Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000
LegislationReferenced in 58 bills
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.
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.
Police Powers and Responsibilities (Jack’s Law) Amendment Bill 2022
This bill extends and expands 'Jack's Law' -- police powers to scan people for concealed knives without a warrant. Named after 17-year-old Jack Beasley who was fatally stabbed in Surfers Paradise in 2019, the law now applies to all 15 safe night precincts across Queensland and all public transport stations and vehicles.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill strengthens Queensland police powers across several areas: extending monitoring periods for convicted child sex offenders, expanding covert investigation tools for cybercrime, allowing civilians to assist in undercover police operations, and introducing new offences to crack down on hooning events and their spectators.
Expanding Adult Crime, Adult Time and Taking a Strong Stance on Drugs and Anti-Social Behaviour Amendment Bill 2026
This bill expands Queensland's youth crime laws, overhauls the drug diversion system, and creates new police powers in designated business precincts. It adds 12 new offences to the Adult Crime, Adult Time scheme so young offenders face adult penalties for more serious crimes, replaces the three-chance Police Drug Diversion Program with a stricter one-chance framework, and allows the Minister to declare business and community precincts where police have enhanced powers to address anti-social behaviour.
Criminal Code (Serious Vilification and Hate Crimes) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill strengthens Queensland's hate crime and vilification laws by implementing recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry. It increases penalties for serious vilification, creates aggravated offences for crimes motivated by hatred based on race, religion, sexuality, sex characteristics or gender identity, and bans the public display of prescribed hate symbols such as Nazi imagery.
Summary Offences (Prevention of Knife Crime) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill makes it illegal to sell knives, swords, machetes, axes, Gel Blasters and other dangerous items to anyone under 18 in Queensland. It also bans the sale of weapons marketed to glorify violence — such as 'zombie knives' with violent imagery — and requires retailers to display warning signs and securely store particularly dangerous items. The bill responds to an 18% rise in knife-related offences since 2019 and a 22% rise among under-18s.
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.
Corrective Services (Emerging Technologies and Security) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill modernises Queensland's corrective services and youth detention laws to address emerging security threats and improve emergency preparedness. It creates new criminal offences for flying drones over prisons and youth detention centres, authorises x-ray body scanners and surveillance devices, overhauls the emergency declaration framework to cover disasters and pandemics, and strengthens information sharing between corrective services and partner agencies.
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.
State Emergency Service Bill 2023
This bill establishes the Queensland State Emergency Service (SES) as a standalone organisation under its own Act, replacing provisions previously contained in the Fire and Emergency Services Act 1990. It is part of a major reform of Queensland's emergency services that places the SES under the Queensland Police Service Commissioner and provides a dedicated legislative framework recognising the organisation's critical role in disaster response.
Inspector of Detention Services Bill 2021
This bill creates an independent Inspector of Detention Services to oversee Queensland's prisons, youth detention centres, community corrections centres, work camps and police watch-houses. The Inspector, held by the Queensland Ombudsman, will conduct regular inspections and reviews of detention facilities and report findings directly to Parliament, with the aim of preventing harm and improving conditions for people in custody.
Community Protection and Public Child Sex Offender Register (Daniel’s Law) Bill 2025
This bill creates Daniel's Law, a three-tiered public child sex offender register for Queensland. It allows police to publish details of missing offenders who have breached their conditions, lets residents view photos of high-risk offenders in their local area, and enables parents to check whether someone with unsupervised access to their child is a registered sex offender.
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.
Police Service Administration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2022
This bill amends several Acts to improve operations for the Queensland Police Service and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. It reforms the police discipline system, introduces automatic dismissal for officers sentenced to imprisonment, strengthens protections for confidential police information, streamlines weapons licensing, and modernises fire and emergency services legislation.
Criminal Code (Consent and Mistake of Fact) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill bundles several unrelated reforms: it clarifies Queensland's sexual consent laws in the Criminal Code based on Law Reform Commission recommendations, reforms the legal profession's Fidelity Guarantee Fund, strengthens alcohol-fuelled violence measures for licensed venues and nightlife areas, bans wagering inducements to protect online gamblers, and makes other miscellaneous amendments.
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.
Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Offender Prohibition Order) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill updates Queensland's laws for monitoring convicted child sex offenders to address modern technology-based offending. It requires offenders to report their use of anonymising software, hidden vault applications and the digital identifiers of all their devices, and gives police stronger powers to inspect those devices and enter offenders' homes to do so.
Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill tightens bail for serious repeat youth offenders, trials electronic ankle monitoring for 16-17 year olds in limited areas, gives police new powers to scan for knives in Gold Coast entertainment precincts, and strengthens owner onus rules for hooning offences. It responds to a small cohort of recidivist young offenders responsible for nearly half of all youth crime, recent knife murders on the Gold Coast, and ongoing community concern about dangerous driving.
