Veterinary

This bill creates the Queensland Racing Integrity Commission, a new independent watchdog for animal welfare and integrity in greyhound, thoroughbred, and harness racing. It responds directly to the 2015 Commission of Inquiry that found widespread live baiting and industry self-regulation failure. The bill strips Racing Queensland of its welfare and licensing role, leaving it to handle only commercial operations, and gives authorised officers stronger powers to investigate cruelty and share information with police.

This bill creates a single law for exhibiting animals in Queensland, covering zoos, wildlife parks, aquariums, circuses and mobile animal shows. It replaces four overlapping Acts with one exhibition licence and a new legal duty to minimise animal welfare, biosecurity and public safety risks.

This bill makes a broad range of changes across agriculture, biosecurity, animal welfare, forestry, racing and nature conservation law. Its most prominent measures double penalties for trespassing on farming land, strengthen biosecurity obligations for anyone entering places where biosecurity matter is present, clarify that leaving animals in hot vehicles is an offence, and expand access to farm debt mediation.

This bill sets up a compulsory registration scheme for anyone who breeds a dog in Queensland, so authorities can find and shut down cruel puppy farms. It also modernises the Biosecurity Act — aligning animal feed rules with national standards, letting officials place restrictions on contaminated animals or materials rather than only on places, and updating the lists of banned pests, diseases and weeds. A smaller change clarifies the offence of using an animal as a 'kill or lure' to blood a hunting dog.

This bill updates 10 Queensland agriculture laws with mostly technical changes — clearing the way for drone-based crop spraying, tightening controls on feeding animal products to livestock, speeding up exotic disease responses, simplifying pet microchip rules, and realigning company director liability with national principles. It also stops the automatic repeal of rules that manage the state's 38 remaining forest reserves, keeping them in place until those lands can be transferred to new tenures.

This bill updates Queensland's 20-year-old animal welfare laws to match modern science and community expectations. It bans harmful practices like prong collars and horse leg firing, creates tougher penalties for serious animal neglect, requires CCTV surveillance at slaughterhouses, and introduces new protections for retired racehorses.