Committee Details

About the Bill 

On 20 May 2025, the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Minister for Integrity introduced the Penalties and Sentences (Sexual Offences) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 into the Queensland Parliament.  The Bill was referred to the Justice, Integrity and Community Safety Committee for detailed consideration.   

View: Explanatory speech 
View: Bill 
View: Explanatory Notes 
View: Statement of compatibility 

The objectives of the Bill are to:

• implement four recommendations from the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council (QSAC) report, Sentencing of Sexual Assault and Rape: The Ripple Effect (the Report);
  • QSAC’s review of the sentencing practices for rape and sexual assault included whether sentences for these offences adequately reflect community views. The Report made four recommendations for specific legislative amendments to the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (PS Act). The Bill will amend the PS Act to:
    • expand the sentencing purposes to include recognition of harm caused to a victim of an offence;
    • qualify the court’s treatment of good character as a mitigating factor in sentencing persons convicted of offences of a sexual nature;
    • introduce a statutory aggravating factor for rape and sexual assault against children aged 16 or 17 years; and
    • clarify that no inference may be drawn from the absence of details of harm caused to a victim.
• introduce a new offence for false representations in relation to government agencies.
• realign the Queensland Crimes at Sea Act 2001 (CS Act) with relevant provisions of the Commonwealth Crimes at Sea Act 2000 (Commonwealth CS Act) to:
  • omit references to Area A of the Zone of Cooperation; and
  • amend the definitions of adjacent areas for Western Australia and the NT, to replace references to provisions of the repealed Petroleum (Submerged Lands) Act 1967 (Cth) with references to relevant provisions of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 (Cth).
• ensure the blue card system operates as intended:
  • The Working with Children (Risk Management and Screening) and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 (WWC Amendment Act), on commencement, will amend the Working with Children (Risk Management and Screening) Act 2000 (WWC Act) to implement recommendations made in the Queensland Family and Child Commission Report: Keeping Queensland’s children more than safe: review of the blue card system. Several amendments to the WWC Act have been identified as necessary to support the intended operation of the reforms to the blue card system made by the WWC Amendment Act.

Further information

Further information including written briefings, correspondence, response to submissions, transcripts and answers to questions taken on notice are available under the Related Publications tab.

Call for submissions

The committee invited submissions on any aspect of the Bill, from all interested parties. Submissions closed at 10:00am Wednesday, 4 June 2025. Submissions considered and accepted by the committee will be made available on the Submissions tab (above).

Decisions about whether and how submissions are published are at the discretion of the committee.

PUBLIC PROCEEDINGS

The committee has scheduled a public briefing on the Bill by officers of the Department of Justice on Wednesday, 18 June 2025 at Parliament House.

See below for further information and updates on public proceedings.

Committee’s report

The committee is due to table its report on Friday, 11 July 2025. The report will be published here.

Once the committee’s report has been tabled, the Government has three months to respond to the report’s recommendations (if any). At that time, the Government Response will be published here.

Timeline