Mrs Yvette D'Ath MP

This bill fixes a technical problem with the oaths taken by some Queensland magistrates and judicial registrars between April 2013 and April 2015. It confirms that their appointments and all their past decisions are legally valid, even though they took an outdated form of oath.

This bill removes the requirement for transgender people to be unmarried before they can update their birth certificate to reflect their sex reassignment. The change was prompted by the introduction of federal marriage equality in December 2017, which made the old restriction both unnecessary and potentially discriminatory under Commonwealth law.

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.

This bill replaces Queensland's Cooperatives Act 1997 with the Co-operatives National Law, a nationally harmonised framework already adopted by every other Australian state and territory. It modernises how co-operatives are formed, registered and managed in Queensland, while reducing red tape and ensuring consistency across the country.

This bill creates Queensland's first Human Rights Act, establishing 23 protected human rights and requiring all government entities to act compatibly with them. It adopts a 'dialogue model' where Parliament remains sovereign but courts can declare laws incompatible, and a renamed Queensland Human Rights Commission handles complaints from the public.

This bill removes the so-called 'gay panic' defence by stopping killers from using an unwanted sexual advance as grounds for reducing murder to manslaughter, except in exceptional cases. It also packages a long list of other criminal law tidy-ups, covering criminal proceeds confiscation, court evidence, juries, Magistrates Court procedure, and sentencing enforcement.

This bill extended Queensland's COVID-19 emergency powers from their original expiry in late 2020 and early 2021 until 30 September 2021. It maintained the Chief Health Officer's ability to issue public health directions, continued hotel quarantine cost recovery, and preserved emergency provisions in the Mental Health Act to allow mental health patients to comply with health directions.

This bill creates the legal framework for the Queen's Wharf Brisbane casino and entertainment precinct on state-owned land in the CBD. It ratifies a 99-year casino agreement with the Destination Brisbane Consortium, exempts the precinct from parts of Queensland's property, tenancy and planning laws, and introduces tight probity controls over who can own or influence the casino.

This bill reforms Queensland's criminal appeals system in two significant ways. It creates a new right for convicted persons to make subsequent appeals to the Court of Appeal when fresh or new compelling evidence emerges, even after their original appeal has been decided. It also expands the double jeopardy exception — which previously only applied to murder — to allow retrials for 10 additional serious offences punishable by life imprisonment.

This bill amends eight health-related Acts to improve Queensland's health system. It strengthens protections for public health workers, modernises the Queensland Cancer Register to collect better data on cancer diagnosis and treatment, enables schools to share information with the children's vision screening program, and simplifies organ donation consent in private hospitals.

This bill overhauls Queensland's electoral funding and integrity laws. It caps political donations and campaign spending to reduce the influence of money in elections, creates new criminal offences for Ministers and councillors who dishonestly hide conflicts of interest, restricts election signage at polling booths, and reforms the local government integrity framework including a new role of councillor advisor.

This bill amends over 30 Acts and regulations within the justice portfolio to improve how Queensland's courts, tribunals, and administrative agencies operate. It modernises the coronial system, strengthens protections for vulnerable witnesses, speeds up the handling of property offences, and fixes various anomalies across the justice system.

This bill toughens Queensland's political donation disclosure rules and removes voter ID requirements. It also sets up a judicial-style pension for the chairperson of the Crime and Corruption Commission.

This bill reforms Queensland's criminal justice system to better protect children from sexual abuse and improve access to justice for survivors. It implements key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, strengthens sentencing for child exploitation material offences, and criminalises child abuse objects such as life-like child replicas.

This bill modernises Queensland's framework for incorporated associations and charitable organisations. It introduces governance standards for management committees, reduces duplicate financial reporting for organisations registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, and provides simpler processes for dispute resolution, voluntary administration, and cancellation of incorporation.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes across Queensland's justice system, courts, electoral processes, and victims' rights. Major reforms include formally recognising the deaths of unborn children in criminal sentencing, allowing media to identify sexual offence defendants before committal, improving accountability for Justices of the Peace, modernising legal costs disclosure, and saving postal votes affected by envelope errors.

This bill overhauls Queensland's casino regulation following the Gotterson Review, which found money laundering, links to organised crime, and inadequate harm minimisation at Star Entertainment's Queensland casinos. It introduces mandatory identity-linked player cards, cashless gambling limits, binding pre-commitment systems for loss and time limits, a new supervision levy on casinos, five-yearly reviews of casino operations, and requirements to exclude people banned from interstate casinos.

