Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service
OrganisationReferenced in 26 bills
Child Protection Reform Amendment Bill 2017
This bill rewrites large parts of Queensland's Child Protection Act 1999 to give children in long-term out-of-home care more stability and to strengthen cultural protections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. It introduces a new 'permanent care order' lasting until age 18, limits successive short-term orders to two years, extends support for young people leaving care up to age 25, and simplifies how agencies share information to protect children at risk.
Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2016
This bill removes the so-called 'gay panic' defence by stopping killers from using an unwanted sexual advance as grounds for reducing murder to manslaughter, except in exceptional cases. It also packages a long list of other criminal law tidy-ups, covering criminal proceeds confiscation, court evidence, juries, Magistrates Court procedure, and sentencing enforcement.
Mental Health Amendment Bill 2016
This bill makes technical and protective amendments to the Mental Health Act 2016 before it starts on 5 March 2017. The key change stops statements made by a person during a court-ordered mental health assessment or examination from being used against them in civil or criminal proceedings, so patients can be frank with clinicians. The bill also tightens limits on detention, seclusion and restraint, fixes gaps affecting private mental health services, and makes small changes to the Public Health Act 2005 and Coroners Act 2003.
Child Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill clarifies that adoption is an option for achieving permanent homes for children in out-of-home care, responding to coronial recommendations following the death of toddler Mason Jet Lee. It requires mandatory case plan reviews after two years for children under the chief executive's long-term guardianship, to ensure better permanency options are actively considered.
Corrective Services (Emerging Technologies and Security) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill modernises Queensland's corrective services and youth justice legislation to address emerging security threats and improve emergency preparedness. It criminalises drone use over prisons and youth detention centres, authorises new search and surveillance technologies, strengthens information sharing between agencies, and creates a comprehensive emergency response framework for correctional facilities.
Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill amends over 30 Acts and regulations within the justice portfolio to improve how Queensland's courts, tribunals, and administrative agencies operate. It modernises the coronial system, strengthens protections for vulnerable witnesses, speeds up the handling of property offences, and fixes various anomalies across the justice system.
Inspector of Detention Services Bill 2021
This bill creates an independent Inspector of Detention Services to oversee Queensland's prisons, youth detention centres, police watch-houses, work camps and community corrections centres. The Inspector's job is to prevent harm by regularly inspecting detention facilities and reporting publicly to Parliament on conditions and treatment of detainees. The role is held by the Queensland Ombudsman but operates independently with dedicated staff and resources.
Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Offender Prohibition Order) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill updates Queensland's child protection offender registry scheme to address technology-based offending that has become more prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic. It strengthens police monitoring powers over convicted child sex offenders, particularly their use of digital devices, anonymising software, and online platforms.
Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill tightens bail rules for serious repeat young offenders, gives police new powers to scan for knives in Gold Coast entertainment precincts, and makes it harder for hooning drivers to avoid identification. It responds to a small cohort of recidivist youth offenders responsible for nearly half of all youth crime, tragic knife murders in Surfers Paradise, and ongoing community concerns about dangerous driving.
Criminal Code (Non-consensual Sharing of Intimate Images) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill creates new criminal offences for sharing intimate images without consent, commonly known as 'revenge porn'. It criminalises both the actual distribution of intimate images and threats to distribute them, with penalties of up to 3 years imprisonment. Courts can also order offenders to remove or delete the images.
Community Based Sentences (Interstate Transfer) Bill 2019
This bill establishes Queensland's participation in a national scheme for transferring community based sentences — such as probation, community service and intensive correction orders — between Australian states and territories. It replaces informal interstate supervision arrangements that had no enforcement powers, ensuring offenders who move interstate can be properly supervised and held accountable for breaches in their new jurisdiction.
Child Death Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill reforms Queensland's system for reviewing child deaths connected to the child protection system. It requires multiple government agencies — not just Child Safety — to conduct internal reviews when a child known to the system dies, and establishes an independent Child Death Review Board to identify systemic failures and recommend improvements.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill amends ten pieces of legislation to modernise police powers, strengthen domestic violence protections, improve prostitution regulation enforcement, and reform weapons licensing. It clarifies that police can access cloud-based and social media data from digital devices under warrant, and makes a range of operational improvements for the Queensland Police Service.
