Environmental Protection Act 1994
LegislationReferenced in 35 bills
Vegetation Management and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill reinstates stronger vegetation clearing laws in Queensland, reversing changes made in 2013 that loosened protections. It ends broadscale clearing of remnant vegetation for agriculture, extends protections for regrowth vegetation to freehold and Indigenous land, protects waterways in all Great Barrier Reef catchments, and significantly increases penalties for illegal clearing.
Waste Reduction and Recycling (Waste Levy) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill introduces a waste levy on waste delivered to landfill sites in Queensland, starting at $70 per tonne from March 2019. It aims to discourage landfill disposal, encourage recycling, stop interstate waste dumping, and fund a $100 million resource recovery program. Households are protected from direct cost increases through annual payments to local governments.
Fisheries (Sustainable Fisheries Strategy) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill overhauls Queensland's fisheries laws to implement the Sustainable Fisheries Strategy 2017-2027. It introduces harvest strategies as the main tool for managing fish stocks, cracks down on the illegal sale of fish (black marketing) with new trafficking offences and stronger inspector powers, and formally recognises charter fishing and traditional fishing as distinct sectors.
Mineral and Energy Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill makes wide-ranging changes across Queensland's mining, energy and water sectors. It introduces industrial manslaughter offences for the resources industry, strengthens financial assurance requirements to prevent mining companies from abandoning sites without proper rehabilitation, streamlines resource authority approval processes, extends energy consumer protections, and increases transparency of water infrastructure charges in South East Queensland.
Environmental Protection (Great Barrier Reef Protection Measures) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill strengthens Queensland's laws to protect the Great Barrier Reef from agricultural and industrial pollution, and updates how the state classifies threatened species. It expands regulation of farming practices across all Reef catchment areas to reduce nutrient and sediment run-off that harms coral and marine ecosystems.
Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment Bill 2025
This bill allows disused greenhouse gas exploration wells to be converted into water supply bores and given to rural landholders for free. After Queensland banned carbon storage in the Great Artesian Basin in 2024, the company CTSCo was left with wells that would normally be plugged and abandoned. This bill instead lets those wells be repurposed as a useful water resource for farming.
Major Sports Facilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill updates Queensland's major sports facilities and major events laws. It removes liquor licensing barriers so Gold Coast stadiums can host concerts until 10:30pm like Suncorp Stadium, significantly increases penalties for ticket scalping, modernises the Stadiums Queensland board, and improves the flexibility of event regulation. The bill was passed with amendment.
Major Sports Facilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill makes several changes to Queensland's major sports facilities and major events laws. It allows Gold Coast stadiums to host concerts until 10:30pm (matching Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane), significantly increases penalties for ticket scalping, modernises Stadiums Queensland's board governance, and updates advertising restrictions to cover drones.
Natural Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill makes a broad range of amendments across the Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It caps mining exploration permits at 15 years, strengthens rural water compliance with higher penalties, simplifies Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land processes, modernises water authority board governance to improve gender balance, and supports the establishment of CleanCo as a new clean energy electricity generator.
COVID-19 Emergency Response and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill extends Queensland's COVID-19 emergency response legislation from 31 December 2020 to 30 April 2021, keeping temporary measures in place across tenancy, courts, health and other areas. It also makes standalone reforms to support artisan distillers, reform local government vacancy processes, and enable COVID-safe by-elections.
Debt Reduction and Savings Bill 2021
This bill implements the Queensland Government's Savings and Debt Plan through a series of structural reforms. It transfers the Titles Registry to a government-owned company within the Queensland Future Fund to improve the State's balance sheet, abolishes three statutory bodies (Building Queensland, the Queensland Productivity Commission, and the Public Safety Business Agency), and introduces measures to modernise government operations including a fee unit model and mandatory digital publication.
Property Law Bill 2023
This bill replaces Queensland's nearly 50-year-old Property Law Act 1974 with a modernised framework covering how property is bought, sold, leased, and mortgaged. It introduces a new statutory seller disclosure scheme requiring sellers to provide standardised information to buyers before contracts are signed, updates the law to support electronic conveyancing and digital transactions, and removes outdated provisions that no longer reflect modern property practice.
