Health

This bill replaces the nearly 80-year-old law governing the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) with a modern governance framework. It strengthens integrity safeguards for Council members, updates how the Institute Director is appointed, and creates a fairer system for rewarding researchers whose work is commercialised.

This bill amends five health-related laws to strengthen pharmacy ownership regulation, improve occupational disease tracking, enhance mosquito-borne disease surveillance, streamline Mental Health Commissioner appointments, and clarify radioactive waste disposal rules. The largest component prepares Queensland's pharmacy business ownership licensing framework for full commencement by March 2026.

This bill establishes the Queensland Academy of Sport as an independent statutory body, giving it greater operational flexibility and its own governance board. Currently part of a government department, the Academy needs more agility to prepare Queensland's elite athletes for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games.

This bill significantly strengthens Queensland's ability to crack down on the illegal trade in tobacco, vapes and other nicotine products. It extends the time shops can be forced to close from 72 hours to three months, creates new offences for landlords who allow illegal trade on their premises, and gives Queensland Health powers to conduct covert 'test purchase' operations to catch illegal sellers.

This bill puts frontline health workers on hospital boards and cracks down on illegal vaping. It requires each Hospital and Health Board to include at least one doctor, nurse or allied health professional who actually works at that hospital, delivering on a 2024 election commitment. It also allows Queensland Health to immediately destroy seized vaping products instead of storing them for weeks, and lets courts make convicted sellers pay enforcement costs.

This bill amends eight Queensland health laws to fix practical problems with fertility clinic regulation, strengthen the government's power to remove health board members, introduce mandatory cosmetic surgery standards for private hospitals, and create a legal framework for organ donation procedures before a donor's death. It also streamlines private hospital data sharing and updates disease notification requirements.

This bill removes stamp duty for first home buyers purchasing new homes or vacant land in Queensland, lets home buyers rent out part of their property without losing their duty concession, and exempts medical practices from payroll tax on wages paid to GPs. It delivers on commitments made during the 2024 State Election campaign.

This bill reforms Australia's national health practitioner registration system to better protect patients. It requires practitioners who have had their registration cancelled to get a tribunal order before reapplying, permanently publishes sexual misconduct findings on public registers, and makes it an offence to punish someone for reporting a health practitioner.

This bill makes amendments across five health-related Acts to improve access to healthcare, strengthen patient safety, and modernise health legislation in Queensland. The most significant changes allow nurses and midwives to perform early medical terminations of pregnancy, count newborn babies as separate patients for maternity ward staffing ratios, and improve how patient safety information is shared across Queensland Health.

This bill replaces Queensland's 20-year-old pharmacy ownership law with a modern licensing and regulatory framework. It establishes the Queensland Pharmacy Business Ownership Council as an independent body to oversee who can own pharmacies, introduces mandatory annual licensing, and strengthens protections against commercial interference in pharmacy health services.

This bill extended Queensland's COVID-19 emergency powers from 31 December 2020 until 30 September 2021. It maintained the Chief Health Officer's ability to issue public health directions, continued hotel quarantine cost recovery, and preserved emergency provisions in the Mental Health Act.

This bill amends eight health-related Acts to strengthen protections for public health workers, modernise cancer data collection, enable electronic recording of Mental Health Review Tribunal proceedings, expand school vision screening, streamline organ donation consent, and update various administrative processes across Queensland's health system.

This bill overhauls Queensland's gambling regulation in response to major interstate inquiries that uncovered money laundering, criminal infiltration and other integrity failures at casinos operated by Crown and Star. It strengthens casino oversight, modernises gambling laws to allow cashless payments, creates a framework for wagering on computer-simulated events, and makes it easier for national charities to fundraise in Queensland.

This bill makes it easier for first responders to claim workers' compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It creates a presumptive system where PTSD in eligible workers is automatically assumed to be caused by their work, removing the burden on injured workers to prove the connection. This responds to evidence from Beyond Blue and other reviews that first responders experience mental health conditions at substantially higher rates than the general workforce.

This bill bundles several unrelated reforms: it clarifies Queensland's sexual consent laws in the Criminal Code based on Law Reform Commission recommendations, reforms the legal profession's Fidelity Guarantee Fund, strengthens alcohol-fuelled violence measures for licensed venues and nightlife areas, bans wagering inducements to protect online gamblers, and makes other miscellaneous amendments.

