed to prove the actus reus let alone the mens rea. I believe that Barwick CJ inclined to this view and that influenced him in his decision to reject the decision in R v Majewski [1976] UKHL 2; [1977] AC 443 in O'Connor v The Queen (1979-80) [1980] HCA 17; 146 CLR 64. And see Ryan v The Queen [1967] HCA 2; (1967) 121 CLR 205. On that analysis, of course, it is difficult to justify the decision to treat the accused as a criminal. It can only be justified and, in the decision in Majewski's case, it is justified on the basis that, if the only explanation for the involuntary nature of the act is self induced intoxication, public policy insists that, generally speaking, that state is no excuse and that the act was voluntary and intentional is an irrebuttable presumption supplied by the law as an expression of the relevant public policy. Of course that presumption operates only for the purpose of denying exculpatory effect to the evidence of drink taken. The realisation that it is really that presumption which lies at the basis of the Majewski decision (and at the basis of our law in Tasmania) takes the mind of the informed Australian reader to the strong condemnation by the late Sir Owen Dixon of the notion propounded in Director of Public Prosecutions v Smith that a man is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequence of his acts (see Parker v The Queen [1963] HCA 14; (1963) 111 CLR 610 at 632 and Smyth v The Queen [1957] HCA 24; (1957) 98 CLR 163). The real vice which his Honour saw in that notion, I suggest, is that it imposed a view on the community's representatives, ie the members of the jury. (See what he said in Thomas v The King [1937] HCA 83; (1937) 59 CLR 279 at 309). If in Smith's case the court had said that as a matter of fact in the great majority of cases the jury could safely infer that the accused intended the natural and probable consequences of his act, the statement would have been one to which no valid objection could be taken. In fact, such a statement is a valid and useful intellectual tool (see Stapleton v The Queen (1952) 86 CLR at p365; The Queen v O'Connor (1979-80) [1980] HCA 17; 146 CLR 64 at 146 per Murphy J and R v Moloney [985] 1 All ER 1025 at 1038-9. However, it does not follow that the presumption underpinning the Majewski decision should be condemned because of the condemnation of the presumption asserted in Smith's case. The presumption in Majewski is properly imposed on the jury because it is in truth a rule of law expressing basic public policy; as such it is binding on the jury like any other rule of law. But I have sought to show that it is a presumption operating to displace for certain cases what is, in the general run of cases, regarded as essential and basic notions of justice. It is thus a very sensitive area and that it has split the common law world comes as no surprise.