Powers of Attorney Act 1998
LegislationReferenced in 22 bills
Guardianship and Administration and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2017
This bill modernises Queensland's guardianship laws to better protect adults with impaired decision-making capacity and align them with international human rights standards. It also makes separate, unrelated changes to integrity advice rules for senior public servants and resolves a conflict between state and federal whistleblower laws for government-owned corporations.
Mental Health (Recovery Model) Bill 2015
This bill replaces Queensland's Mental Health Act 2000 with a new framework for treating people with mental illness who cannot consent to their own care. It is built around a recovery model that treats people in the community wherever possible, strengthens patient rights, and provides clearer ways to divert people with mental illness from the criminal justice system while protecting the community.
Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2023
This bill makes a range of changes across five health-related Acts to improve healthcare access, strengthen patient safety, and update health legislation. Key reforms include allowing nurses and midwives to perform early medical terminations of pregnancy, counting newborns as separate patients for maternity ward staffing ratios, and enabling better sharing of patient safety information across Queensland Health.
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.
Making Queensland Safer Bill 2024
This bill implements the government's 'adult crime, adult time' policy, allowing children convicted of serious offences like murder, robbery, burglary and dangerous driving to receive the same penalties as adults. It also removes the principle of detention as a last resort, makes victim impact the primary consideration in sentencing young offenders, and creates an automatic process to transfer 18-year-olds from youth detention to adult prisons.
Public Trustee (Advisory and Monitoring Board) Amendment Bill 2021
This bill creates a new independent board to oversee Queensland's Public Trustee, which manages the financial and legal affairs of vulnerable people. It was introduced after the Public Advocate found significant issues with the Public Trustee's fees, charges and practices in a 2021 review.
Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2021
This bill creates Queensland's voluntary assisted dying scheme, giving adults who are suffering from a terminal illness expected to cause death within 12 months the legal right to choose the timing and manner of their death. It establishes a rigorous process involving three requests and two independent medical assessments, with extensive safeguards to protect vulnerable people from coercion.
Court and Civil Legislation Amendment Bill 2017
This bill bundles many small justice-portfolio reforms into one Act. It speeds up how courts and tribunals work, brings Queensland's film and game classification laws in line with the national scheme, strengthens the Ombudsman, creates an automatic domestic violence notation on criminal records, and updates a long list of rules on wills, trusts, legal practice and retail shop leases.
Trusts Bill 2024
This bill replaces Queensland's 50-year-old Trusts Act 1973 with modernised trusts legislation. It clarifies what trustees must and can do, makes it easier to deal with common trust problems without going to court, and strengthens protections for people who benefit from trusts.
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.
Trusts Bill 2025
This bill replaces Queensland's 50-year-old Trusts Act 1973 with a modernised framework for managing trusts. It implements recommendations from the Queensland Law Reform Commission's review, updating trustee powers and duties, strengthening beneficiary protections, and making trust disputes easier and cheaper to resolve through expanded District Court jurisdiction.
Mental Health Bill 2015
This bill completely replaces Queensland's Mental Health Act 2000 with a new framework for treating people with serious mental illness who cannot consent to their own treatment, and for dealing with people with a mental illness who are charged with serious crimes. It tightens the criteria for involuntary treatment, strengthens patient rights, limits the use of restraint and seclusion, and creates a new role - the chief psychiatrist - to oversee the system.
Relationships (Civil Partnerships) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2015
This bill restores the right for adult couples of any gender in Queensland to hold an official civil partnership ceremony before registering their relationship. It renames the Relationships Act back to the Civil Partnerships Act, sets up a new scheme for registering civil partnership notaries who can conduct ceremonies, and modernises the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry by moving to electronic lodgement of birth and death records.
Meriba Omasker Kaziw Kazipa (Torres Strait Islander Traditional Child Rearing Practice) Bill 2020
This bill creates Australia's first legal framework to recognise Torres Strait Islander traditional child rearing practice (Ailan Kastom), where children are permanently placed with cultural parents within the extended family network. It establishes a Commissioner to decide applications for cultural recognition orders that legally transfer parentage, resulting in new birth certificates that reflect a person's cultural identity.
Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2016
This bill makes a set of changes across health, research and criminal law. It equalises Queensland's age of consent at 16 for all sexual activity, gives GPs access to hospital records through a system called The Viewer, streamlines research use of patient data, lets schools share student details with immunisation and dental providers, and frees QIMR Berghofer to pay research bonuses up to $10 million a year without Cabinet approval.
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.
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.
Disability Services (Restrictive Practices) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024
This bill overhauls how Queensland authorises the use of restrictive practices — such as physical restraint, chemical restraint and seclusion — on people with disability. It replaces the current system where guardians approve these practices with a new clinician-led model under a Senior Practitioner, aligning Queensland with national standards endorsed by all other states and territories.
Health Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 2025
This bill amends eight Queensland health Acts to fix implementation issues with the new fertility clinic regulatory framework, create a legal basis for organ donation procedures before circulatory death, require cosmetic surgery safety standards at private hospitals, and give the government broader powers to remove health board members. It is the third health legislation amendment bill for 2025.
Information Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
This bill modernises Queensland's information privacy and right to information laws. It introduces mandatory data breach notifications so agencies must tell you if your personal information is compromised, replaces the old dual privacy principles with a single set of Queensland Privacy Principles aligned with federal law, and supports the proactive release of Cabinet documents for greater government transparency.
Criminal Law (Historical Homosexual Convictions Expungement) Bill 2017
This bill creates a scheme for people to apply to have historical convictions or charges for consensual adult homosexual activity wiped from their criminal records. It covers offences from before homosexuality was decriminalised in Queensland on 19 January 1991. Once expunged, a person is treated in law as never having been convicted or charged.
Disability Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
This bill extends Queensland's disability safeguards to providers funded through the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) as the scheme rolls out from 2016. It makes sure NDIS participants keep the same state-based protections - worker screening, complaints handling, community visitor checks and coroner oversight - that currently apply to people funded directly by the Queensland Government.