Hon Shannon Fentiman MP

This bill cracks down on 'claim farming' — the practice of cold-calling people to pressure them into making personal injury or workers' compensation claims, then selling their details to law firms. It also tightens rules on legal billing in personal injury cases, confirms when terminally ill workers can access lump sum compensation, and fixes technical issues with Queensland's political donation caps.

This bill makes amendments across five health-related Acts to improve access to healthcare, strengthen patient safety, and modernise health legislation in Queensland. The most significant changes allow nurses and midwives to perform early medical terminations of pregnancy, count newborn babies as separate patients for maternity ward staffing ratios, and improve how patient safety information is shared across Queensland Health.

This bill replaces Queensland's 20-year-old pharmacy ownership law with a modern licensing and regulatory framework. It establishes the Queensland Pharmacy Business Ownership Council as an independent body to oversee who can own pharmacies, introduces mandatory annual licensing, and strengthens protections against commercial interference in pharmacy health services.

This bill strengthens Queensland's hate crime and vilification laws by implementing recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry. It increases penalties for serious vilification, creates aggravated offences for crimes motivated by hatred based on race, religion, sexuality, sex characteristics or gender identity, and bans the public display of prescribed hate symbols such as Nazi imagery.

This bill establishes Forensic Science Queensland as an independent statutory body responsible for providing forensic services to Queensland's criminal justice system. It responds to the 2022 Commission of Inquiry into Forensic DNA Testing, which found serious problems with DNA evidence handling and made 123 recommendations. Queensland becomes the first Australian state to have dedicated legislation governing forensic science services.

This bill creates an independent advisory and monitoring board to oversee the Public Trustee of Queensland. It responds to the Public Advocate's 2021 report which found the Public Trustee needed greater transparency and accountability in how it manages the financial affairs of vulnerable Queenslanders, particularly people with impaired decision-making capacity.

This bill creates an independent Inspector of Detention Services to oversee Queensland's prisons, youth detention centres, community corrections centres, work camps and police watch-houses. The Inspector, held by the Queensland Ombudsman, will conduct regular inspections and reviews of detention facilities and report findings directly to Parliament, with the aim of preventing harm and improving conditions for people in custody.

This bill bundles several unrelated reforms: it clarifies Queensland's sexual consent laws in the Criminal Code based on Law Reform Commission recommendations, reforms the legal profession's Fidelity Guarantee Fund, strengthens alcohol-fuelled violence measures for licensed venues and nightlife areas, bans wagering inducements to protect online gamblers, and makes other miscellaneous amendments.

This bill amends the Liquor Act 1992 to create a new artisan producer licence tailored for Queensland's independent craft brewers and artisan distillers. It allows these small producers to sell their products on-premises, online, by wholesale, and at promotional events like farmers markets. The bill was introduced to support the industry's recovery from COVID-19, which saw nationwide craft brewery sales drop by 67 per cent.

This bill extends Queensland's COVID-19 emergency response legislation from 31 December 2020 to 30 April 2021, keeping temporary measures in place across tenancy, courts, health and other areas. It also makes standalone reforms to support artisan distillers, reform local government vacancy processes, and enable COVID-safe by-elections.

This bill replaces Queensland's nearly 50-year-old Property Law Act 1974 with a modernised framework covering how property is bought, sold, leased, and mortgaged. It introduces a new statutory seller disclosure scheme requiring sellers to provide standardised information to buyers before contracts are signed, updates the law to support electronic conveyancing and digital transactions, and removes outdated provisions that no longer reflect modern property practice.

This bill creates Queensland's first laws to regulate the fertility industry and establishes a central register of donor conception information. It was introduced after high-profile failures in 2023, including allegations of wrong donor sperm being used and donors having far more genetic offspring than guidelines allow. The bill requires all fertility clinics to hold a Queensland licence, sets enforceable rules for how gametes and embryos are used, and gives all donor-conceived people the right to know who their biological donor is.

This bill strengthens protections for owners in older Queensland multi-owner developments (unit blocks, townhouses, mixed-use complexes) that are still governed by laws from the 1980s and 1990s. It brings these older body corporate laws closer into line with the more modern Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 by improving governance standards, financial transparency, and dispute resolution. It also enables the Office of Fair Trading to issue infringement notices for gift card breaches.

This bill modernises Queensland's defamation laws to match nationally agreed reforms. It makes it harder to bring trivial defamation claims by requiring proof of serious harm, gives journalists and academics stronger defences when publishing on matters of public interest, and requires people to attempt to resolve disputes before going to court. It also fixes a heavy vehicle regulation issue before it causes problems for truck operators.

This bill repeals and replaces Queensland's births, deaths and marriages registration law. It removes the requirement for surgery to change a person's recorded sex, allows same-sex parents to both use matching titles on birth certificates, streamlines registry services, and strengthens name change fraud prevention. It also adds new anti-discrimination protections for intersex people.

This bill makes changes across several areas of Queensland's justice system. It introduces shield laws to protect journalists' confidential sources in court, creates a framework for a pilot where police-recorded video statements can be used as evidence in domestic and family violence criminal proceedings, and establishes a process for viewing deceased persons' remains in criminal cases following the Daniel Morcombe inquest.

This bill makes permanent several temporary measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic across the justice portfolio. It modernises how legal documents are executed by allowing electronic signatures and video call witnessing, improves access to domestic and family violence protection orders, allows licensed restaurants to permanently sell takeaway wine with meals, and extends commercial lease protections.

This bill strengthens Queensland's domestic and family violence laws by implementing key recommendations from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce. It recognises coercive control as a pattern of behaviour, modernises the stalking offence to cover technology-facilitated abuse, reforms court processes for competing protection order applications, and expands evidence rules so courts and juries better understand domestic violence dynamics. It also updates outdated sexual offence terminology and makes unrelated changes to the Coroners Act, Oaths Act, and Telecommunications Interception Act.

This bill gives Queensland stronger powers to enforce the national ban on recreational vaping and crack down on the illegal sale of vapes and tobacco. It creates new offences for supplying and possessing illicit nicotine products (including vapes and nicotine pouches), dramatically increases penalties, and introduces powers to close non-compliant shops and seek court injunctions against repeat offenders.

This bill amends Australia's national health practitioner regulation laws to better protect the public from practitioners who have been struck off or found to have committed sexual misconduct. It was introduced following agreement by all Australian Health Ministers but lapsed at the end of the 57th Parliament and did not become law.

This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency laws until 30 September 2021, continuing protections and flexible arrangements across tenancy, courts, corrections, gaming, and other areas. It also gives local governments new powers to adjust rates mid-year, hold COVID-safe by-elections, and continue remote council meetings.

This bill makes coercive control a criminal offence in Queensland and introduces an affirmative model of consent for sexual offences. It implements recommendations from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce and other inquiries to strengthen protections for victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence across the criminal justice system.

This bill creates a legal framework for the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to visit and monitor Queensland detention facilities. It implements Australia's obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), ratified in 2017, which aims to prevent torture and cruel treatment through independent international inspections of places where people are held against their will.