Evidence Act 1977
LegislationReferenced in 22 bills
Victims' Commissioner and Sexual Violence Review Board Bill 2024
This bill establishes a Victims' Commissioner as an independent statutory officer to promote and protect the rights of victims of crime in Queensland. It also creates a Sexual Violence Review Board to identify and address systemic issues in how sexual offences are reported, investigated and prosecuted. The bill was recommended by the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce and the Independent Commission of Inquiry into Queensland Police Service responses to domestic and family violence.
Domestic and Family Violence Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill strengthens Queensland's response to domestic and family violence by giving police the power to issue 12-month protection directions without going to court, piloting GPS ankle bracelet monitoring for high-risk perpetrators, and expanding video-recorded evidence to all Magistrates Courts statewide. It also improves oversight of providers delivering DFV intervention programs.
Forensic Science Queensland Bill 2023
This bill establishes Forensic Science Queensland as an independent statutory body responsible for providing forensic services to Queensland's criminal justice system. It responds to the 2022 Commission of Inquiry into Forensic DNA Testing, which found serious problems with DNA evidence handling and made 123 recommendations. Queensland becomes the first Australian state to have dedicated legislation governing forensic science services.
Making Queensland Safer Bill 2024
This bill implements the government's 'Making Queensland Safer Plan', centred on the 'adult crime, adult time' policy. It allows courts to sentence children to the same penalties as adults for 13 serious offences including murder, manslaughter, robbery and dangerous driving. It also removes the longstanding principle that detention should be a last resort for children and makes victim impact the primary consideration in youth sentencing.
Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill makes a broad package of reforms across over 30 Acts in the Queensland justice portfolio. It modernises the coronial system, streamlines criminal proceedings, strengthens protections for vulnerable witnesses, closes gaps in the dangerous prisoners scheme, updates legal profession regulation, and clarifies court jurisdictional limits.
Criminal Code (Child Sexual Offences Reform) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill reforms Queensland's criminal justice response to child sexual abuse, implementing key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It creates mandatory reporting obligations for all adults, introduces new offences for possessing child abuse objects, strengthens sentencing for child sexual offenders, and establishes a pilot scheme to help vulnerable witnesses give evidence in court.
Transport Legislation (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2022
This bill makes a range of improvements to Queensland's transport laws. It broadens the types of road safety programs that can be funded from camera fine revenue, allows a wider range of motorised mobility devices to be used legally, extends legal protections for health professionals reporting unfit interstate drivers, streamlines court evidence rules for vehicle modification offences, and extends accommodation works powers to rail projects.
Disability Services and Other Legislation (Worker Screening) Amendment Bill 2020
This bill establishes a nationally consistent worker screening system for people working with Australians with disability under the NDIS, replacing Queensland's existing yellow card system. It ensures that screening clearances are portable across all states and territories, introduces ongoing national criminal history monitoring, and streamlines the process for workers who also need a blue card to work with children with disability.
Termination of Pregnancy Bill 2018
This bill decriminalises termination of pregnancy in Queensland by repealing Criminal Code provisions that made it a crime punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. Based on 28 recommendations from the Queensland Law Reform Commission, it creates a new legal framework treating termination as a health matter rather than a criminal one, with a gestational limit of 22 weeks for termination on request and additional safeguards for later terminations.
COVID-19 Emergency Response Bill 2020
This bill was Queensland's second emergency legislative response to the COVID-19 pandemic, passed in April 2020. It created temporary powers to protect residential and commercial tenants from eviction, enabled Parliament and courts to operate remotely, established a Small Business Commissioner, and allowed legal documents to be witnessed electronically. All provisions expired on 31 December 2020.
Criminal Justice Legislation (Sexual Violence and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2024
This bill implements the third tranche of legislative reforms recommended by the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce, focusing on sexual violence and women and girls' experiences in Queensland's criminal justice system. It creates a new criminal offence to protect 16 and 17 year olds from sexual exploitation by adults in positions of authority, strengthens courtroom protections for victim-survivors, reforms evidence rules to make it easier to admit relevant past conduct in criminal trials, and extends non-contact orders from two to five years. The bill was passed with amendment.
