Local Government

This bill undoes industrial relations changes made by the previous government in 2012 and 2013 that reduced workplace conditions and union rights in Queensland's state system. It restores the independence of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission, brings back union right of entry without notice, and removes restrictions on what can be included in workplace awards and agreements.

This bill introduces a waste disposal levy in Queensland, starting at $70 per tonne from 4 March 2019, to discourage sending waste to landfill and boost recycling. The levy funds a $100 million Resource Recovery Industry Development Program and stops Queensland being used as a cheap dumping ground for interstate waste.

This bill bans political donations from property developers to candidates, councillors, political parties and third parties at both state and local government levels in Queensland. It also significantly strengthens the rules for how local government councillors must declare and manage conflicts of interest, following recommendations from the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra investigation into corruption risks in local government.

This bill was a complete rewrite of Queensland's planning laws, aimed at replacing the 700-page Sustainable Planning Act 2009 with a simpler, faster system. It simplified development categories, cut State planning instruments from four to two, increased maximum fines for illegal development to over $500,000, and gave councils new powers over party houses. The bill was introduced by the Newman LNP government shortly before the 2015 election and did not pass; Queensland's planning system was instead replaced by the Labor government's Planning Act 2016.

This bill creates the Sunshine Coast Waterways Authority, a new statutory body to plan for and manage the region's waterways from Pumicestone Passage to the Noosa River. It responds to community concerns about fragmented management by different councils and state agencies, particularly after the 2022 Bribie Island breakthrough, and is modelled on the existing Gold Coast Waterways Authority.

This bill updates Queensland's dam safety laws after community concerns about how flood releases from Callide Dam and Wivenhoe Dam were handled in 2015. It makes dam owners responsible for warning downstream communities (not just notifying them), gets local councils more involved in checking dam emergency plans, and lets dam owners lower water levels when engineers find safety risks. It also cuts red tape for small dam owners and reduces overlap with workplace and mining safety laws.

This bill replaces the 2002 Stock Route Management Act with a new framework for managing Queensland's 72,000km stock route network that runs through 44 local government areas. It puts local councils firmly in charge as day-to-day managers of the network, lets them keep all fees and fines they collect, and brings stock travel, grazing and pasture harvesting under a single Act instead of four.

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 bundles three unrelated changes. It stops council CEOs from automatically running their own council's elections, delays the national heavy vehicle registration scheme until 1 July 2018, and extends the Queensland Reconstruction Authority past its original 2015 expiry date so it can keep helping disaster-hit communities.

This bill extends Queensland's COVID-19 emergency response legislation from 31 December 2020 to 30 April 2021, keeping in place temporary measures across tenancy, court proceedings, health, and other areas. It also reforms by-election procedures during the pandemic, allows artisan distillers to sell spirits directly to the public, changes how local government councillor vacancies are filled, and bolsters youth detention centre staffing powers.

This bill modernises Queensland's land valuation framework, which determines how property is valued for land tax, council rates, and state land rent. It gives the valuer-general new powers to make binding guidelines on valuation practices, streamlines the objection process by removing arbitrary monetary thresholds, and gives farmers more control over how their non-adjoining lots are valued.

This bill modernises Queensland's waste laws by embedding the circular economy principle, banning outdoor balloon releases, removing the clean earth levy exemption, and requiring local councils to be transparent about how they spend waste levy payments. It was passed with amendment.

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 reforms Queensland's local government laws to give councils and mayors more authority, simplify the councillor conduct and conflicts of interest frameworks, and cut red tape across a range of council operations. It responds to concerns from the local government sector about unnecessary regulatory burden, particularly around conduct complaints, mandatory training, and disaster recovery decision-making during election caretaker periods.

This bill gave Queensland authorities the legal powers needed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including lockdowns, quarantine orders, business closures, and restrictions on gatherings. It also amended electoral and planning laws to provide flexibility during the public health emergency, with most emergency powers set to expire one year after commencement.

This bill makes several technical fixes to Queensland's local government and planning laws. It gives councils up to two more years to adopt infrastructure plans, lets developers skip offset and refund details to speed up approvals, and cleans up inconsistencies around how-to-vote cards and outdated mayoral voting rules.

This bill makes a range of technical changes to Queensland's tax, superannuation, and government planning laws. It tightens a stamp duty home concession rule, backdates several tax exemptions that have been run administratively, lets State and Local Government employees choose their own super fund, opens QSuper and LGIAsuper to everyone, and cuts duplicated Queensland Plan reporting.

