Children & Families

This bill was discharged and did not become law. It sought to implement recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by making it easier for survivors to sue institutions. It would have created a legal duty for schools, churches, and other organisations to prevent child abuse and reversed the burden of proof so institutions had to show they took reasonable steps.

This bill expands police powers in four areas: longer monitoring of child sex offenders, new tools to investigate cybercrime, allowing civilians to assist in undercover operations, and creating offences targeting hooning gatherings and their spectators.

This bill clarifies that adoption is an option for achieving permanent homes for children in out-of-home care, responding to coronial recommendations following the death of Mason Jet Lee. It requires case plan reviews after two years for children under the chief executive's long-term guardianship, to ensure better permanency options are actively considered.

This bill makes it illegal to sell knives, swords, machetes, axes, Gel Blasters and other dangerous items to anyone under 18. It also bans the sale of weapons marketed to glorify violence, such as 'zombie knives', and requires retailers to display warning signs and securely store certain items.

This bill implements the Government's 'adult crime, adult time' policy, allowing children who commit serious offences to receive the same sentences as adults, including mandatory life imprisonment for murder. It removes the principle that detention should be a last resort for young offenders and requires courts to give primary consideration to victims when sentencing. The changes also open up Childrens Court proceedings to victims and media.

This bill creates an independent Inspector of Detention Services to oversee Queensland's prisons, youth detention centres, work camps, and police watch-houses. The Inspector will conduct regular inspections, review how people in custody are treated, and report publicly to Parliament on conditions and any concerns about harm or ill-treatment.

This bill establishes a three-tiered public child sex offender register, named Daniel's Law after Daniel Morcombe. It allows police to publish details of missing offenders, lets residents view photos of high-risk offenders in their area, and enables parents to check if someone with unsupervised access to their child is a registered offender.

This bill implements recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It creates new offences requiring adults to report child sexual abuse to police (including information from religious confession), makes it a crime to fail to protect children in institutional settings, criminalises child-like sex dolls, and enables prosecution of historical abuse that was previously time-barred.

This bill updates Queensland's monitoring system for convicted child sex offenders living in the community. It requires offenders to report their use of anonymising software, hidden applications and digital device details, while giving police stronger powers to inspect devices and track offenders' online activities.

This bill responds to a small group of repeat young offenders responsible for nearly half of youth crime by tightening bail laws and allowing GPS monitoring. It also gives Gold Coast police new powers to scan people for knives in entertainment areas, and makes it easier to prosecute drivers involved in hooning offences.

This bill creates Queensland's first laws to regulate fertility clinics and establishes a donor conception register. It responds to failures in industry self-regulation, including cases where wrong donor sperm was used and donors fathered far more children than guidelines allowed. The law prioritises the welfare of people born through donor conception, giving them the right to know their genetic origins.

This bill implements major reforms to Queensland's criminal justice system to better support victim-survivors of sexual violence and domestic violence. It creates new protections for young people from adults in positions of trust, makes court processes less traumatic for victims, and updates evidence rules to allow juries to hear about patterns of offending behaviour.

This bill toughens Queensland's response to youth crime, particularly car theft and serious repeat offending. It increases penalties for vehicle crimes, makes bail breaches a criminal offence for children, and allows courts to declare young people 'serious repeat offenders' - shifting the focus from rehabilitation to community protection for this group.

This bill extends Queensland's trial of electronic monitoring devices for children on bail by one year, to 30 April 2026. The extension allows the government to properly evaluate whether the devices are effective at reducing reoffending before deciding the trial's future.

This bill modernises Queensland's birth, death and marriage registration system with significant reforms for trans and gender diverse people. It removes the requirement for surgery to change sex on a birth certificate, instead allowing people 16 and over to self-declare their sex with a supporting statement. It also recognises contemporary family structures by allowing same-sex parents to both be recorded as 'mother' or both as 'father'.

This bill overhauls how Queensland reviews the deaths of children known to child protection services. It requires multiple government agencies (not just Child Safety) to conduct reviews when a vulnerable child dies, and creates a new independent Child Death Review Board to identify systemic problems and publicly report on what needs to change.

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 reforms Queensland's child protection laws to give children in care stronger rights and a greater voice in decisions affecting them. It also improves screening of carers and people working with children by enabling domestic violence information sharing and connecting Queensland to a national database that tracks people barred from working with children in other states.

