Work & Employment

This bill strengthens protections for subcontractors in the building industry who often go unpaid. It extends Project Bank Account requirements to more contracts, gives new tools to recover unpaid money, improves QBCC enforcement powers, and strengthens regulation of building certifiers, architects and engineers.

This bill creates Resources Safety and Health Queensland as an independent statutory body to regulate safety in Queensland's mining, quarrying, explosives and petroleum industries. It implements recommendations from the Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis inquiry, separating the safety regulator from the government department that promotes the mining industry.

This bill strengthens workplace safety in Queensland's resources sector by introducing industrial manslaughter offences, while also improving mine rehabilitation oversight, streamlining regulatory processes, and protecting energy and water consumers.

This bill stops 'claim farming' - where third parties cold-call people to pressure them into making injury claims and sell their details to lawyers. It creates new offences for personal injury and workers' compensation claims, requires law practices to certify compliance, and confirms when workers with terminal conditions can access lump sum compensation.

This bill changes when health practitioners must report colleagues they're treating to regulators, and increases penalties for people pretending to be registered health practitioners. The reporting changes aim to encourage practitioners with mental health or substance issues to seek treatment without fear of automatic career consequences.

This bill strengthens workplace health and safety laws by giving workers and their representatives more power to address unsafe conditions, making it easier to prosecute the most serious safety breaches, and stopping companies from insuring against safety fines. It implements recommendations from two major reviews of Queensland's work health and safety system.

This bill makes a wide range of health reforms to improve patient safety and expand access to healthcare. Key changes include allowing nurses and midwives to provide early medical terminations of pregnancy, counting babies as separate patients for midwife staffing ratios, requiring disclosure of serious patient safety risks identified by quality committees, and allowing Mental Health Court documents to be used in criminal proceedings.

This bill amends nine health-related Acts to improve how Queensland's health system operates. It strengthens wellbeing protections for health workers, modernises cancer data collection, enables electronic recording of mental health tribunal proceedings, and streamlines several administrative processes including organ donation consent and school vision screening.

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 two sets of changes. First, it strengthens Queensland's electrical safety framework by confirming electricity distributors can issue defect notices and by giving the regulator clearer powers to ban unsafe electrical equipment. Second, it removes an uncommenced provision that would have given workplace safety representatives a new way to request information from the regulator.

This bill modernises the Queensland Building and Construction Commission by removing the requirement for physical licence cards and enabling digital alternatives. It also streamlines workplace safety reporting so that building industry licensees only need to notify one regulator of safety incidents, rather than reporting the same incident to both the QBCC and workplace safety regulators.

This bill creates a portable long service leave scheme for Queensland's community services industry. Workers in this sector often move between employers due to short-term funding arrangements, making it hard to reach the 10 years of continuous service usually needed for long service leave. The scheme allows workers to accumulate leave credits across multiple employers, with entitlements payable after 7 years of industry service.

This bill reforms the national law governing trucks and other heavy vehicles across Australia. It expands driver fitness requirements to cover more vehicles, requires transport operators to have safety management systems, modernises the national regulator's governance, and adjusts penalties to be more proportionate to the seriousness of offences.

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 that first responders experience mental health conditions at 10 times the rate of the general workforce.

This bill creates a nationally consistent worker screening system for the NDIS to better protect people with disability from harm. It requires workers in risk-assessed roles to be screened before starting work, enables clearances to be recognised across all Australian states and territories, and introduces ongoing national criminal history monitoring.

This bill simplifies Queensland's retail trading hours framework and strengthens protections for retail workers who don't want to work extended hours. It also makes permanent the COVID-era arrangements allowing school P&C meetings and teacher registration investigations to be conducted by video call.

This bill establishes Queensland's legal framework for transforming its electricity system to renewable energy. It sets legislated targets for 50% renewable energy by 2030, 70% by 2032, and 80% by 2035, creates frameworks to build transmission infrastructure and Renewable Energy Zones, and guarantees job security for workers in coal-fired power stations.

