Hon Stirling Hinchliffe MP

This bill bans political donations from property developers to politicians and political parties at both State and local government levels in Queensland. It also strengthens the rules for how local councillors must declare and manage conflicts of interest. The reforms implement the Government's response to the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra report, which investigated corruption risks in local government following the 2016 council elections.

This bill dissolved Ipswich City Council and removed all councillors from office following a Crime and Corruption Commission investigation that found serious, long-running corruption and governance failures. An interim administrator was appointed with full council and mayoral powers to run the council until Ipswich residents could elect new councillors at the 2020 local government elections.

This bill modernises how Stadiums Queensland, the body that manages the state's major sports venues, is governed and operates. It implements six recommendations from the Stadium Taskforce, which was set up in 2018 after venue hirers raised concerns about costs, operations and infrastructure at stadiums across Queensland.

This bill retrospectively validates council rates and charges across Queensland that may have been technically invalid due to a procedural issue. In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that Fraser Coast Regional Council's rates were invalid because the council adopted its budget without passing a separate resolution specifically deciding what rates to levy. Because many other councils may have followed the same practice, this bill validates all such rates and charges state-wide for financial years up to 30 June 2018.

This bill replaces Queensland's system for handling complaints about local government councillors with an independent, streamlined framework. It creates an Independent Assessor to investigate all complaints, a Councillor Conduct Tribunal to hear serious misconduct cases, and a mandatory code of conduct for councillors. The reforms address longstanding concerns about conflicts of interest when council CEOs assessed complaints against their own councillors.

This bill officially makes the Muttaburrasaurus langdoni Queensland's State fossil emblem and fixes several technical issues with parliamentary procedures, including validating remote committee participation back to 1998, protecting MP privacy during proxy votes, and clarifying the Speaker's authority over the parliamentary precinct on sitting days.

This bill implements the second stage of reforms arising from the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra investigation into corruption risks at several Queensland councils. It strengthens donation transparency, overhauls how councillors manage conflicts of interest, expands the State's power to intervene in local government, brings Brisbane City Council under the same rules as other councils, and changes local government elections to full-preferential voting.