Courts

This bill establishes a Victims' Commissioner as an independent statutory officer to promote and protect the rights of victims of crime in Queensland. It also creates the Sexual Violence Review Board to examine systemic problems in how sexual offences are reported, investigated and prosecuted. The bill transfers the Charter of Victims' Rights from the Victims of Crime Assistance Act 2009 and gives the Commissioner power to handle complaints when victims' rights are breached.

This bill makes major reforms to combat metal theft with new offences and penalties up to 25 years imprisonment, streamlines the coronial system, increases stock offence penalties, gives media a legal framework to access court information, and doubles the District Court's civil jurisdiction to $1.5 million. It also makes technical updates across more than 25 Acts covering casino law, privacy, integrity, evidence rules, and judicial administration.

This bill reforms Queensland's response to domestic and family violence by giving police the power to issue 12-month protection directions without going to court, piloting GPS electronic monitoring for high-risk perpetrators, and expanding video-recorded evidence across all Magistrates Courts statewide. It aims to reduce the operational burden on police while providing faster, longer-term protection for victim-survivors.

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 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 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 established temporary emergency powers to help Queensland respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. It protected renters and small businesses from eviction, allowed Parliament and courts to operate remotely, and gave government broad powers to modify legal requirements around documents, time limits, and proceedings. The entire Act expired on 31 December 2020.

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 strengthens Queensland's response to domestic and family violence by implementing recommendations from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce. It recognises coercive control as a pattern of behaviour, modernises stalking laws to cover technology-facilitated abuse, reforms how courts handle competing domestic violence claims, and improves evidence rules so juries better understand DFV dynamics. It also makes unrelated changes to the Coroners Act, Oaths Act, and Telecommunications Interception Act.

This bill creates a dedicated Mining and Resources Coroner who must investigate and hold mandatory public inquests into all accidental deaths at coal mines, mines, quarries, and petroleum and gas sites in Queensland. It implements the government's election commitment to increase oversight of mining-related fatalities and ensure families receive answers about how their loved ones died.

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 to better protect victims of domestic, family and sexual violence, while also reforming how courts handle bail, sentencing and evidence in these cases.

This bill increases the financial assistance available to victims of violent crime in Queensland, with the maximum payment for primary victims rising from $75,000 to $120,000. It recognises the seriousness of domestic and family violence by boosting the special assistance payment for those victim-survivors from $1,000 to $9,000. These are the first increases to most victim assistance caps since 2009.