This bill implements major reforms to Queensland's industrial relations system following a five-year review. It strengthens workplace sexual harassment protections, creates a framework for minimum standards for gig economy courier drivers, modernises parental leave, and enhances equal remuneration requirements in enterprise bargaining.

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 technical improvements to several health-related laws before they take full effect. It clarifies pharmacy ownership rules, moves dust lung disease reporting to a national system, allows mosquito traps to be left on properties to detect Japanese Encephalitis Virus, and fixes minor issues in mental health and radiation safety legislation.

This bill modernises Queensland's electrical safety and workplace safety laws. It updates electrical safety definitions to cover new technologies like e-scooters and battery storage systems, strengthens industrial manslaughter laws to protect the public, adds negligence to serious safety offences, and gives safety representatives new powers to photograph and test workplace hazards.

This bill makes major reforms to Queensland's rental laws to strengthen tenant protections in a tight housing market. It bans rent bidding, applies the 12-month rent increase limit to properties rather than individual tenancies, caps break-lease fees, requires evidence for bond claims, and protects tenant privacy. The bill also requires property agents to complete mandatory annual training and allows local government employees to reduce their superannuation contributions.

This bill strengthens workplace safety laws for Queensland's mining and quarrying industries, responding to the re-identification of black lung disease among coal miners. It increases penalties, expands inspector powers, requires better qualified ventilation officers, and creates new health surveillance for former miners.

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

This bill makes Christmas Eve a part-day public holiday in Queensland from 6pm to midnight. It gives workers the right to refuse work after 6pm or to receive penalty rates if they do work, recognising that Christmas celebrations often begin on Christmas Eve.

This bill strengthens workplace safety across Queensland's resources sector following the Coal Mining Board of Inquiry and a review of fatal mining accidents. It requires better risk management through critical controls, mandates competency standards for key safety roles, modernises enforcement powers, and clarifies that companies can be prosecuted for industrial manslaughter when workers die due to criminal negligence.

This bill implements 26 recommendations from the 2023 Review of Queensland's workers' compensation scheme to improve support for injured workers. It requires faster rehabilitation planning, prevents secondary psychological injuries, expands cancer protections for firefighters, and creates a framework for future gig worker coverage. The bill also increases parental leave entitlements and requires superannuation contributions for Queensland public sector employees.

This bill strengthens anti-corruption measures in Queensland prisons following the Crime and Corruption Commission's Taskforce Flaxton investigation, improves the parole system for victims of crime, and establishes a permanent firearms amnesty allowing people to surrender unregistered firearms without prosecution. It also clarifies lawful possession of gel blasters and replica firearms for club members and collectors.

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 reforms Queensland public sector employment laws to give government workers greater job security and fairer treatment. It makes permanent employment the default, creates pathways for temporary and casual workers to become permanent, and establishes positive performance management principles that emphasise support over discipline.

This bill ensures Suncorp remains headquartered in Queensland after selling its banking business to ANZ. It updates existing legislation to require Suncorp's insurance business to maintain its registered office, head office, key corporate functions, and at least one board director in Queensland.

This bill declared 22 September 2022 as a one-off public holiday in Queensland for the National Day of Mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It ensured all standard public holiday entitlements applied to the day.

This bill makes deliberate wage theft a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It also creates a simpler, faster and cheaper process for workers to recover unpaid wages through the Industrial Magistrates Court, with free conciliation offered before matters go to court.

This bill gives the Director-General of Premier and Cabinet and the Clerk of Parliament explicit legal power to conduct criminal history checks on staff working in ministerial offices, electorate offices, and the Parliamentary Service. It formalises interim procedures that were already in place and aligns with criminal history check powers that exist for other Queensland public servants.

This bill decriminalises sex work in Queensland, removing criminal offences for sex work between consenting adults and abolishing the brothel licensing system. It implements the Queensland Law Reform Commission's recommendations to treat sex work as legitimate work while creating strong new offences to protect children from exploitation.