Waste Reduction and Recycling and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill makes several changes to Queensland's waste laws. It bans the outdoor release of helium balloons and sky lanterns, removes the waste levy exemption for clean earth sent to landfill, introduces circular economy principles, sets a 2025 deadline for phasing out plastic items attached to shelf-ready products, and adds transparency rules for how councils report waste levy payments on rate notices.
Environmental Protection (Efficiency and Streamlining) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill reforms Queensland's environmental regulation to reduce red tape and improve responsiveness. It introduces a new risk-based system for classifying and regulating environmentally relevant activities, streamlines environmental impact assessments, strengthens groundwater protections for bore owners, and creates a single permit for tourism operators working across multiple public land tenures.
Economic Development and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill updates a wide range of planning, development and disaster recovery laws in Queensland. It modernises how Priority Development Areas are managed and enforced, adjusts Building Queensland's business case thresholds, expands the Queensland Reconstruction Authority's role to cover all types of natural disasters, and makes numerous improvements to the planning framework.
Justice and Other Legislation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Amendment Bill 2020
This bill amends over 20 Queensland Acts to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency. It provides temporary financial relief for workers, businesses, body corporate owners, and local governments, adjusts operational rules for health, disability, corrective services, and youth detention facilities, and creates new enforcement powers including court-ordered COVID-19 testing of people who cough, sneeze, or spit on others during an offence. Most provisions expired on 31 December 2020.
Environmental Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill reforms Queensland's framework for rehabilitating land disturbed by mining and resource activities. It creates a statutory Rehabilitation Commissioner to independently advise on best practice rehabilitation and publicly report on how well mine sites are being restored. It also overhauls the residual risk framework so the State can better manage former resource sites after companies hand back their environmental authorities, including establishing a dedicated fund to pay for ongoing management and remediation.
Mineral and Energy Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill reforms Queensland's framework for managing the coexistence of resource, renewable energy, and agricultural industries. It introduces a major new system for managing coal seam gas induced land subsidence, expands the roles of key coexistence institutions, streamlines regulatory processes across resources legislation, and modernises the Financial Provisioning Scheme for mining rehabilitation.
Land and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill makes a broad range of administrative and streamlining amendments to Queensland's land, resources and environmental legislation. It modernises outdated processes, improves state land management, reforms stock route governance, and updates how vegetation management data is maintained.
Tobacco and Other Smoking Products (Dismantling Illegal Trade) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill significantly strengthens Queensland's ability to crack down on the illegal trade in tobacco, vapes and other nicotine products. It extends the time shops can be forced to close from 72 hours to three months, creates new offences for landlords who allow illegal trade on their premises, and gives Queensland Health powers to conduct covert 'test purchase' operations to catch illegal sellers.
Public Health and Other Legislation (Further Extension of Expiring Provisions) Amendment Bill 2021
This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency laws from 30 September 2021 to 30 April 2022. It keeps in place the Chief Health Officer's powers to issue public health directions, require quarantine, and restrict movement, while also reforming the quarantine fee system to allow prepayment by prescribed traveller cohorts and third-party liability for fees.
Agriculture and Fisheries and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill makes sweeping changes across Queensland's agriculture, fisheries and animal management laws. It bans dangerous dog breeds, introduces statewide dog control rules with tough penalties including imprisonment, sets up camera and observer monitoring on commercial fishing boats to protect the Great Barrier Reef, strengthens biosecurity emergency powers, and reforms several other agricultural and animal welfare laws.
Mineral and Energy Resources (Financial Provisioning) Bill 2018
This bill establishes a Financial Provisioning Scheme to protect Queensland from the cost of cleaning up mine sites when resource companies fail to rehabilitate the land. It replaces the old individual financial assurance system with a pooled fund model, where companies pay annual contributions based on their risk level, and introduces enforceable Progressive Rehabilitation and Closure Plans to ensure mined land is progressively restored throughout the life of a mine.