This bill reforms Queensland's body corporate and off-the-plan property laws. It creates a new process for terminating ageing community titles schemes that are no longer economically viable, modernises body corporate governance rules around pets, smoking, and parking, and protects off-the-plan buyers from developers misusing sunset clauses to cancel contracts.

This bill introduces a 'No Body, No Parole' rule in Queensland. Prisoners serving time for murder, manslaughter or related homicide offences cannot be released on parole if the victim's body or remains have not been found, unless the Parole Board is satisfied they have cooperated satisfactorily with police to help locate the victim.

This bill broadens what counts as 'corrupt conduct' in Queensland and gives the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) wider powers to investigate corruption, including conduct by people outside the public sector. It also forces the CCC to give people a chance to respond before publishing damaging findings about them, and cleans up the disciplinary rules for officers moving between the CCC, public service, ambulance and fire services.

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.

This bill replaces the 1992 Brisbane Casino Agreement with a new agreement between the State and the casino operator. The main change is that future redevelopment of the Brisbane casino-hotel site will be assessed under state planning law as part of the Queen's Wharf Brisbane project, rather than being exempt from development and heritage laws as it has been since 1992.

This bill decriminalises termination of pregnancy in Queensland by removing century-old Criminal Code offences and creating a new health-based legal framework. Based on 28 recommendations from the Queensland Law Reform Commission, it allows medical practitioners to perform terminations on request up to 22 weeks gestation, with clinical safeguards for later terminations. It also establishes safe access zones around clinics and protects women from criminal liability.

This bill creates new criminal offences for sharing intimate images without consent, commonly known as 'revenge porn'. It criminalises both the actual distribution of intimate images and threats to distribute them, with penalties of up to 3 years imprisonment. Courts can also order offenders to remove or delete the images.

This bill extended Queensland's COVID-19 public health emergency powers from 30 April 2022 to 31 October 2022, while allowing most other temporary COVID-19 measures to expire. It kept in place the Chief Health Officer's power to issue public health directions, emergency powers in corrective services and disaster management, and mental health patient leave provisions, with all measures tied to the ongoing public health emergency declaration.

This bill implements the third wave of reforms from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce, focusing on sexual violence and improving how women and girls experience the criminal justice system. It creates new offences to protect young people from sexual exploitation by people in authority, strengthens protections for vulnerable witnesses, allows expert evidence to help juries understand victim behaviour, and modernises rules about how past behaviour evidence can be used in criminal trials.

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.

This bill abolishes the Queensland Training Assets Management Authority (QTAMA) and returns control of the state's vocational training assets - such as TAFE campuses and equipment - to the Department of Education and Training. It delivers the Government's 'Rescuing TAFE' election commitment so that TAFE Queensland has priority access to state-owned training facilities rather than competing for them on commercial terms.

This bill undoes tougher youth justice laws from 2012 and 2014 and returns to a more rehabilitative approach. It closes youth justice proceedings to the public (but lets victims attend), raises the age for transfer to adult prison from 17 to 18, and brings back court-referred restorative justice conferencing as a way to divert young offenders from the formal court system.

This bill protects the title 'surgeon' within the medical profession so that only doctors with significant specialist surgical training can use it. It responds to widespread consumer confusion in the cosmetic surgery industry, where any registered doctor could previously call themselves a 'cosmetic surgeon' regardless of their qualifications. The bill also clarifies tribunal powers when disciplining health practitioners.

This bill responds to the Not Now, Not Ever report by the Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence. It creates a new criminal offence of strangulation in a domestic setting, makes domestic violence an aggravating factor that increases sentences, and restores the power of lawyers to suggest specific sentences to the court.

This bill reforms Queensland's system for reviewing child deaths connected to the child protection system. It requires multiple government agencies — not just Child Safety — to conduct internal reviews when a child known to the system dies, and establishes an independent Child Death Review Board to identify systemic failures and recommend improvements.

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.

This bill creates Jobs Queensland, a new independent body that advises the state government on what skills Queensland will need, how to plan for future workforce needs, and how the apprenticeship and traineeship system should work. It is intended to give industry, unions, and regional Queensland a stronger voice in shaping training priorities.

This bill extended most of Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency laws until 30 April 2022, continuing the legal basis for public health directions, quarantine requirements, and support measures across multiple sectors. It also reformed the quarantine fee system to allow prepayment and third-party liability, and clarified that quarantine directions could be issued electronically.