This bill strengthens heavy vehicle safety by requiring company executives to actively ensure compliance with safety laws, and establishes a national database of heavy vehicles. It also significantly increases penalties for dangerous and careless driving that causes death or serious injury, and allows vehicle owners to be notified of traffic offences committed in their vehicles.

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 modernises Queensland's plumbing and drainage laws by replacing the 2002 Act with a streamlined framework. It creates four categories of plumbing work with different approval requirements, introduces a new mechanical services licence for air-conditioning and medical gas work, and strengthens penalties for unlicensed or defective work to better protect public health and safety.

This bill strengthens Queensland's anti-discrimination and workplace protections by requiring employers to actively prevent discrimination and harassment, expanding the grounds on which discrimination is prohibited, and creating new protections against sex-based harassment and hostile work environments. It also increases penalties for violence against workers and clarifies judicial immunity for magistrates.

This bill tackles 'claim farming' - a growing problem where anonymous callers from local or overseas call centres contact Queenslanders after car accidents, often impersonating government agencies, to pressure them into making insurance claims. These callers then sell the victims' personal information to lawyers or claims services for a fee. The bill creates new criminal offences for this conduct and strengthens the Motor Accident Insurance Commission's powers to investigate and prosecute offenders.

This bill puts Queensland's emissions reduction targets into law, committing the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030, 75% by 2035, and reach net zero by 2050. It creates a framework for planning how key industries will reduce emissions, establishes an expert advisory panel, and requires annual progress reports to Parliament.

This bill simplifies Queensland's payment protection rules for building subcontractors and implements governance reforms for the building industry regulator. It clarifies trust account requirements, makes the QBCC Board more transparent, and streamlines licensing processes for builders and trades.

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 implements 2023-24 State Budget revenue measures affecting land tax, stamp duty, and payroll tax. It creates major tax concessions for build-to-rent housing developments that include affordable housing, extends payroll tax relief for regional employers and apprentice wages, and simplifies land tax administration for homeowners.

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 reforms several health-related regulatory frameworks in Queensland. It repeals the state's medicinal cannabis approval system (which duplicated Commonwealth processes), establishes a register to track occupational dust lung diseases like coal workers' pneumoconiosis, empowers health authorities to require public notices about pollution events, and ensures freehold retirement village residents receive timely payment when they leave.

This bill creates a dedicated Mining and Resources Coroner to investigate all accidental deaths on Queensland's coal mines, mines, quarries, and petroleum and gas sites. Every mining-related death will now have a mandatory public inquest to determine what happened and how similar deaths can be prevented.

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 establishes a formal process for recognising exceptional teachers through 'Highly Accomplished Teacher' and 'Lead Teacher' certification. It empowers the Queensland College of Teachers to assess and certify teachers in State and Catholic schools against national professional standards, giving experienced educators a career pathway that doesn't require leaving the classroom.

This bill makes changes across multiple transport policy areas. It completes Queensland's transition to the national heavy vehicle regulatory scheme by transferring staff to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator. It also strengthens road safety for e-scooter and bicycle users, creates consistent safety duties for bus and passenger transport operators, modernises toll payment processes, and allows overseas visitors to use digital driver's licences.

This bill makes practical adjustments to coal mining safety employment rules and supports Queensland's critical minerals sector. It allows coal mining companies more flexibility in staffing safety-critical positions while maintaining the core protections for workers, and introduces rent deferrals for new critical minerals mining leases.

This bill enables the merger of QSuper and Sunsuper to create Australia's second-largest superannuation fund, managing around $200 billion. It restructures how the fund is governed while protecting existing benefits for Queensland public sector employees.

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 lapsed and did not become law. It was a private member's bill that sought to amend the 1985 agreement between Queensland and Mount Isa Mines Limited to prevent the company from ceasing copper mining without government approval. The bill was introduced in response to Glencore's announcement to close the copper mine with 1,200 job losses.