Local Government Association of Queensland
OrganisationReferenced in 48 bills
Disaster Management and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill restructures Queensland's fire and emergency services by splitting the former Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) into two dedicated services — Queensland Fire and Rescue (QFR) for urban firefighting and Rural Fire Service Queensland (RFSQ) for bushfire management and rural brigades. It also strengthens disaster management coordination by clarifying the Police Commissioner's role, creating new recovery coordination positions, and expanding the Queensland Reconstruction Authority's functions. Additionally, it requires smoke alarms in all registered caravans and motorised caravans.
Waste Reduction and Recycling (Waste Levy) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill introduces a waste disposal levy in Queensland, starting at $70 per tonne from 4 March 2019, to discourage sending waste to landfill and boost recycling. The levy funds a $100 million Resource Recovery Industry Development Program and stops Queensland being used as a cheap dumping ground for interstate waste.
Local Government Electoral (Implementing Stage 1 of Belcarra) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill bans political donations from property developers to candidates, councillors, political parties and third parties at both state and local government levels in Queensland. It also significantly strengthens the rules for how local government councillors must declare and manage conflicts of interest, following recommendations from the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra investigation into corruption risks in local government.
Work Health and Safety and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill overhauls Queensland's workplace health and safety framework by implementing recommendations from two major reviews. It strengthens health and safety representatives, gives registered unions a direct role in workplace safety matters, makes it easier to prosecute the most serious safety offences by adding negligence as a fault element, and bans insurance against WHS fines.
Building and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill modernises Queensland's building and plumbing laws across several areas. It strengthens homeowners' rights to install solar panels and hot water systems free from aesthetic-based restrictions by developers and body corporates, expands permissible uses of treated greywater in large buildings, allows holding tanks for sewage and greywater under local government permits, and improves the QBCC's regulatory and enforcement powers.
Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill amends eight health-related Acts to improve Queensland's health system. It strengthens protections for public health workers, modernises the Queensland Cancer Register to collect better data on cancer diagnosis and treatment, enables schools to share information with the children's vision screening program, and simplifies organ donation consent in private hospitals.
Emergency Services Reform Amendment Bill 2023
This bill restructures Queensland's emergency services by transferring the State Emergency Service and marine rescue functions from Queensland Fire and Emergency Services to the Queensland Police Service. It establishes a new State Disaster Management Group chaired by the Premier to provide faster strategic oversight during disasters, and makes consequential amendments across more than 20 pieces of legislation to ensure workers' compensation, civil liability protections, and Blue Card requirements continue for volunteers.
State Emergency Service Bill 2023
This bill establishes the Queensland State Emergency Service (SES) as a standalone organisation under its own Act, moving it out of the Fire and Emergency Services Act 1990 and under the control of the Queensland Police Service Commissioner. It is part of a broader reform of Queensland's emergency services following an independent review, and formalises the SES's role in rescue, search, severe weather response, and disaster resilience.
Marine Rescue Queensland Bill 2023
This bill establishes Marine Rescue Queensland (MRQ) as a dedicated statewide marine rescue service, unifying the existing volunteer Coast Guard flotillas and Volunteer Marine Rescue squadrons into one organisation under the Queensland Police Service. It is part of a broader reform of Queensland's emergency services following independent reviews that found the fragmented system led to duplication, unclear boundaries, and inconsistent training.
Electoral and Other Legislation (Accountability, Integrity and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2019
This bill overhauls Queensland's electoral funding and integrity laws. It caps political donations and campaign spending to reduce the influence of money in elections, creates new criminal offences for Ministers and councillors who dishonestly hide conflicts of interest, restricts election signage at polling booths, and reforms the local government integrity framework including a new role of councillor advisor.
Environmental Protection (Great Barrier Reef Protection Measures) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill strengthens protections for the Great Barrier Reef by toughening regulations on agricultural and industrial activities that contribute to poor water quality. It expands mandatory farming standards across all Reef catchments and introduces a national approach to classifying threatened species in Queensland.
Police Service Administration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2022
This bill makes operational improvements to the Queensland Police Service and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. It reforms police discipline processes, introduces automatic dismissal of officers sentenced to imprisonment, creates stronger protections for confidential police information, streamlines weapons licensing, and modernises fire safety and emergency management laws.
Waste Reduction and Recycling (Strengthening the Container Refund Scheme) Amendment Bill 2026
This bill overhauls the governance of Queensland's Container Refund Scheme — the 10-cent bottle and can return program — following a parliamentary inquiry that found significant weaknesses in how the scheme is run. It gives the government much stronger oversight of the scheme coordinator (currently Container Exchange), requires an independent board majority, and expands the scheme's purpose to include supporting environmental and community programs.