This bill creates a new independent Director of Child Protection Litigation who will decide when to apply for child protection orders and run those cases in the Childrens Court, a role currently performed by the child safety department. It implements a key recommendation from the 2013 Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry to improve evidence standards and accountability in child protection cases.

This bill raises the age of a 'child' in Queensland's youth justice system from under 17 to under 18, so 17-year-olds are treated as young people rather than adults in the criminal justice system. It also sets up transitional rules to move 17-year-olds currently in adult prisons, on remand or in adult court proceedings into the youth justice system. Queensland was the last state to treat 17-year-olds as adults, and the change aligns with national practice and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This bill toughens Queensland's response to domestic violence by increasing penalties for breaching protection orders, flagging domestic violence offences on criminal histories, and giving victims better protections when they give evidence in court. It delivers three recommendations from the 'Not Now, Not Ever' Taskforce report on domestic and family violence.

This bill creates an independent Domestic and Family Violence Death Review and Advisory Board to examine why people are dying from domestic and family violence in Queensland and recommend changes to prevent future deaths. It amends the Coroners Act 2003 to set up the Board's membership, functions, powers, and reporting requirements, implementing a key recommendation of the Not Now, Not Ever report.

This bill reforms Queensland's Crime and Corruption Commission to make it more accountable, independent and effective. It overhauls the CCC's enforcement powers into a unified framework, requires the Director of Public Prosecutions to advise on corruption charges before they are laid, extends journalist shield laws to CCC proceedings, and introduces fixed seven-year non-renewable terms for commissioners.

This bill decriminalises sex work in Queensland by repealing criminal offences that made most forms of sex work illegal and abolishing the brothel licensing system. It implements recommendations from the Queensland Law Reform Commission to treat sex work as legitimate work, while introducing new offences specifically targeting the exploitation of children and coercion in commercial sexual services.

This bill strengthens Queensland's anti-corruption framework by widening the definition of 'corrupt conduct' and giving the Crime and Corruption Commission broader powers to investigate corruption risks. It also implements recommendations from two parliamentary committee reviews to improve how the Commission handles disciplinary matters, shares information, and treats people named in its reports.

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.

This bill implements key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It shifts the burden of proof so institutions must show they took reasonable steps to prevent child sexual abuse, and creates a legal framework so survivors can identify and sue the right defendant even when the responsible institution is unincorporated or has changed over time.

This bill improves Queensland's main tribunal (QCAT) and strengthens consumer protections for vehicle buyers. It raises QCAT's jurisdictional limit for motor vehicle disputes from $25,000 to $100,000, reinstates statutory warranty protections for older used vehicles sold by dealers, and introduces conciliation as a new dispute resolution option.

This bill makes major reforms to Queensland's anti-discrimination laws, implementing recommendations from the national Respect@Work inquiry, the QHRC's Building Belonging review, and parliamentary committee reports on vilification. It also strengthens sentencing for workplace violence, clarifies judicial immunity, and gives magistrates access to parental leave.

This bill overhauls Queensland's smoking product laws to reduce smoking rates, combat the illicit tobacco trade, and protect more people from second-hand smoke. It introduces mandatory licensing for all tobacco and vaping product sellers, creates new offences for supplying illicit tobacco, expands smoke-free zones to outdoor dining areas, markets, and school carparks, and strengthens protections for children.

This bill rolls back two key parts of Queensland's 2016 alcohol-fuelled violence laws after an interim review found venues were routinely working around them. It scraps the 1am lock-out and the two-tier '3am safe night precinct' system, keeping a uniform 3am last drinks across all 15 precincts, while tightening the rules on one-off late-night trading permits and letting courts ban drug traffickers and suppliers from licensed areas.

This bill dismantles Queensland's 2013 anti-bikie laws and replaces them with a new Organised Crime Regime. It repeals the VLAD Act and Criminal Organisation Act 2009, removes mandatory minimum penalties targeting gang members, and introduces a new consorting offence, control orders, public safety orders and a mandatory seven-year jail 'top-up' for serious organised crime. It also toughens laws on online child exploitation, boiler-room fraud and drug trafficking, and restores fair process rights for people applying for licences in regulated industries such as tattooing and security.

This bill introduces a 'No Card, No Start' policy for Queensland's blue card system, meaning no one can begin paid work with children without first holding a working with children clearance. It also modernises the blue card application process with online options, expands the criminal offences that automatically disqualify a person from working with children, closes loopholes that allowed high-risk people to rely on exemptions, and creates a centralised register of home-based care services.

