Minister for Energy, Biofuels and Water Supply
Role / OfficeReferenced in 3 bills
Water Legislation (Dam Safety) Amendment Bill 2016
This bill updates Queensland's dam safety laws after community concerns about how flood releases from Callide Dam and Wivenhoe Dam were handled in 2015. It makes dam owners responsible for warning downstream communities (not just notifying them), gets local councils more involved in checking dam emergency plans, and lets dam owners lower water levels when engineers find safety risks. It also cuts red tape for small dam owners and reduces overlap with workplace and mining safety laws.
Liquid Fuel Supply (Ethanol and Other Biofuels Mandate) Amendment Bill 2015
This bill creates Queensland's first mandatory biofuels targets, requiring larger fuel retailers to ensure 2 per cent of their regular petrol sales are ethanol or other biobased petrol, and fuel wholesalers to ensure 0.5 per cent of diesel sales are biodiesel or other renewable diesel. The mandate is designed to grow Queensland's biofuels industry, create regional jobs, and cut transport emissions while protecting consumer choice by excluding premium unleaded petrol from the target.
Electricity and Other Legislation (Batteries and Premium Feed-in Tariff) Amendment Bill 2017
This bill would have tightened the rules for Queensland's Solar Bonus Scheme, which pays a premium 44c/kWh feed-in tariff to over 280,000 homes and small businesses with eligible solar panels. It spelled out when adding a battery or extra solar would cause a customer to lose that tariff, and it also opened up retail electricity competition for customers in embedded networks like apartment buildings. The bill lapsed when Parliament was dissolved and did not become law.