Dr Anthony Lynham MP

This bill reinstates and strengthens Queensland's vegetation clearing laws, delivering on the government's election commitment to end broadscale tree clearing. It removes the ability to clear remnant vegetation for agriculture, extends regrowth protections to freehold and indigenous land, expands watercourse protections to all Great Barrier Reef catchments, and significantly increases penalties for unlawful clearing.

This bill requires large mining and gas projects in Queensland to share the benefits with the regional towns near them. It bans future projects from staffing their entire operational workforce as fly-in fly-out (FIFO), makes it illegal to discriminate against local residents when hiring, and requires every project to do a social impact assessment. It also permanently bans underground coal gasification (UCG), a controversial gas-extraction method.

This bill strengthens safety and health laws for Queensland mines in response to the re-emergence of black lung disease. It delivers 15 improvements including higher penalties, proactive duties on company directors, a new civil penalty regime, mandatory safety systems for small opal and gem mines, and broader inspector powers.

This bill establishes Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) as an independent statutory body to regulate safety and health across Queensland's coal mining, mineral mining, quarrying, explosives, and petroleum and gas industries. It separates the safety regulator from the department that promotes industry growth, responding to the coal workers' pneumoconiosis (black lung disease) inquiry that found the regulator lacked independence. The bill also creates an independent Commissioner for Resources Safety and Health and gives the Work Health and Safety prosecutor responsibility for prosecuting serious safety offences.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland's resources, energy, and water laws. It introduces industrial manslaughter offences for the mining and resources sector, reforms how the State manages mine rehabilitation and abandoned mines, tightens scrutiny of who can hold resource authorities, extends energy consumer protections, and increases transparency of water infrastructure charges in South East Queensland.

This bill protects the Great Barrier Reef by tightly controlling port development along the Queensland coast. It confines new port facilities and capital dredging to four priority ports (Abbot Point, Gladstone, Hay Point/Mackay and Townsville) and bans sea dumping of port dredge spoil in the World Heritage Area. Each priority port must have a long-term master plan and a port overlay that sets consistent rules across local planning schemes.

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.

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.

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.

This bill sets up a new independent Land Access Ombudsman to help landholders and resource companies resolve disputes about the agreements that govern mining, petroleum and gas activity on private land. It also gives the Land Court power to decide these disputes and preserves technical mining rules that were due to expire.

This bill reverses a set of yet-to-commence changes to Queensland's resource laws that would have reduced the public's right to object to mining projects and weakened protections for farmers and rural landholders. It restores community objection rights in the Land Court, writes protections for homes, schools and key farm infrastructure into primary legislation, and removes ministerial powers to grant mining leases over land without the landholder's consent.

This bill updates Queensland's positioning and mapping laws to adopt the new national standard (GDA2020), closes a growing 1.8-metre gap between GPS coordinates and government maps, and makes several unrelated improvements to state land management, Indigenous land grants, land titling, and Cape York Peninsula heritage protection.

This bill reshapes how Queensland landholders and resource companies resolve disputes over mining and gas activity on private land, and modernises water planning laws to address climate change, First Nations cultural values, and urgent water quality emergencies. It bundles these changes with a large set of streamlining amendments to eight resource and water Acts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This bill restructures the GasFields Commission Queensland to clearly separate its strategic board from its day-to-day management, and to allow a part-time chairperson. It also makes it easier for biodiscovery businesses to on-license the use of native biological material, and fixes a technical gap in how port planning overlays apply to development.

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.

This bill is an omnibus package that makes changes across nine Queensland laws in the natural resources and mines portfolio. It strengthens explosives security, modernises gas safety, protects two Cape York properties from mining, gives Indigenous communities more flexibility over land and social housing, and updates state land compliance powers and property titling.