This bill establishes a nationally consistent worker screening system for people working with Australians with disability under the NDIS, replacing Queensland's existing yellow card system. It ensures that screening clearances are portable across all states and territories, introduces ongoing national criminal history monitoring, and streamlines the process for workers who also need a blue card to work with children with disability.

This bill establishes a voluntary assisted dying scheme in Queensland, giving eligible adults who are suffering from a terminal condition the legal right to choose the timing and manner of their death with medical assistance. It creates a detailed request and assessment process with extensive safeguards, an independent oversight board, and legal protections for participating health practitioners.

This bill implements the Queensland Government's Savings and Debt Plan through a series of structural reforms. It transfers the Titles Registry to a government-owned company within the Queensland Future Fund to improve the State's balance sheet, abolishes three statutory bodies (Building Queensland, the Queensland Productivity Commission, and the Public Safety Business Agency), and introduces measures to modernise government operations including a fee unit model and mandatory digital publication.

This bill creates Queensland's first laws to regulate the fertility industry and establishes a central register of donor conception information. It was introduced after high-profile failures in 2023, including allegations of wrong donor sperm being used and donors having far more genetic offspring than guidelines allow. The bill requires all fertility clinics to hold a Queensland licence, sets enforceable rules for how gametes and embryos are used, and gives all donor-conceived people the right to know who their biological donor is.

This bill establishes the Queensland Veterans' Council as a new statutory body to take over management of Anzac Square in Brisbane, administer the Anzac Day Trust Fund that supports ex-service personnel and their families, and formally advise government on veterans' matters. It consolidates three existing governance arrangements — Brisbane City Council's trusteeship of Anzac Square, the Anzac Day Trust Board, and the Queensland Veterans' Advisory Council — into a single body.

This bill extended Queensland's core COVID-19 public health emergency powers from 30 April 2022 to 31 October 2022 (or earlier if the Health Minister ended the emergency), while allowing most other pandemic-era modifications to business, court, and local government processes to expire. It preserved the Chief Health Officer's ability to issue public health directions such as mask mandates, quarantine requirements, and gathering restrictions, and continued COVID-19 measures in corrective services, disaster management, and mental health settings.

This bill implements the major revenue measures from the 2022-23 Queensland State Budget. It introduces a mental health levy on large employers, increases coal royalty rates during high-price periods, reforms land tax to account for interstate landholdings, and provides various stamp duty exemptions for small businesses, deceased estates and retirement visa holders.

This bill updates search and forensic procedure safeguards across Queensland law to recognise gender diversity, following the passage of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2023. It replaces sex-based requirements with gender-responsive ones, giving people being searched the right to express a gender preference. The bill also restricts how often prisoners can reapply for parole after refusal, expands who can assess at-risk prisoners, and clarifies planning rules for corrective services facilities.

This bill makes several changes to policing and emergency services law. Its centrepiece is a major expansion of the Police Drug Diversion Program, allowing people caught with small quantities of any dangerous drug to be diverted to health-based programs instead of going to court. It also increases the maximum penalty for drug trafficking to life imprisonment, creates tougher penalties for evading police in aggravated circumstances, and introduces a standalone assault offence for attacks on fire and emergency services workers.

This bill protects the title 'surgeon' so that only medical practitioners with significant specialist surgical training can use it. It responds to widespread consumer confusion in the cosmetic surgery industry, where any doctor could previously call themselves a 'cosmetic surgeon' regardless of their qualifications, putting patients at risk of serious harm. As Queensland is the host jurisdiction for the national health practitioner law, these changes apply across Australia.

This bill repeals and replaces Queensland's births, deaths and marriages registration law. It removes the requirement for surgery to change a person's recorded sex, allows same-sex parents to both use matching titles on birth certificates, streamlines registry services, and strengthens name change fraud prevention. It also adds new anti-discrimination protections for intersex people.

This bill reforms Queensland's workers' compensation scheme based on a five-yearly independent review. It strengthens rehabilitation and return-to-work requirements, expands cancer coverage for firefighters, creates faster weekly payments for injured workers, introduces new enforcement tools, and lays groundwork for future gig worker coverage. It also increases flexible parental leave and adds superannuation as a Queensland employment standard.

