Office of Best Practice Regulation
OrganisationReferenced in 30 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.
Stock Route Network Management Bill 2016
This bill replaces the 2002 Stock Route Management Act with a new framework for managing Queensland's 72,000km stock route network that runs through 44 local government areas. It puts local councils firmly in charge as day-to-day managers of the network, lets them keep all fees and fines they collect, and brings stock travel, grazing and pasture harvesting under a single Act instead of four.
Land and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2016
This bill makes a suite of administrative improvements to Queensland's Land Act 1994 and Land Title Act 1994. The biggest practical changes are replacing the current settlement notice with a nationally consistent priority notice to support electronic conveyancing, cutting red tape in titles registry processes, and allowing non-tidal watercourse or lake land to be dedicated as a community reserve with the adjoining owner's consent.
Housing Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill enables the Homes for Homes charitable donation model in Queensland, allowing property owners to voluntarily pledge a small donation from the sale of their property to fund social and affordable housing. It also reforms financial reporting in retirement villages to give residents clearer, more consistent information about how their village funds are managed.
Workers' Compensation and Rehabilitation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
This bill makes it easier for first responders to claim workers' compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It creates a presumptive system where PTSD in eligible workers is automatically assumed to be caused by their work, removing the burden on injured workers to prove the connection. This responds to evidence from Beyond Blue and other reviews showing first responders experience mental health conditions at substantially higher rates than the general workforce.
Biodiscovery and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
This bill strengthens protections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional knowledge used in biodiscovery — the process of collecting native biological materials for scientific analysis and commercial purposes like pharmaceuticals and bioplastics. It requires researchers and companies to obtain consent and negotiate benefit sharing with First Nations custodians before using their knowledge, aligning Queensland with the international Nagoya Protocol.
Revenue and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
This bill implements several 2025-26 State Budget measures and makes other amendments across seven Acts. It extends the doubled First Home Owner Grant and the apprentice payroll tax rebate, introduces contingency windfall taxes to protect foreign surcharge revenue, reforms how Budget Estimates hearings are chaired, and clarifies SPER registration fee rules.
Racing Integrity Amendment Bill 2022
This bill overhauls how stewards' decisions are challenged in Queensland's racing industry. It creates a new independent Racing Appeals Panel to replace the current system of internal reviews and lengthy QCAT hearings, ensuring disputes are resolved in days rather than months. The bill also introduces online publication of stewards' reports and substance test results to improve transparency.
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.
Fire and Emergency Services (Domestic Smoke Alarms) Amendment Bill 2016
This bill tightens Queensland's smoke alarm rules in response to the 2011 Slacks Creek house fire that killed 11 people. It requires every home to have photoelectric, interconnected smoke alarms powered by hardwiring or a 10-year lithium battery, phased in over a decade from 1 January 2017 to 1 January 2027.
Work Health and Safety and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2017
This bill introduces a new criminal offence of industrial manslaughter in Queensland, with up to 20 years jail for employers or senior officers whose negligence causes a worker's death and up to $10 million for companies. It follows a government review prompted by the Dreamworld and Eagle Farm worker fatalities and also creates an independent WHS Prosecutor, expands workplace safety dispute powers to the Industrial Relations Commission, and brings back Workplace Health and Safety Officers.
Building Units and Group Titles and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
This bill reforms governance of older multi-owner property developments in Queensland that pre-date the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997. It strengthens protections for unit owners in these older schemes by improving committee eligibility rules, financial accountability, dispute resolution, and transparency. It also enables the state's Office of Fair Trading to issue infringement notices for breaches of gift card requirements.
Mines Legislation (Resources Safety) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill strengthens safety and health protections for workers in Queensland's coal mining, quarrying, and metalliferous mining sectors. Prompted by the re-identification of coal workers' pneumoconiosis (black lung disease), it increases penalties for safety breaches, introduces civil penalties for corporations, requires company directors to proactively ensure safety compliance, and improves disease reporting and health surveillance for current and former mine workers.
