Indigenous Affairs

This bill enables the joint management of national parks and conservation parks on Moreton Island (Mulgumpin) by the Quandamooka People and the Queensland Government. It follows a 2019 Federal Court native title determination and extends the same joint management model already used on North Stradbroke Island.

This bill clarifies that adoption is an option for achieving permanent homes for children in out-of-home care, responding to coronial recommendations following the death of toddler Mason Jet Lee. It requires mandatory case plan reviews after two years for children under the chief executive's long-term guardianship, to ensure better permanency options are actively considered.

This bill establishes Health and Wellbeing Queensland, a new statutory body with an initial budget of nearly $33 million dedicated to preventing chronic disease and improving the health of Queenslanders. It takes a whole-of-government and community approach, working across sectors like education, employment and housing to tackle the social factors that drive poor health outcomes.

This bill makes changes across five unrelated policy areas bundled into one piece of legislation. It restructures the 2032 Olympics infrastructure authority, repeals the Path to Treaty Act 2023 (ending First Nations treaty and truth-telling processes), winds back workplace safety entry powers for union officials, clarifies planning rules for State Facilitated Development, and strengthens the independence of the Public Sector Commissioner.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments across Queensland's health laws to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equity, ban conversion therapy by health service providers, strengthen collaboration across the public health system, and update private hospital accreditation requirements. It also repeals the redundant Pap Smear Register and makes administrative changes to the Queensland Mental Health Commission.

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 strengthens protections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional knowledge used in biodiscovery — the process of collecting native biological materials for scientific analysis and commercial purposes like pharmaceuticals and bioplastics. It requires researchers and companies to obtain consent and negotiate benefit sharing with First Nations custodians before using their knowledge, aligning Queensland with the international Nagoya Protocol.

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 amends a wide range of Queensland legislation covering tax administration, electronic property conveyancing, fine enforcement, alcohol restrictions in Indigenous communities, cultural heritage protections, and the Cross River Rail project. It is administered by the Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships.

This bill creates Queensland's legal framework for negotiating treaties with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It establishes two new institutions: the First Nations Treaty Institute, an independent statutory body to help First Nations communities prepare for and participate in treaty negotiations; and the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry, a three-year process to document the impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This bill proposed giving Indigenous Community Justice Groups the power to approve Blue Cards (working with children checks) for community members who would otherwise be denied due to certain non-sexual criminal offences such as stealing, burglary, and drug offences. It was a private member's bill introduced by Mr R Katter MP. The bill's second reading failed and it did not become law.

This bill creates Australia's first legal framework to recognise Torres Strait Islander traditional child rearing practice (Ailan Kastom), where children are permanently placed with cultural parents within the extended family network. It establishes a Commissioner to decide applications for cultural recognition orders that legally transfer parentage, resulting in new birth certificates that reflect a person's cultural identity.

This bill reforms Queensland's child protection system to give children in care stronger rights and a genuine voice in decisions about their lives. It also strengthens the blue card screening system by connecting Queensland to a national database and allowing domestic violence information to be considered in working with children checks.

This bill sought to raise Queensland's minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years old, consistent with United Nations standards and medical evidence that children under 14 lack the brain development to fully understand the consequences of their actions. It was a private member's bill introduced by Michael Berkman MP (Greens) that failed at its second reading vote and did not become law.

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 modernises the management of Queensland's state land, place naming, and resource authority obligations. It streamlines how reserves and trust lands are administered, gives trustees more autonomy, overhauls the place naming process to allow faster removal of offensive names, and requires resource companies to pay local government rates as a condition of their authority.

This bill replaces the Public Service Act 2008 with a new Public Sector Act that modernises employment arrangements for all Queensland public sector employees. It implements recommendations from the Bridgman Review and the Coaldrake Report, extending employment protections across the entire public sector, creating new rights for temporary workers to convert to permanent roles, and requiring public sector entities to actively support the government's reframed relationship with Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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 replaces Queensland's 20-year-old public records law with a modern framework suited to the digital age. It makes government records in the State Archives open to the public by default, strengthens protections against the destruction or tampering of records, and formally recognises the importance of public records for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This bill strengthens First Nations recognition and governance across Queensland's five major cultural institutions — the State Library, Art Gallery, Museum, Performing Arts Trust and Theatre Company. It mandates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander board representation, creates dedicated First Nations Committees, and modernises board governance with criminal history checks and accountability measures. It also introduces anti-ticket scalping rules for QPAC 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 would have created a new Blue Card framework giving Indigenous community justice groups the power to recommend restricted working with children clearances for people in their communities. It aimed to address chronic unemployment in remote Indigenous communities where the standard Blue Card system's inflexibility prevents people with certain past offences from accessing employment, even when the local community considers them safe. The bill's second reading was defeated and it did not become law.