Meriba Omasker Kaziw Kazipa (Torres Strait Islander Traditional Child Rearing Practice) Bill 2020
This bill creates a legal framework to recognise Torres Strait Islander traditional child rearing practice (Ailan Kastom), under which children are permanently placed with cultural parents within the extended family. It establishes a new Commissioner to decide applications for cultural recognition orders that transfer legal parentage, so that a child's birth certificate and legal identity match their cultural reality. This is the first legislation of its kind in Australia.
Evidence and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill makes changes across several areas of Queensland's justice system. It introduces shield laws to protect journalists' confidential sources in court, creates a framework for a pilot where police-recorded video statements can be used as evidence in domestic and family violence criminal proceedings, and establishes a process for viewing deceased persons' remains in criminal cases following the Daniel Morcombe inquest.
Crime and Corruption and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill reforms the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) following several review reports that found problems with the agency's powers, culture and oversight. It streamlines the CCC's investigation powers, introduces journalist shield laws for CCC proceedings, requires the Director of Public Prosecutions to review corruption charges before they are laid, and sets a fixed seven-year non-renewable term for CCC commissioners.
Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill reforms Queensland's youth justice system by creating stronger bail protections for children, reducing the time young people spend in custody on remand, and banning electronic tracking devices on children. It implements the Queensland Government's Youth Justice Strategy 2019-2023 and its principle that detention should be a last resort for young people.
Domestic and Family Violence Protection (Combating Coercive Control) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill strengthens Queensland's domestic and family violence laws by implementing key recommendations from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce. It recognises coercive control as a pattern of behaviour, modernises the stalking offence to cover technology-facilitated abuse, reforms court processes for competing protection order applications, and expands evidence rules so courts and juries better understand domestic violence dynamics. It also updates outdated sexual offence terminology and makes unrelated changes to the Coroners Act, Oaths Act, and Telecommunications Interception Act.
Police Service Administration (Discipline Reform) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill overhauls the Queensland Police Service discipline system, which had remained largely unchanged since 1990. It introduces faster complaint resolution processes, modernised sanctions that focus on rehabilitation alongside punishment, expanded oversight by the Crime and Corruption Commission, and formalises professional development strategies as responses to officer misconduct.
Working with Children (Risk Management and Screening) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill overhauls Queensland's blue card system, which screens people who work or volunteer with children. It introduces a fairer risk-based assessment, expands the types of jobs and businesses requiring blue cards, and begins removing the blue card requirement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kinship carers. It also enables sharing of child protection court records with family law courts across Australia.
Child Safe Organisations Bill 2024
This bill creates a mandatory child safe organisations system for Queensland, requiring organisations that work with children to meet 10 child safe standards and to report and investigate allegations of child abuse by their workers. It implements key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, with the Queensland Family and Child Commission overseeing the system.
Criminal Code and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill strengthens Queensland's criminal law response to child homicide, following a Sentencing Advisory Council inquiry that found community expectations were not being met. It requires courts to treat a child's vulnerability as an aggravating factor in manslaughter sentencing, expands the definition of murder to include reckless indifference to human life, and increases the maximum penalty for failing to supply necessaries to dependants from 3 to 7 years.
Public Records Bill 2023
This bill replaces the Public Records Act 2002 with a modernised law governing how Queensland's government records are created, managed and made accessible to the public. It updates definitions to cover digital records, strengthens protections against unlawful destruction of records, and recognises the importance of public records for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Criminal Law (Coercive Control and Affirmative Consent) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill makes coercive control a criminal offence in Queensland and introduces an affirmative model of consent for sexual offences. It implements recommendations from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce and other inquiries to strengthen protections for victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence across the criminal justice system.