Mineral Resources (Aurukun Bauxite Resource) Amendment Bill 2016
This bill restores normal community objection and judicial review rights to bauxite mining projects at Aurukun on western Cape York. Since 2006, a special regime under the Mineral Resources Act 1989 had bypassed those rights for projects on Restricted Area 315. The bill brings Aurukun projects back in line with the standard mining approval process.
Energy and Water Ombudsman Amendment Bill 2015
This bill expands what the Energy and Water Ombudsman Queensland (EWOQ) can do. It opens the free dispute resolution service to small businesses with higher electricity use, lets EWOQ handle credit reporting complaints against energy and water providers, and fixes a small drafting error in another energy law.
State Development and Public Works Organisation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
This bill restores the right of community members to formally object to mining projects' environmental authorities, even when the Coordinator-General has already set the conditions. It also clarifies that Land Court judges, registrars, lawyers and witnesses have full legal immunity when handling mining objection matters, fixing uncertainty caused by a recent Supreme Court decision.
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.
Electricity and Other Legislation (Batteries and Premium Feed-in Tariff) Amendment Bill 2018
This bill sets clear rules for Queensland's 240,000 Solar Bonus Scheme customers on how they can install batteries and extra solar panels without losing their 44c/kWh feed-in tariff. It also opens up retail competition for customers in embedded electricity networks and lets regional Queensland households and small businesses switch back to Ergon Retail.
Mineral, Water and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018
This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to Queensland's mineral resources, petroleum, and water laws. It reforms how landholders and resource companies resolve compensation disputes, requires climate change and Indigenous cultural values to be formally considered in water planning, creates temporary access to strategic water reserves, and gives the government emergency powers to address urgent water quality threats.
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.
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.
Queensland Future Fund Bill 2020
This bill establishes the Queensland Future Fund framework, starting with a Debt Retirement Fund that sets aside money exclusively for paying down State debt. It also legislates a 100% guarantee that the State will fully fund public sector defined benefit superannuation entitlements. The model is based on similar NSW legislation designed to satisfy credit rating agency requirements.
Agriculture and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
This bill updates 10 Queensland agriculture laws with mostly technical changes — clearing the way for drone-based crop spraying, tightening controls on feeding animal products to livestock, speeding up exotic disease responses, simplifying pet microchip rules, and realigning company director liability with national principles. It also stops the automatic repeal of rules that manage the state's 38 remaining forest reserves, keeping them in place until those lands can be transferred to new tenures.
Workers' Compensation and Rehabilitation (Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2017
This bill improves workers' compensation for Queensland coal miners and others with dust-related lung diseases, sets up a committee so families of workers killed or seriously injured at work have a formal voice, and strengthens electrical licensing safety rules. It responds to the re-identification of coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP) in Queensland.
Therapeutic Goods Bill 2019
This bill adopts the Commonwealth Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 as a law of Queensland, ensuring all manufacturers of therapeutic goods — including sole traders and partnerships — meet national safety and quality standards. It closes a regulatory gap where small manufacturers trading only within Queensland were not subject to any therapeutic goods regulation.
Animal Care and Protection Amendment Bill 2022
This bill updates Queensland's 20-year-old animal welfare laws to match modern science and community expectations. It bans harmful practices like prong collars and horse leg firing, creates tougher penalties for serious animal neglect, requires CCTV surveillance at slaughterhouses, and introduces new protections for retired racehorses.
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.
Small Business Commissioner Bill 2021
This bill permanently establishes a Queensland Small Business Commissioner to provide advice, advocacy, and affordable dispute resolution for small businesses. It replaces the temporary commissioner created during COVID-19 with a permanent statutory office and transfers administration of retail tenancy dispute mediation to the new commissioner.
Water Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
This bill undoes several water law changes that the previous government passed in 2014 but which had not yet taken effect. It puts ecologically sustainable development principles back into the purpose of the Water Act 2000, removes 'water development options' that would have given large infrastructure proponents an early exclusive claim over water, and removes the ability to declare 'designated watercourses' where a water licence would not be needed. It also fixes a 2005 technical mistake in setting up the Lower Herbert Water Management Authority and confirms that existing river improvement trusts continue to operate.