This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency laws from 30 September 2021 to 30 April 2022. It keeps in place the Chief Health Officer's powers to issue public health directions, require quarantine, and restrict movement, while also reforming the quarantine fee system to allow prepayment by prescribed traveller cohorts and third-party liability for fees.

This bill reforms Queensland's framework for authorising the use of restrictive practices (such as physical restraint, chemical restraint, seclusion and containment) for people with disability. It replaces the current guardianship-based system with a clinician-based model centred on a new, independent Senior Practitioner who will make all authorisation decisions. The bill also expands protections to include children with disability and aligns Queensland's approach with national NDIS standards.

This bill overhauls Queensland's smoking laws by requiring all businesses selling tobacco, vapes and other smoking products to hold a licence, expanding smoke-free public spaces, cracking down on illicit tobacco, and updating advertising rules for the digital age. It aims to continue driving down smoking rates while protecting Queenslanders — especially children — from the harms of smoking and second-hand smoke.

This bill gives Queensland stronger powers to enforce the national ban on recreational vaping and crack down on the illegal sale of vapes and tobacco. It creates new offences for supplying and possessing illicit nicotine products (including vapes and nicotine pouches), dramatically increases penalties, and introduces powers to close non-compliant shops and seek court injunctions against repeat offenders.

This bill increases the tax on betting operators from 15 to 20 per cent and directs 80 per cent of the revenue to Racing Queensland, creating a more sustainable funding model for the racing industry. It also guarantees at least $20 million per year for country thoroughbred race meetings and makes administrative changes to support the rollout of the mental health levy on large employers from 1 January 2023.

This bill amends Australia's national health practitioner regulation laws to better protect the public from practitioners who have been struck off or found to have committed sexual misconduct. It was introduced following agreement by all Australian Health Ministers but lapsed at the end of the 57th Parliament and did not become law.

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 wound back Queensland's broad COVID-19 emergency powers and replaced them with a smaller set of temporary public health powers that expired on 31 October 2023. It allowed the Chief Health Officer to continue issuing directions about isolation, quarantine, masks and vaccination of workers in high-risk settings, but removed powers for border closures, lockdowns, gathering restrictions and general vaccination requirements.

This bill creates a legal framework for the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to visit and monitor Queensland detention facilities. It implements Australia's obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), ratified in 2017, which aims to prevent torture and cruel treatment through independent international inspections of places where people are held against their will.

This bill makes broad amendments across Queensland's health legislation, with the most significant changes strengthening rights and protections for mental health patients. It reforms electroconvulsive therapy approval processes, adopts a stronger rights-based approach for patient transfers, improves support for victims of unlawful acts, and expands allied health professionals' access to patient information. It also allows health students to assist in pregnancy terminations and clarifies that human milk is not regulated as human tissue.

This bill creates Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ), a new independent regulator for workplace safety in Queensland's mining, quarrying, explosives and petroleum and gas industries. It was introduced after an inquiry into coal workers' pneumoconiosis (black lung disease) found that having safety regulation inside the same department that promotes the mining industry created a conflict of interest. The bill separates safety regulation from industry promotion and strengthens prosecution and oversight arrangements.

This bill creates a new framework for publicly reporting quality, safety and staffing information about Queensland hospitals and aged care facilities. It also sets minimum staffing levels in public aged care homes and reforms the health complaints system to improve coordination between the Health Ombudsman and the national health practitioner regulator, AHPRA.

This bill was introduced in February 2020 in direct response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. It extends the maximum period for renewing a declared public health emergency from 7 days to 90 days, giving Queensland Health greater continuity in managing the pandemic response.

This bill reforms mandatory reporting rules so that health practitioners can more confidently seek treatment for health conditions, including mental illness and substance abuse, without fear of being reported by their treating practitioner. It also doubles penalties and introduces imprisonment for people who falsely claim to be registered health practitioners.

This bill updates Queensland's disability services laws to work alongside the national NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, which commenced in Queensland on 1 July 2019. It ensures that important state-level protections for people with disability — including worker screening, authorisation of restrictive practices, coronial oversight of deaths in care, and community visitor programs — continue under the new national framework.