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 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 reforms how complaints about local government councillors are handled in Queensland. It creates an Independent Assessor to investigate complaints instead of council CEOs, establishes a Councillor Conduct Tribunal for misconduct hearings, and introduces a mandatory code of conduct for all councillors outside Brisbane.

This bill would have removed state-imposed caps on infrastructure charges that local governments can levy on property developers. Introduced by Greens MP Michael Berkman, it lapsed at the end of the 57th Parliament and did not become law. It aimed to give councils the flexibility to charge developers the true cost of providing infrastructure like parks, footpaths, and flood mitigation in growing communities.

This bill reforms Queensland's local government councillor conduct complaints system, implementing recommendations from a parliamentary committee inquiry. It introduces a new preliminary assessment process, compulsory councillor training, a vexatious complainant scheme, and greater transparency for conduct investigations. The bill also modernises advertising requirements, amends the Queen's Wharf Brisbane Act, and updates Moreton Bay City Council references.

This bill tightens the environmental assessment of underground water taken by mining and petroleum projects, improves protections for landholders whose water bores are damaged by resource activities, and fixes gaps in how local councils enforce heritage laws. It also creates a transitional 'associated water licence' process for mining projects that were partway through approval when Queensland's 2014 water reforms commenced.

This bill replaces Queensland's entire planning and development system with a simpler framework, repealing the Sustainable Planning Act 2009 and introducing a new Planning Act. It reduces red tape, streamlines how councils make planning schemes, clarifies the rules for approving or refusing development applications, and increases penalties for breaking planning laws.

This bill updates 68 other Queensland laws so they work with the new Planning Act 2016 and Planning and Environment Court Act 2016, which together replace the Sustainable Planning Act 2009. It mostly changes terminology and cross-references, removes duplicated or outdated planning steps, and sets transitional rules so any application already lodged is finished under the old system.

This bill modernises Queensland's information privacy and right to information laws. It introduces mandatory data breach notifications so agencies must tell you if your personal information is compromised, replaces the old dual privacy principles with a single set of Queensland Privacy Principles aligned with federal law, and supports the proactive release of Cabinet documents for greater government transparency.

This bill responds to the Crime and Corruption Commission's Operation Belcarra report by banning political donations from property developers to candidates, councillors, political parties and state MPs in Queensland. It also tightens the rules on how councillors must handle conflicts of interest at council meetings, with new criminal offences and the possibility of being barred from office for four years.

This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency legislation to 30 September 2021, gives local governments flexibility to adjust rates mid-year, creates a framework for holding COVID-safe local government by-elections and fresh elections, and extends temporary remote meeting arrangements for councils.

This bill amends Queensland's tobacco laws to ban smoking in many more outdoor public places, including bus stops, outdoor malls, public swimming pools, skate parks, under-age sports grounds, childcare centres and aged care homes. It also stops the sale of smoking products from pop-up stalls at festivals and gives councils a new general power to ban smoking at other outdoor public places.

This bill creates a new, independent system for handling complaints about Queensland councillors. It sets up an Independent Assessor to investigate complaints, a Councillor Conduct Tribunal to hear serious cases of misconduct, and a Local Government Remuneration Commission to set councillor pay. The changes apply to every Queensland council except Brisbane City Council.

This bill replaces Queensland's Industrial Relations Act 1999 with an entirely new framework governing work for the state's public service, local councils and Brisbane City Council. It sets new minimum employment conditions, makes collective bargaining the main way to negotiate pay and conditions, introduces paid domestic and family violence leave for the first time, and makes Easter Sunday a public holiday from 2017.

This bill implements the second stage of the Queensland 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. It strengthens donation disclosure, tightens conflict of interest rules, mandates full preferential voting, reforms mayoral powers, and brings Brisbane City Council under the same oversight framework as all other Queensland councils.

This bill introduces spending caps for Queensland local government elections, limiting how much candidates, political parties and third parties can spend on campaigning. It follows recommendations from a parliamentary committee inquiry prompted by the Crime and Corruption Commission's Belcarra report, which found that uneven financial competition was deterring candidates and distorting local government elections.

This bill tightens the rules for money in Queensland local council elections and makes a range of technical fixes to planning and building laws. It lowers the donation disclosure threshold to $500, paves the way for real-time online donation reporting, and clarifies when council approval is needed alongside a private certifier's approval for building work.