Corrective Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill strengthens anti-corruption measures in Queensland prisons following the Crime and Corruption Commission's Taskforce Flaxton report, reforms the parole system based on the Queensland Parole System Review, creates a permanent firearms amnesty, and regulates the possession of replica firearms including gel blasters.
Director of Child Protection Litigation Bill 2016
This bill creates a new independent Director of Child Protection Litigation who will decide when to apply for child protection orders and run those cases in the Childrens Court, a role currently performed by the child safety department. It implements a key recommendation from the 2013 Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry to improve evidence standards and accountability in child protection cases.
Child Protection Reform Amendment Bill 2016
This bill reforms Queensland's child protection court system by implementing ten recommendations from the 2013 Carmody Inquiry. It strengthens the voice of children and families in Childrens Court proceedings, clarifies which agency applies for which kind of order, and introduces a new duty of disclosure.
Criminal Law (Raising the Age of Responsibility) Amendment Bill 2021
This bill sought to raise Queensland's minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years old, consistent with United Nations standards and medical evidence that children under 14 lack the brain development to fully understand the consequences of their actions. It was a private member's bill introduced by Michael Berkman MP (Greens) that failed at its second reading vote and did not become law.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill makes broad changes across policing, corrective services, and child protection law. It tackles knife crime in entertainment precincts, overhauls parole rules for the most serious murderers, strengthens 'No Body, No Parole' laws, creates tougher penalties for harming police and corrective services animals, and updates child sexual abuse offence lists to include modern Commonwealth offences.
Crime and Corruption and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill strengthens Queensland's anti-corruption framework by widening the definition of 'corrupt conduct' and giving the Crime and Corruption Commission broader powers to investigate corruption risks. It also implements recommendations from two parliamentary committee reviews to improve how the Commission handles disciplinary matters, shares information, and treats people named in its reports.
Land and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2023
This bill modernises the management of Queensland's state land, place naming, and resource authority obligations. It streamlines how reserves and trust lands are administered, gives trustees more autonomy, overhauls the place naming process to allow faster removal of offensive names, and requires resource companies to pay local government rates as a condition of their authority.
Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill reforms Queensland's youth justice laws to keep more children out of custody and ensure they receive appropriate support. It creates a new bail framework with a clear presumption in favour of releasing children, bans electronic tracking devices on young people, enables better information sharing between government agencies and service providers, and authorises body-worn cameras in youth detention centres.
Liquor and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2017
This bill rolls back two key parts of Queensland's 2016 alcohol-fuelled violence laws after an interim review found venues were routinely working around them. It scraps the 1am lock-out and the two-tier '3am safe night precinct' system, keeping a uniform 3am last drinks across all 15 precincts, while tightening the rules on one-off late-night trading permits and letting courts ban drug traffickers and suppliers from licensed areas.
Police Service Administration (Discipline Reform) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill overhauls the Queensland police discipline system, replacing a framework that had been largely unchanged since 1990. It introduces faster investigation timeframes, a broader range of sanctions (from reprimands to dismissal), a new fast-track process for undisputed matters, and formal professional development strategies as alternatives to punishment. The Crime and Corruption Commission gains significantly expanded powers to review police disciplinary decisions.
Justice Legislation (Links to Terrorist Activity) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill implements a national agreement to make it much harder for people with links to terrorism to get bail or parole in Queensland. It amends four Acts to create a presumption against bail and parole for anyone convicted of a terrorism offence or subject to a Commonwealth control order, requiring them to prove exceptional circumstances before being released.
Police Powers and Responsibilities and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill updates police powers and several related laws to improve community safety and front-line policing. It creates new search powers for high-risk missing persons, simplifies crime scene rules, strengthens evade police provisions, streamlines parole board processes, and adds Commonwealth child sex offences to Queensland's reportable offender scheme.
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.