This bill implements a national agreement to make it much harder for people with links to terrorism to get bail or parole in Queensland. It amends four Acts to create a presumption against bail and parole for anyone convicted of a terrorism offence or subject to a Commonwealth control order, requiring them to prove exceptional circumstances before being released.

This bill rewrites the rules for retail shop leases in Queensland, following a long statutory review of the Retail Shop Leases Act 1994. It tightens what landlords must disclose to tenants, makes centre outgoings and marketing spending more transparent, frees outgoing tenants and their guarantors from ongoing liability when they assign a lease, and removes coverage of the Act from large shops over 1000m2 and predominantly non-retail tenancies.

This bill overhauls Queensland's blue card (Working with Children Check) system. It introduces a new risk-based decision-making framework replacing the current 'best interests' test, expands the types of work and businesses that require blue cards, simplifies the disqualification process, removes blue card requirements for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kinship carers, and improves information sharing between agencies.

This bill strengthens Queensland's criminal law response to child homicide, following a Sentencing Advisory Council inquiry that found community expectations were not being met. It requires courts to treat a child's vulnerability as an aggravating factor in manslaughter sentencing, expands the definition of murder to include reckless indifference to human life, and increases the maximum penalty for failing to supply necessaries to dependants from 3 to 7 years.

This bill targets alcohol-fuelled violence by cutting late-night liquor trading hours, banning rapid intoxication drinks after midnight, and stopping new extended trading approvals for takeaway alcohol. It also reforms drug and alcohol bail conditions to focus on treatment instead of punishment, and tidies up a range of liquor rules covering craft beer, community clubs, bed and breakfasts and car park events.

This bill strengthens how Australia's health practitioner registration scheme protects the public. It makes public safety the paramount principle, creates new powers to stop unregistered people from providing health services, dramatically increases penalties for misleading health advertising, and embeds cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as a guiding principle of the scheme.

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.

This bill restores the Crime and Corruption Commission's ability to publicly report on corruption investigations, after the High Court ruled in 2023 that the CCC had no such power. It creates a structured framework for the CCC to prepare reports and make public statements about corruption, balanced by a public interest test, identity protections, and procedural fairness for people affected.

This bill brings back a drug court in Queensland by creating a new sentencing option called a Drug and Alcohol Treatment Order. Designated magistrates can suspend a prison sentence of up to four years while the offender completes a court-supervised treatment program of at least two years. The bill also tightens the dangerous drug definition, clarifies that long prison sentences can never be 'spent', and gives extra court protections to victims of domestic strangulation.

This bill wound down Queensland's broad COVID-19 emergency powers and replaced them with a more targeted, temporary framework expiring on 31 October 2023. It allowed the Chief Health Officer to issue public health directions only about isolation, quarantine, mask wearing and worker vaccination in high-risk settings, with new requirements for public justification and parliamentary oversight.

This bill reforms Queensland's electoral laws to improve transparency, modernise voting operations, and align with four-year fixed parliamentary terms. It implements recommendations from the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra report and an independent review of the 2016 elections, requiring disclosure of the true source of political donations and making it easier for voters to cast absentee and postal votes.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to Queensland's health legislation, with the most significant reforms to the Mental Health Act 2016. It strengthens the rights of people receiving mental health treatment by replacing 'best interests' tests with a rights-based approach, improves safeguards around electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), enables international patient transfers, and aligns confidentiality provisions across health agencies.

This bill strengthens support for victims of crime in Queensland. It makes financial assistance easier to claim, extends it to victims of domestic and family violence including elder abuse and economic abuse, and creates a new Charter of Victims' Rights. It also introduces legal protection for sexual assault counselling records and automatically treats sexual offence victims as 'special witnesses' in court.

This bill reforms the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC), Queensland's anti-corruption watchdog, by restoring its independence and broadening how people can report corruption. It reverses several changes made in 2014, separating the CEO role from the commissioners, requiring cross-party agreement on senior appointments, and bringing back the CCC's power to prevent corruption and run its own research.

This bill rolls back a package of tough-on-youth-crime laws introduced in 2013 and 2014. It abolishes youth boot camps, ends the offence of breaching bail for children, restores a ban on naming children in the media, and reinstates the principle that detention or imprisonment should only be used as a last resort.

This bill creates an independent Training Ombudsman for Queensland to handle complaints about vocational education and training, apprenticeships, and traineeships. The Ombudsman is an independent statutory position appointed by the Governor in Council and backed by a public service office, with powers to investigate, refer, and report on complaints.