Natural Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill makes wide-ranging amendments across the Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It reforms mineral and petroleum exploration permits with a 15-year cap, strengthens water compliance penalties, introduces dispute resolution for state land sublease disputes, streamlines Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land administration, and supports the establishment of CleanCo as a government-owned clean energy 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 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.
Transport Legislation (Disability Parking and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2019
This bill expands Queensland's Disability Parking Permit Scheme to include people who are legally blind, and doubles the fine for misusing disability parking bays from $266 to $533. It also makes technical updates to rail safety definitions to align with national law.
Energy (Renewable Transformation and Jobs) Bill 2023
This bill creates the legal framework for Queensland's shift from coal-fired to renewable electricity generation. It sets legislated renewable energy targets (50% by 2030, 70% by 2032, 80% by 2035), establishes new infrastructure frameworks to build transmission lines and Renewable Energy Zones, commits to public ownership of energy assets, and creates a $150 million fund to support coal-fired power station workers through the transition.
Land Valuation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill modernises Queensland's land valuation framework, which determines how property is valued for land tax, council rates, and state land rent. It gives the valuer-general new powers to make binding guidelines on valuation practices, streamlines the objection process by removing arbitrary monetary thresholds, and gives farmers more control over how their non-adjoining lots are valued.
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.
Electrical Safety and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill updates Queensland's electrical safety and workplace health and safety laws based on recommendations from five major reviews. It brings new technologies like e-scooters and battery storage systems under electrical safety regulation, strengthens industrial manslaughter laws to cover deaths of bystanders, makes it easier to prosecute serious safety breaches, and gives worker safety representatives new powers to document hazards.
Local Government (Dissolution of Ipswich City Council) Bill 2018
This bill dissolved Ipswich City Council and removed all councillors from office following a Crime and Corruption Commission investigation that found serious, long-running corruption and governance failures. An interim administrator was appointed with full council and mayoral powers to run the council until Ipswich residents could elect new councillors at the 2020 local government elections.
Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill reforms Queensland's rental laws to strengthen protections for renters, stabilise rents in the private market, and ease cost-of-living pressures. It also introduces mandatory professional development for property agents, removes compulsory superannuation contributions for local government employees, and fixes technical issues in body corporate termination processes.
Cross-Border Commissioner Bill 2024
This bill establishes Queensland's first Cross-Border Commissioner, a new statutory role dedicated to helping communities along Queensland's borders with New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. The Commissioner will work across governments to resolve issues caused by different state regulations and improve service delivery for border residents, with a priority focus on disaster management capacity along the Queensland-NSW border.
Local Government (Empowering Councils) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill reforms Queensland's local government laws to give councils and mayors more authority, simplify the councillor conduct and conflicts of interest frameworks, and cut red tape across a range of council operations. It responds to concerns from the local government sector about unnecessary regulatory burden, particularly around conduct complaints, mandatory training, and disaster recovery decision-making during election caretaker periods.
Environmental Protection (Efficiency and Streamlining) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill overhauls Queensland's environmental regulation across multiple domains. It introduces ERA codes as a simpler way to regulate lower-risk environmental activities, creates a single tourism permission for operators working across parks and forests, strengthens enforcement powers for environmental and koala habitat offences, and improves protections for bore owners affected by resource operations.
Economic Development and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland's planning, development and disaster management laws. It streamlines how priority development areas are managed, updates Building Queensland's infrastructure assessment thresholds, expands the Queensland Reconstruction Authority's role to cover all natural disasters rather than just floods, and improves various planning processes.
Public Health and Other Legislation (Public Health Emergency) Amendment Bill 2020
This bill gave Queensland authorities the legal powers needed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including lockdowns, quarantine orders, business closures, and restrictions on gatherings. It also amended electoral and planning laws to provide flexibility during the public health emergency, with most emergency powers set to expire one year after commencement.
Land and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill updates a range of land and resource management laws within the Queensland Resources portfolio. It streamlines lease conversions and renewals, modernises stock route management, updates surveying rules, improves vegetation management administration, and enables coal mining lease transfers under the Central Queensland Coal Associates Agreement.
Integrity and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill implements integrity reforms recommended by the Coaldrake Report and Yearbury Report. It overhauls the regulation of lobbyists to increase transparency, strengthens the independence of Queensland's five core integrity bodies by giving parliamentary committees a greater role in their funding and appointments, and extends the Ombudsman's jurisdiction to cover non-government organisations delivering public services on behalf of government.
Resources and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2021
This bill makes changes across five unrelated areas of law: validating historically granted mining leases, clarifying petroleum lease renewal rules, strengthening water restriction enforcement in South East Queensland, protecting water providers' cybersecurity information from mandatory public disclosure, and repealing the never-commenced Personalised Transport Ombudsman Act 2019.