Revenue and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging amendments across revenue, penalties, Indigenous community safety, cultural heritage, and transport infrastructure legislation. It expands electronic property settlement in Queensland, formalises several beneficial tax arrangements, improves the SPER debt management system, closes a loophole allowing homemade alcohol production in remote Indigenous communities, and makes governance changes to the Cross River Rail Delivery Authority.
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.
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.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill updates search and forensic procedure safeguards across Queensland law to recognise gender diversity, following the passage of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2023. It replaces sex-based requirements with gender-responsive ones, giving people being searched the right to express a gender preference. The bill also restricts how often prisoners can reapply for parole after refusal, expands who can assess at-risk prisoners, and clarifies planning rules for corrective services facilities.
Strengthening Community Safety Bill 2023
This bill toughens Queensland's response to serious repeat youth offending, particularly involving stolen motor vehicles. It increases maximum penalties for unlawful use of motor vehicles to up to 14 years imprisonment, makes it a criminal offence for children to breach bail conditions, creates a new 'serious repeat offender' declaration for sentencing, and establishes multi-agency panels in legislation to coordinate support for high-risk young people.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill makes several changes to policing and emergency services law. Its centrepiece is a major expansion of the Police Drug Diversion Program, allowing people caught with small quantities of any dangerous drug to be diverted to health-based programs instead of going to court. It also increases the maximum penalty for drug trafficking to life imprisonment, creates tougher penalties for evading police in aggravated circumstances, and introduces a standalone assault offence for attacks on fire and emergency services workers.
Penalties and Sentences (Sexual Offences) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill reforms how courts sentence sexual offenders in Queensland and creates a new offence for impersonating government agencies. It implements four recommendations from the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council to better recognise victim harm, restrict the use of 'good character' defences, and protect child victims aged 16-17.
Police Powers and Responsibilities (Making Jack’s Law Permanent) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill makes Jack's Law permanent and expands police powers to use hand held scanners to detect knives and other weapons across Queensland. It removes oversight requirements for scanning in designated locations, extends scanning to all public places, and also extends counter-terrorism detention powers for 15 years, confirms Marine Rescue Queensland's charitable status, and validates historical SES member appointments.
Summary Offences and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill creates new criminal offences for using 'dangerous attachment devices' during protests — specialised equipment like steel tubes, concrete-filled drums, and tripods designed to make it difficult and dangerous for police to remove protesters. It was introduced after a series of climate, mining, and animal welfare protests caused significant disruptions across Queensland, including a $1.3 million cost when a protester delayed coal trains at the Port of Brisbane for 14 hours. The bill passed with amendment.
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.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill amends ten pieces of legislation to update police powers, strengthen domestic violence protections, give the Prostitution Licensing Authority proper enforcement tools, and modernise weapons licensing rules. It also clarifies that law enforcement access to electronic devices extends to cloud-based and social media information.
Housing Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill reforms Queensland's rental laws to give tenants stronger protections and greater security. It ends no-grounds evictions, introduces minimum housing standards for all rental properties, strengthens protections for people experiencing domestic and family violence, creates a framework for renting with pets, and shields tenants from retaliatory action by landlords. It also exempts resident-operated freehold retirement villages from mandatory buyback obligations.
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.
Police Legislation (Efficiencies and Effectiveness) Amendment Bill 2021
This bill modernises Queensland Police Service operations by cutting red tape that takes officers away from frontline duties. It allows senior police to witness key documents instead of requiring a Justice of the Peace, expands powers to access locked digital devices during investigations, introduces faster saliva drug testing for officers after critical incidents, and updates firearms rules including extending temporary storage periods and supporting the permanent national firearms amnesty.
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.
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.
Police Service Administration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill modernises the security arrangements for Queensland government buildings by repealing the State Buildings Protective Security Act 1983 and moving its provisions into existing police legislation. It creates a single category of 'protective services officer' with standardised security powers and also streamlines identity card requirements for police officers working under Parks and Wildlife legislation.
Criminal Law (Raising the Age of Responsibility) Amendment Bill 2021
This bill sought to raise the age of criminal responsibility in Queensland from 10 to 14 years old. Children under 14 would no longer have been charged, prosecuted, detained, or given criminal records. It also required the release of children already in custody and the expungement of their records. This bill failed at the second reading and did not become law.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill makes a broad set of changes to Queensland's policing, corrective services and child protection laws. It expands police powers to ban people carrying knives in safe night precincts, creates tougher parole rules for the most serious murderers, strengthens the No Body No Parole framework, introduces new criminal offences for killing or seriously injuring police and corrective services animals, and updates child sex offender monitoring and blue card screening to cover additional Commonwealth offences.