Mineral, Water and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland's mineral resources and water management laws. It improves dispute resolution between landholders and resource companies, requires climate change to be explicitly considered in water planning, recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural values in water plans, and gives the government new emergency powers to address urgent water quality problems.
Land, Explosives and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to laws governing land, explosives, gas safety, and mining within Queensland's Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It introduces security clearances for people who handle explosives, modernises compliance powers for state land, protects Aboriginal freehold land on Cape York Peninsula from mining, supports Indigenous home ownership, facilitates electronic conveyancing, and addresses gas safety and abandoned mining infrastructure.
Plumbing and Drainage Bill 2018
This bill replaces Queensland's Plumbing and Drainage Act 2002 with a modernised framework that simplifies plumbing approvals, strengthens penalties for unlicensed work, and introduces a new licence for mechanical services workers including those installing hospital gas systems. It consolidates all technical plumbing standards into a single code and gives local governments updated enforcement powers.
Nature Conservation (Special Wildlife Reserves) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill creates a new type of protected area called a 'special wildlife reserve' for privately owned or managed land with outstanding conservation value. It gives private land the same level of legal protection as a national park, banning mining, forestry, and fossicking while keeping the land in private ownership. The bill also ensures conservation agreements survive changes in land tenure and extends environmental regulation to cover activities straddling state and Commonwealth waters in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Local Government (Councillor Conduct) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill reforms Queensland's councillor conduct complaints system based on a parliamentary committee inquiry that found the system was too slow and resource-intensive. It also strengthens councillor conflict of interest rules, introduces compulsory training for councillors, modernises advertising requirements, and makes amendments to support the Queen's Wharf Brisbane development.
Environmental Protection (Powers and Penalties) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill strengthens Queensland's environmental protection laws by modernising the powers and penalties available to regulators and creating new obligations for polluters. It implements recommendations from a 2022 independent review that found existing tools were too reactive, and introduces proactive measures including a new duty to restore contaminated environments and an offence for breaching the general environmental duty.
Nature Conservation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill confirms that Queensland government electronic systems can legally be used to automatically issue routine environmental and wildlife permits. It retrospectively validates permits that were automatically issued since 2017 and fixes an enforcement gap created by recent legislative changes to the Environmental Protection Act.
Environmental Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill modernises Queensland's environmental protection laws by amending the Environmental Protection Act 1994 and several related Acts. It streamlines regulatory processes for environmental authorities and impact assessments, strengthens compliance powers for environmental inspectors, creates temporary authority provisions for emergency situations, improves contaminated land management, and bans mining in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
COVID-19 Emergency Response and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency laws until 30 September 2021, continuing protections and flexible arrangements across tenancy, courts, corrections, gaming, and other areas. It also gives local governments new powers to adjust rates mid-year, hold COVID-safe by-elections, and continue remote council meetings.
Housing Availability and Affordability (Planning and Other Legislation Amendment) Bill 2023
This bill amends Queensland's planning laws to address the housing availability crisis. It gives the State new powers to acquire land for development infrastructure, creates a streamlined 'state facilitated application' process for priority housing developments, introduces an Urban Investigation Zone to manage growth areas, modernises outdated Development Control Plans, reduces red tape for urban encroachment registrations, and updates various operational aspects of the planning framework.
Planning (Social Impact and Community Benefit) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill introduces a community benefit system requiring developers of prescribed projects (initially renewable energy developments) to assess social impacts and negotiate agreements with local governments before lodging planning applications. It also restructures the governance and delivery framework for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and makes administrative changes to Economic Development Queensland.
Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill makes broad amendments across Queensland's health legislation, with the most significant changes strengthening rights and protections for mental health patients. It reforms electroconvulsive therapy approval processes, adopts a stronger rights-based approach for patient transfers, improves support for victims of unlawful acts, and expands allied health professionals' access to patient information. It also allows health students to assist in pregnancy terminations and clarifies that human milk is not regulated as human tissue.