Water Supply

This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland's resources, energy, and water laws. It introduces industrial manslaughter offences for the mining and resources sector, reforms how the State manages mine rehabilitation and abandoned mines, tightens scrutiny of who can hold resource authorities, extends energy consumer protections, and increases transparency of water infrastructure charges in South East Queensland.

This bill makes changes across five unrelated areas of law: validating historically granted mining leases, clarifying petroleum lease renewal rules, strengthening water restriction enforcement in South East Queensland, protecting water providers' cybersecurity information from mandatory public disclosure, and repealing the never-commenced Personalised Transport Ombudsman Act 2019.

This bill strengthens how non-urban water take is measured and reported in Queensland, delivering on commitments made after the 2018 Independent Audit of Queensland Non-Urban Water Measurement and Compliance and the Murray-Darling Basin Compliance Compact. It creates a new regulatory framework requiring water entitlement holders to use approved measurement devices, measurement plans, and in some cases telemetry to accurately track and report their water use.