Criminal Code (Decriminalising Sex Work) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill decriminalises sex work in Queensland by repealing the Prostitution Act 1999 and removing sex-work-specific criminal offences. Based on the Queensland Law Reform Commission's 47 recommendations, it replaces the existing brothel licensing system with a framework that treats sex work like any other lawful occupation, while introducing tough new offences to protect children from exploitation and prevent coercion.
Tow Truck and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill regulates the tow truck industry's removal of vehicles from private property, reinstates driving offence accountability for 17-year-olds, and simplifies toll road demand notices. It was prompted by an independent investigation into predatory towing practices at private car parks across Queensland.
Police and Other Legislation (Identity and Biometric Capability) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill amends six Queensland Acts to enable the state's participation in a national facial biometric identity matching system, strengthen police access to driver licence photos, increase penalties for explosive offences, and provide temporary extended liquor trading on the Gold Coast during the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
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.
Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill puts frontline health workers on hospital boards and cracks down on illegal vaping. It requires each Hospital and Health Board to include at least one doctor, nurse or allied health professional who actually works at that hospital, delivering on a 2024 election commitment. It also allows Queensland Health to immediately destroy seized vaping products instead of storing them for weeks, and lets courts make convicted sellers pay enforcement costs.
Tobacco and Other Smoking Products Amendment Bill 2023
This bill overhauls Queensland's smoking laws by requiring all businesses selling tobacco, vapes and other smoking products to hold a licence, expanding smoke-free public spaces, cracking down on illicit tobacco, and updating advertising rules for the digital age. It aims to continue driving down smoking rates while protecting Queenslanders — especially children — from the harms of smoking and second-hand smoke.
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.
Tow Truck Bill 2023
This bill repeals the Tow Truck Act 1973 and replaces it with a modern regulatory framework for tow truck operations in Queensland. It introduces a new accreditation system for operators, drivers and assistants, strengthens penalties for non-compliance, and updates enforcement powers to better protect consumers, particularly motorists who are vulnerable after a vehicle incident.
Corrective Services (Promoting Safety) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill amends Queensland's corrective services laws to improve safety for victims of crime, frontline corrective services officers, prisoners, and the wider community. It strengthens the QCS Victims Register, cracks down on prisoners misusing phone systems for domestic violence, extends police powers over dangerous sex offenders on supervision, and reforms the Parole Board to include victim and First Nations representation.
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 2018
This bill implements Queensland's 'No Card, No Start' policy, requiring everyone to hold a blue card (working with children clearance) before starting child-related work. It modernises the blue card application process with online applications, creates a register of home-based care services to better monitor children's safety in foster care, kinship care and family day care settings, and expands the list of offences that permanently disqualify a person from working with children.
Justice Legislation (Links to Terrorist Activity) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill implements a national agreement to make it harder for people with demonstrated links to terrorism to get bail or parole in Queensland. It amends four Acts to reverse the normal presumption in favour of bail for terrorism-linked defendants, create a presumption against parole for prisoners with terrorism connections, and impose stricter conditions on children with terrorism links in youth detention.
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.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland police powers and several other Acts. Its most significant reforms create new search powers for high-risk missing persons, strengthen the framework for investigating drivers who flee police, enable court-ordered access to locked electronic devices at crime scenes, and streamline parole board decision-making for serious offenders.
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.
Fighting Antisemitism and Keeping Guns out of the Hands of Terrorists and Criminals Amendment Bill 2026
This bill responds to the December 2025 Bondi Beach terrorist attack by strengthening laws against antisemitism and hate crimes, and significantly tightening firearms controls in Queensland. It introduces new offences for hate expressions and intimidation near places of worship, dramatically increases penalties for weapons offences, bans 3D-printed firearm blueprints, restricts weapons licences to Australian citizens, and expands police powers to disrupt criminal activity.
Queensland Community Safety Bill 2024
This bill introduces a comprehensive package of community safety measures across policing, criminal law, firearms regulation, youth justice, domestic and family violence, and road safety. It creates new offences and increases penalties for knife crime, dangerous driving, attacks on emergency workers, and posting criminal content online, while also modernising police operations through electronic document service and signatures.
Weapons and Other Legislation (Firearms Offences) Amendment Bill 2019
This bill proposed to crack down on firearms crime by introducing Firearm Prohibition Orders, creating new offences for shooting at buildings and possessing 3D gun blueprints, and significantly increasing penalties for weapons offences. It was a private member's bill introduced by Trevor Watts MP and lapsed at the end of the 56th Parliament without becoming law.
Making Queensland Safer (Adult Crime, Adult Time) Amendment Bill 2025
This bill expands Queensland's 'Adult Crime, Adult Time' policy by adding 20 serious offences to the list of crimes for which young offenders can be sentenced as adults. It is part of the Government's Making Queensland Safer Plan and follows advice from an Expert Legal Panel. The bill also improves victim notification arrangements.