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 is a package of law and order reforms covering knife crime, parole restrictions for the worst murderers, stronger 'No Body, No Parole' laws, protection for police animals, and updated child sex offender monitoring. It aims to improve public safety while reducing trauma for victims' families through the parole process.

This bill makes it easier for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse to sue for compensation. It implements recommendations from the Royal Commission by reversing the burden of proof and creating new rules for suing unincorporated organisations like churches.

This bill reforms Queensland's youth justice system to keep more children out of detention while awaiting trial. It creates a clear presumption that children should be released on bail, bans electronic tracking devices for young people, and requires police to consider alternatives to arrest when children breach bail conditions.

This bill reforms Queensland's Education (General Provisions) Act 2006 to reduce administrative burden on schools and families while strengthening student safety. It makes transfer notes mandatory when students move between schools, implements recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and streamlines processes for online learning platforms, home education, special schools, and P&C Associations.

This bill overhauls Queensland's tobacco laws to reduce smoking rates and protect the community from second-hand smoke. It introduces a licensing scheme for tobacco sellers, cracks down on illicit tobacco, expands smoke-free public spaces, and strengthens protections for children.

This bill sought to introduce mandatory minimum prison sentences for the murder of children and create a new offence of 'child homicide'. Named after Mason Jett Lee, a child who was killed, it aimed to align Queensland's sentencing with other Australian states. The bill was defeated at the second reading and did not become law.

This bill implements a 'No Card, No Start' policy requiring all workers in child-related employment to hold a valid blue card before commencing work. It also modernises the blue card application process, creates a register to monitor home-based care services, and expands the list of offences that disqualify people from working with children.

This bill cracks down on the illegal vape and tobacco trade in Queensland by creating new offences, increasing penalties to up to 2 years imprisonment, and giving authorities power to close non-compliant businesses. It responds to a public health crisis with vaping among 12-17 year olds quadrupling since 2017, and supports the Commonwealth's national vaping ban.

This bill reforms Queensland's blue card system (Working with Children Check) to better protect children from harm. It implements recommendations from the Queensland Family and Child Commission's review, expands which jobs and businesses need blue cards, modernises how applications are assessed based on risk, and improves information sharing between courts handling child protection and family law matters.

This bill creates Queensland's child safe organisations system, implementing key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It requires organisations working with children to meet 10 Child Safe Standards and establishes a Reportable Conduct Scheme where allegations of child abuse by workers must be reported to and investigated under the oversight of the Queensland Family and Child Commission.

This bill enables Queensland to participate in the national redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, following recommendations from the Royal Commission. It allows survivors to receive monetary payments, counselling, and acknowledgment from institutions without going to court.

This bill amends police powers and corrective services legislation across seven distinct policy areas. It creates new search powers for high-risk missing person investigations, expands crime scene powers, allows court orders to unlock seized electronic devices, strengthens evade police investigations, adds Commonwealth child sex offences to reportable offender laws, streamlines Parole Board Queensland processes, and reduces administrative requirements for court proceedings.

This bill responds to community concern that sentences for people who kill children are too lenient. It requires courts to treat a child's vulnerability as an aggravating factor when sentencing for manslaughter, expands the definition of murder to include reckless indifference to human life, and increases the penalty for failing to provide necessaries to dependants.

This bill implements major reforms to Queensland's laws on domestic and family violence and sexual violence, following recommendations from the Women's Safety and Justice Taskforce. It creates a new criminal offence of coercive control (carrying up to 14 years imprisonment), introduces affirmative consent laws requiring active agreement to sexual activity, specifically criminalises 'stealthing', and establishes a diversion scheme for first-time DVO offenders.

This bill makes electronic monitoring of young offenders on bail permanent across Queensland. Following an independent evaluation that found monitoring reduced reoffending and kept young people out of custody, the government is removing the trial's restrictions on age, offence type, and geographic location.

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.

This bill implements a comprehensive package of community safety measures. It expands police powers to search for knives in shopping centres and on public transport, creates new firearm prohibition orders for high-risk individuals, increases penalties for dangerous driving and attacks on emergency workers, allows police to issue on-the-spot fines for low-range drink driving, and reforms youth justice detention transfers.

This bill expands Queensland's 'Adult Crime, Adult Time' policy by adding 20 serious offences to the list of crimes for which young offenders can be sentenced as adults. It allows courts to impose adult maximum penalties, including life imprisonment with a 15-year mandatory minimum non-parole period, on young people convicted of offences including rape, torture, kidnapping, arson, and drug trafficking.