First Nations

This bill creates Queensland's first Human Rights Act, establishing statutory protections for 23 fundamental rights including the right to life, liberty, privacy, freedom of expression, and fair treatment. It requires government agencies to act compatibly with human rights and creates a complaint mechanism through the Queensland Human Rights Commission.

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 strengthens Queensland's hate crime laws by increasing penalties for serious vilification, creating aggravated offences for hate-motivated crimes, and banning the public display of symbols like Nazi imagery. It implements recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry into serious vilification and hate crimes.

This bill creates Health and Wellbeing Queensland, a new government agency dedicated to preventing chronic disease and improving the health of Queenslanders. The agency focuses on reducing risk factors like obesity, poor nutrition and lack of physical activity, with particular attention to closing the health gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, remote communities and disadvantaged areas.

This bill bundles together five unrelated policy changes: restructuring the Brisbane 2032 Olympics governance body and requiring a 100-day infrastructure review, abolishing Queensland's treaty process with First Nations peoples, rolling back workplace safety inspection rights for unions, clarifying planning rules for major developments, and making the Public Sector Commissioner harder to dismiss.

This bill makes significant reforms across Queensland's health system, including banning conversion therapy by health service providers, embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equity in law, and aligning private hospital licensing with national safety standards. It responds to expert reviews and national commitments to improve health outcomes.

This bill strengthens protections for First Nations traditional knowledge used in scientific research by requiring researchers to obtain consent and share benefits with knowledge custodians. It also simplifies the approval process for biodiscovery activities and aligns Queensland law with international treaties including the Nagoya Protocol.

This bill updates Queensland's spatial positioning framework to the national GDA2020 standard, ensuring maps stay accurate as Australia drifts north-east. It also creates easier pathways for Traditional Owners to receive land under Indigenous Land Use Agreements and streamlines state land lease renewals.

This bill improves Queensland's workers' compensation scheme based on an independent review, while also strengthening protections for apprentices and trainees, requiring Indigenous representation on the TAFE Queensland Board, and repealing the now-redundant Commonwealth Games Act.

This bill makes amendments across multiple unrelated areas of Queensland law. It expands electronic conveyancing for property transactions, gives legislative effect to beneficial tax administrative arrangements, supports the State Penalties Enforcement Registry's new service delivery model, addresses a legal loophole allowing homemade alcohol production in discrete Indigenous communities, clarifies cultural heritage provisions following a Supreme Court decision, and streamlines Cross River Rail administration.

This bill was discharged and did not become law. It sought to establish a Queensland Crocodile Authority in Cairns to remove crocodiles from populated waterways, expand the commercial crocodile industry, and give Indigenous landholders new rights to manage crocodiles on their land.

This bill creates Queensland's formal framework for negotiating treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It establishes an independent First Nations Treaty Institute to support communities to become treaty-ready and participate in negotiations, and a Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry to document the impacts of colonisation.

This bill would have established a Queensland Crocodile Authority based in Cairns to manage crocodile populations, prioritising human safety in populated waterways. It aimed to remove crocodiles from urban and recreational areas, empower Indigenous landholders to manage crocodiles on their land, and create a commercial crocodile industry through expanded egg harvesting. This bill lapsed and did not become law.

This bill reforms Queensland's local government laws to reduce red tape and empower councils. It simplifies conflict of interest rules, removes lower-level conduct complaints from the formal system, gives councils more control over senior staff appointments, and streamlines electoral processes.

This bill aimed to reduce crocodile attacks on North Queenslanders by creating a new Queensland Crocodile Authority to remove crocodiles from populated waterways. It would have empowered Indigenous landholders to manage crocodiles on their land and expanded the commercial crocodile egg harvesting industry. The bill's second reading failed and it did not become law.

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. 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 raised by cultural parents within extended family networks. It allows families to apply for cultural recognition orders that transfer legal parentage from birth parents to cultural parents, reflected on new birth certificates.

This bill sought to raise the age of criminal responsibility in Queensland from 10 to 14 years old. It would have prevented children under 14 from being charged, prosecuted, detained or given criminal records, and required the release of children already in custody for offences committed before age 14. The bill failed at the second reading and did not become law.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes to Queensland's mining, petroleum and water laws. It improves dispute resolution for landholders dealing with mining and gas companies, strengthens climate change and First Nations considerations in water planning, creates temporary water access mechanisms, and establishes emergency powers for water quality crises.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes across the Natural Resources, Mines and Energy portfolio. It strengthens explosives safety and security including automatic licence cancellation for domestic violence perpetrators, modernises compliance powers for State land, facilitates electronic property conveyancing, protects Cape York heritage land from mining, and supports Indigenous land ownership.

This bill makes wide-ranging changes to how Queensland manages state land, names places, and ensures resource companies pay their local council rates. It streamlines land administration by removing duplicate assessments, makes it easier to change offensive place names and recognise First Nations names, and gives local governments stronger tools to collect rates from petroleum, geothermal, and greenhouse gas companies.

This bill replaces the Public Service Act 2008 with a modernised framework for Queensland's entire public sector. It implements recommendations from the Bridgman Review and Coaldrake Report to strengthen employment security, promote equity and diversity, support the government's relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and improve public sector governance.

This bill replaces Queensland's 20-year-old public records law to bring it into the digital age. It modernises how government records are defined, managed, and accessed, while formally recognising the importance of public records for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and creating new advisory bodies to ensure their interests are considered.

This bill would have strengthened First Nations recognition across Queensland's five major arts institutions - the Art Gallery, Museum, State Library, QPAC, and Queensland Theatre. It required each board to include at least two Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander members and created dedicated First Nations Committees to guide cultural governance. The bill lapsed and did not become law.

This bill strengthens the national framework for regulating Australia's 800,000+ registered health practitioners. It gives regulators new powers to protect the public from dangerous practitioners, improves information sharing about risky practitioners, and requires the health system to provide culturally safe care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

This bill aimed to reform Queensland's Blue Card system for Indigenous communities by giving Community Justice Groups power to approve restricted working with children clearances for community members who would otherwise be denied. The bill was introduced as a private member's bill but failed at the second reading stage and did not become law.