Bill Byrne MP

This bill creates the Queensland Racing Integrity Commission, a new independent watchdog for animal welfare and integrity in greyhound, thoroughbred, and harness racing. It responds directly to the 2015 Commission of Inquiry that found widespread live baiting and industry self-regulation failure. The bill strips Racing Queensland of its welfare and licensing role, leaving it to handle only commercial operations, and gives authorised officers stronger powers to investigate cruelty and share information with police.

This bill creates a single law for exhibiting animals in Queensland, covering zoos, wildlife parks, aquariums, circuses and mobile animal shows. It replaces four overlapping Acts with one exhibition licence and a new legal duty to minimise animal welfare, biosecurity and public safety risks.

This bill updates Queensland laws to reflect the merger of the national CrimTrac policing database into the Australian Crime Commission, and bundles in several unrelated police, weapons and fire safety changes. It expands police powers to arrest on another officer's instruction, search vehicles for knives, and deploy explosives detection dogs in public places, while also giving fire officers new powers to identify building occupiers.

This bill reshapes the Public Safety Business Agency, which provides shared back-office services to Queensland's police and fire agencies. It sets up a new Board of Management led by the Police and Fire Commissioners, hands some operational functions back to the Queensland Police Service and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, moves Blue Card Services to the Department of Justice and Attorney-General, and absorbs the State Government Protective Security Service into the police service.

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.

This bill expands police powers to respond to terrorist attacks and other declared emergencies in Queensland. It lets police compel anyone to hand over information needed to manage an emergency, creates new 'evacuation area' powers, allows detention orders against terrorism suspects whose name isn't known, and makes operational changes to corrective services and Commonwealth intelligence agency assumed identities.

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.