Local Government Legislation (Validation of Rates and Charges) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill retrospectively validates council rates and charges across Queensland that may have been technically invalid due to a procedural issue. In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that Fraser Coast Regional Council's rates were invalid because the council adopted its budget without passing a separate resolution specifically deciding what rates to levy. Because many other councils may have followed the same practice, this bill validates all such rates and charges state-wide for financial years up to 30 June 2018.
Heavy Vehicle National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill strengthens safety obligations for heavy vehicle businesses, increases penalties for driving offences that cause death or serious injury, and introduces several road safety improvements. It also establishes a national database of heavy vehicles and facilitates the transition from the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme to state-based registration.
Land, Explosives and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill updates multiple regulatory frameworks within Queensland's Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It strengthens explosives safety and security, protects Cape York Peninsula heritage land from mining, modernises State land compliance powers, facilitates electronic conveyancing, improves gas safety regulation, and enhances Indigenous land management options.
Plumbing and Drainage Bill 2018
This bill replaces Queensland's 16-year-old plumbing and drainage laws with a modern framework. It simplifies the approval process by creating four clear categories of plumbing work, strengthens penalties for unlicensed and defective work, and introduces a new licence for mechanical services workers who install heating, cooling and medical gas systems.
Local Government (Councillor Complaints) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill reforms how complaints about local government councillors are handled in Queensland. It creates an Independent Assessor to investigate complaints instead of council CEOs, establishes a Councillor Conduct Tribunal for misconduct hearings, and introduces a mandatory code of conduct for all councillors outside Brisbane.
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.
Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill clarifies and simplifies Queensland's security of payment framework for the building and construction industry, which protects subcontractors from late or non-payment through project trust accounts and retention trust accounts. It also implements governance reforms for the QBCC and makes minor improvements to licensing and regulatory processes across six Acts.
Local Government (Councillor Conduct) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill reforms Queensland's local government councillor conduct complaints system, implementing recommendations from a parliamentary committee inquiry. It introduces a new preliminary assessment process, compulsory councillor training, a vexatious complainant scheme, and greater transparency for conduct investigations. The bill also modernises advertising requirements, amends the Queen's Wharf Brisbane Act, and updates Moreton Bay City Council references.
Transport Legislation (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2019
This bill strengthens Queensland's road safety laws by expanding drink driving interlock requirements to mid-range offenders, introducing mandatory education programs for all drink drivers, and enabling speed cameras on roads with variable speed limits. It also improves marine pollution cost recovery and streamlines various transport administration processes.
Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to health and retirement village legislation. It repeals Queensland's separate medicinal cannabis approval system in favour of the Commonwealth framework, creates a mandatory register for occupational dust lung diseases like black lung and silicosis, gives Queensland Health new powers to issue public pollution notices, streamlines radiation safety licensing, modernises tissue donation laws for research, and requires retirement village operators to buy back unsold freehold units within 18 months.
Public Records Bill 2023
This bill replaces Queensland's 20-year-old public records law with a modern framework suited to the digital age. It makes government records in the State Archives open to the public by default, strengthens protections against the destruction or tampering of records, and formally recognises the importance of public records for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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.
Planning (Social Impact and Community Benefit) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill introduces a community benefit system requiring developers of large-scale projects (primarily renewable energy) to assess social impacts and negotiate community benefit agreements with local governments before seeking planning approval. It also overhauls governance and planning approvals for Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games venues and infrastructure, and makes administrative changes to Economic Development Queensland.
Electoral and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill reforms Queensland's electoral laws to improve transparency, modernise voting operations, and align with four-year fixed parliamentary terms. It implements recommendations from the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra report and an independent review of the 2016 elections, requiring disclosure of the true source of political donations and making it easier for voters to cast absentee and postal votes.
Local Government Electoral (Implementing Stage 2 of Belcarra) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill implements the second stage of the Queensland Government's response to the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra report, which investigated corruption risks in local government following the 2016 council elections. It strengthens donation disclosure, tightens conflict of interest rules, mandates full preferential voting, reforms mayoral powers, and brings Brisbane City Council under the same oversight framework as all other Queensland councils.
Heavy Vehicle National Law Amendment Bill 2018
This bill strengthens national heavy vehicle regulation by giving enforcement officers new powers to address safety risks, improving road access for certain high-productivity trucks, and streamlining how fatigue offences are prosecuted in Queensland courts. It implements reforms agreed by all participating Australian states and territories.
Local Government Electoral and Other Legislation (Expenditure Caps) Amendment Bill 2022
This bill introduces spending caps for Queensland local government elections, limiting how much candidates, political parties and third parties can spend on campaigning. It follows recommendations from a parliamentary committee inquiry prompted by the Crime and Corruption Commission's Belcarra report, which found that uneven financial competition was deterring candidates and distorting local government elections.