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 creates a portable long service leave scheme for Queensland's community services industry. It allows workers who frequently change employers within the sector — due to short-term funding arrangements and contract-based employment — to accumulate long service leave credits across the industry rather than losing entitlements with each job change. The bill also fixes a loophole in the Industrial Relations Act 2016 so that employees dismissed due to illness are entitled to pro rata long service leave.

This bill extends Queensland's Disability Parking Permit Scheme to include people who are legally blind, and doubles the fine for misusing disability parking bays from $266 to $533. It also makes technical updates to rail safety definitions to align with national law.

This bill decriminalises termination of pregnancy in Queensland by repealing Criminal Code provisions that made it a crime punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. Based on 28 recommendations from the Queensland Law Reform Commission, it creates a new legal framework treating termination as a health matter rather than a criminal one, with a gestational limit of 22 weeks for termination on request and additional safeguards for later terminations.

This bill ensures all disability service workers in Queensland undergo proper criminal history screening before providing services. It closes a gap by making clear that self-employed workers (sole traders) must hold a yellow card, and it enables Queensland Police to share expanded criminal history information with other states as the NDIS rolls out nationally.

This bill amends over 20 Queensland Acts to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency. It provides temporary financial relief for workers, businesses, body corporate owners, and local governments, adjusts operational rules for health, disability, corrective services, and youth detention facilities, and creates new enforcement powers including court-ordered COVID-19 testing of people who cough, sneeze, or spit on others during an offence. Most provisions expired on 31 December 2020.

This bill creates a new independent Child Death Review Board and expands requirements for government agencies to review their involvement when a child known to Queensland's child protection system dies or suffers serious physical injury. It implements recommendations from the Queensland Family and Child Commission's review prompted by the death of 21-month-old Mason Jet Lee, replacing the existing Child Death Case Review Panels with a more independent, whole-of-system approach.

This bill gave the Queensland Government broad emergency powers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. It strengthened the Chief Health Officer's ability to issue enforceable public health directions, introduced on-the-spot fines for non-compliance, provided flexibility for elections and planning processes, and allowed Executive Council meetings to be held remotely. Most emergency provisions included a one-year sunset clause.

This bill was discharged and did not become law. It would have allowed people who are blind or have severe vision impairment to apply for disability parking permits in Queensland. Currently, only people with impaired walking ability qualify, even though four other Australian jurisdictions already include vision impairment as an eligible condition.

This bill modernises the governance of Queensland's 13 hospital foundations and separately allows Queensland farmers to grow industrial cannabis (hemp) seeds for food. It repeals the outdated Hospitals Foundations Act 1982 and introduces updated rules for how foundations are run, funded, and overseen, while amending the Drugs Misuse Act 1986 to enable the hemp seed food industry.

This bill replaces Queensland's Plumbing and Drainage Act 2002 with a modernised framework that simplifies plumbing approvals, strengthens penalties for unlicensed work, and introduces a new licence for mechanical services workers including those installing hospital gas systems. It consolidates all technical plumbing standards into a single code and gives local governments updated enforcement powers.

This bill repeals Queensland's 80-year-old medicines and poisons laws and replaces them with a single modern framework. It streamlines licensing for businesses that manufacture, wholesale or sell medicines and poisons, introduces real-time monitoring of prescriptions for opioids and other dependence-forming drugs, and makes it easier for GPs to prescribe medicinal cannabis.

This bill adopts the Commonwealth Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 as a law of Queensland, ensuring all manufacturers of therapeutic goods — including sole traders and partnerships — meet national safety and quality standards. It closes a regulatory gap where small manufacturers trading only within Queensland were not subject to any therapeutic goods regulation.

This bill makes a range of amendments to health and other portfolio legislation. It repeals Queensland's separate medicinal cannabis approval process in favour of the Commonwealth system, creates a register to track occupational dust lung diseases like black lung and silicosis, gives Queensland Health new powers to require public notification of pollution events, streamlines radiation safety licensing, clarifies rules for tissue removal in medical research including for children, and ensures retirement village residents with freehold units receive payment within 18 months of leaving.