First Nations

This bill bundles changes across five unrelated policy areas: restructuring the Brisbane 2032 Olympics governance authority, repealing Queensland's Path to Treaty Act to end the First Nations Treaty Institute and Truth-telling Inquiry, winding back workplace health and safety entry powers for union officials, clarifying planning powers for State Facilitated Development declarations, and strengthening the independence of the Public Sector Commissioner.

This bill reforms Queensland's local government laws to reduce red tape for councils, strengthen the role of mayors, overhaul the conflicts of interest and councillor conduct frameworks, and clarify rules around councillor pay, leave and eligibility. It also formalises rating exemptions for Indigenous councils and makes it easier for disaster-affected councils to act during election caretaker periods.

This bill enables joint management of Moreton Island's national parks and conservation areas between the Queensland Government and the Quandamooka People, following the Federal Court's recognition of their native title in 2019. It transfers protected area land to the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation as Aboriginal land while maintaining its conservation status through a jointly managed arrangement.

This bill was discharged and did not become law. It would have established a Queensland Crocodile Authority based in Cairns to take charge of all crocodile management across the state. The bill responded to rising crocodile numbers and increasing attacks in North Queensland by creating 'zero-tolerance zones' in populated waterways and expanding commercial opportunities including egg harvesting and Indigenous land management rights.

This bill creates a formal pathway towards treaty negotiations between Queensland's First Nations peoples and the state government. It establishes the First Nations Treaty Institute as an independent statutory body to develop a treaty-making framework and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and a Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry to document the effects of colonisation. The bill was passed with amendment.

This bill would have established a Queensland Crocodile Authority based in Cairns to take charge of all crocodile management across the state. It aimed to make North Queensland waterways safer by creating zero-tolerance zones where crocodiles would be killed or relocated within 48 hours, while also building a commercial crocodile industry and empowering Indigenous landholders to manage and profit from crocodiles on their land. This bill lapsed at the end of the 57th Parliament and did not become law.

This bill makes wide-ranging reforms to Queensland's child protection system and blue card (working with children check) framework. It strengthens the rights of children in care, ensures their voices are genuinely heard in decisions affecting them, modernises the regulation of foster, kinship and licensed care, and connects Queensland to a national system for screening people who work with children.

This bill sought to raise the age of criminal responsibility in Queensland from 10 to 14 years old. Children under 14 would no longer have been charged, prosecuted, detained, or given criminal records. It also required the release of children already in custody and the expungement of their records. This bill failed at the second reading and did not become law.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes to how Queensland manages state land, names places, and enforces rates payments by resource companies. It streamlines land administration processes, modernises the place naming framework to enable faster removal of offensive names and smooth transitions to new names like K'gari, and requires petroleum, gas, and geothermal companies to pay local government rates as a condition of their resource authorities.

This bill replaces the Public Service Act 2008 with a new Public Sector Act that creates a unified employment framework for the entire Queensland public sector. It implements recommendations from two independent reviews — the Bridgman Review into public sector employment laws and the Coaldrake Report on public sector culture and accountability — to make the public sector fairer, more diverse and better governed.

This bill overhauls Queensland's blue card system, which screens people who work or volunteer with children. It introduces a fairer risk-based assessment, expands the types of jobs and businesses requiring blue cards, and begins removing the blue card requirement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kinship carers. It also enables sharing of child protection court records with family law courts across Australia.

This bill replaces the Public Records Act 2002 with a modernised law governing how Queensland's government records are created, managed and made accessible to the public. It updates definitions to cover digital records, strengthens protections against unlawful destruction of records, and recognises the importance of public records for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This bill updates Queensland's five arts statutory bodies -- the State Library, Art Gallery, Museum, Performing Arts Trust and Theatre Company -- to formally recognise and embed First Nations peoples in their governance. It also modernises board accountability requirements and introduces anti-scalping protections for QPAC ticket sales.

This bill makes the second major stage of reforms to Australia's national law governing the registration and regulation of health practitioners across 16 professions. It strengthens protections for patients by giving regulators new powers to act against dangerous practitioners, improves information sharing between regulators and employers, and introduces a new objective for cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

This bill sought to reform Queensland's Blue Card system for Indigenous communities by giving Community Justice Groups the power to approve restricted working with children clearances for community members who would otherwise be refused due to certain past criminal offences. It was a private member's bill introduced by Mr R Katter MP that failed at the second reading stage and did not become law.

This bill creates a Human Rights Act for Queensland, establishing statutory protections for 23 human rights drawn from international law. It requires all government agencies, councils, police and contracted public service providers to act compatibly with these rights, and sets up a complaints process through a renamed Queensland Human Rights Commission.

This bill establishes Health and Wellbeing Queensland as a new statutory body dedicated to preventing chronic disease and improving the health of Queenslanders. With an initial budget of $32.955 million, it takes a multi-sector approach to tackling obesity, poor nutrition and physical inactivity, with a particular focus on reducing health inequity for disadvantaged communities, remote areas, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to Queensland's health legislation. It strengthens governance of the public health system, embeds commitments to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equity, bans conversion therapy by health service providers, repeals the outdated Pap Smear Register, updates private health facility accreditation requirements, and adjusts administrative arrangements for the Queensland Mental Health Commission.

This bill makes a broad range of amendments across the Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It caps mining exploration permits at 15 years, strengthens rural water compliance with higher penalties, simplifies Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land processes, modernises water authority board governance to improve gender balance, and supports the establishment of CleanCo as a new clean energy electricity generator.

This bill protects First Nations traditional knowledge from being used without consent in biodiscovery — the scientific study of native plants, animals and organisms for commercial purposes like medicines or bioplastics. It requires researchers to negotiate benefit sharing with knowledge custodians and aligns Queensland law with the international Nagoya Protocol.

This bill updates Queensland's spatial positioning standards to the new national Geocentric Datum of Australia 2020 (GDA2020) across 13 pieces of legislation. It also streamlines state land management, creates a faster pathway for Traditional Owners to receive freehold land under Indigenous Land Use Agreements, and extends the Cape York Peninsula region boundary to support Aboriginal land ownership near the Daintree National Park.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments across revenue, penalties, Indigenous community safety, cultural heritage, and transport infrastructure legislation. It expands electronic property settlement in Queensland, formalises several beneficial tax arrangements, improves the SPER debt management system, closes a loophole allowing homemade alcohol production in remote Indigenous communities, and makes governance changes to the Cross River Rail Delivery Authority.

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 a legal framework to recognise Torres Strait Islander traditional child rearing practice (Ailan Kastom), under which children are permanently placed with cultural parents within the extended family. It establishes a new Commissioner to decide applications for cultural recognition orders that transfer legal parentage, so that a child's birth certificate and legal identity match their cultural reality. This is the first legislation of its kind in Australia.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland's mineral resources and water management laws. It improves dispute resolution between landholders and resource companies, requires climate change to be explicitly considered in water planning, recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural values in water plans, and gives the government new emergency powers to address urgent water quality problems.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to laws governing land, explosives, gas safety, and mining within Queensland's Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It introduces security clearances for people who handle explosives, modernises compliance powers for state land, protects Aboriginal freehold land on Cape York Peninsula from mining, supports Indigenous home ownership, facilitates electronic conveyancing, and addresses gas safety and abandoned mining infrastructure.