Bar Association of Queensland
OrganisationReferenced in 31 bills
Personal Injuries Proceedings and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill cracks down on 'claim farming' — where third parties cold-call or pressure people into making personal injury or workers' compensation claims and sell their details to law firms. It also tightens rules on legal fees for speculative injury claims, reinstates a three-year timeframe for terminal workers' compensation, and fixes technical issues with Queensland's political donation caps.
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.
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 in place temporary measures across tenancy, court proceedings, health, and other areas. It also reforms by-election procedures during the pandemic, allows artisan distillers to sell spirits directly to the public, changes how local government councillor vacancies are filled, and bolsters youth detention centre staffing powers.
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.
Industrial Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill overhauls Queensland's industrial relations laws following a five-year review. It strengthens workplace sexual harassment protections, introduces minimum pay and conditions for independent courier drivers, updates parental leave to include stillbirth leave and flexible leave options, and requires gender pay gap disclosure during enterprise bargaining.
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.
COVID-19 Emergency Response Bill 2020
This bill established temporary emergency powers to help Queensland respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. It protected renters and small businesses from eviction, allowed Parliament and courts to operate remotely, and gave government broad powers to modify legal requirements around documents, time limits, and proceedings. The entire Act expired on 31 December 2020.
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.
Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Bill 2022
This bill replaces Queensland's 2003 births, deaths and marriages registration law with a modernised framework. Its most significant change removes the requirement for surgery to alter the sex recorded on a birth certificate, replacing it with a self-declaration model. It also updates parenting registration rules for same-sex and gender diverse families, strengthens anti-discrimination protections, and tightens fraud prevention for name changes.
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.
Police Legislation (Efficiencies and Effectiveness) Amendment Bill 2021
This bill streamlines Queensland Police Service operations by cutting red tape and updating outdated processes. It lets senior police officers witness certain affidavits instead of requiring a Justice of the Peace, expands police powers to seek court-ordered access to seized digital devices, introduces faster saliva drug testing for officers after critical incidents, and makes several changes to weapons licensing administration.
Police Service Administration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill modernises the security framework for Queensland Government buildings by repealing the State Buildings Protective Security Act 1983 and integrating Protective Services into the Queensland Police Service. It creates a single category of protective services officer (PSO) with standardised powers and introduces new accountability measures including a register of enforcement acts.
Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill makes permanent several temporary COVID-19 measures in Queensland's justice system. It modernises how legal documents are signed and witnessed by allowing electronic signatures and video link witnessing, improves access to domestic violence protection orders, lets licensed restaurants permanently sell takeaway wine with meals, and extends COVID-19 retail lease protections.
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.
Criminal Code and Other Legislation (Wage Theft) Amendment Bill 2020
This bill makes wage theft a criminal offence in Queensland, with penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment for stealing wages and 14 years for fraud against employees. It also creates a simpler, cheaper process for workers to recover unpaid wages through the Industrial Magistrates Court, including conciliation before matters go to a hearing.
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.
Guardianship and Administration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill modernises Queensland's guardianship laws to better protect adults who lack capacity to make their own decisions. It aligns the system with international human rights standards, strengthens safeguards against financial exploitation by attorneys and administrators, and creates new protections for people who report abuse or neglect. It also makes separate amendments to the Integrity Act and government corporation corruption reporting laws.
Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill improves Queensland's main tribunal (QCAT) and strengthens consumer protections for vehicle buyers. It raises QCAT's jurisdictional limit for motor vehicle disputes from $25,000 to $100,000, reinstates statutory warranty protections for older used vehicles sold by dealers, and introduces conciliation as a new dispute resolution option.
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.
Corrective Services (Promoting Safety) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill amends Queensland's corrective services laws to improve safety for victims, frontline officers, prisoners, and the community. It strengthens the Victims Register, cracks down on prisoners misusing phone systems to perpetrate domestic violence, extends police monitoring powers for dangerous child sex offenders, and introduces body-worn cameras and gel blaster protections for corrective services officers.
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.
Environmental Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill modernises Queensland's environmental protection laws by reforming the environmental impact statement process, strengthening enforcement powers against repeat offenders, creating temporary authorities for emergencies, and banning mining in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. It also updates contaminated land management, waste regulation, and mine rehabilitation frameworks.
COVID-19 Emergency Response and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency legislation to 30 September 2021, gives local governments flexibility to adjust rates mid-year, creates a framework for holding COVID-safe local government by-elections and fresh elections, and extends temporary remote meeting arrangements for councils.