Committee Details

About the Bill 

On Thursday, 11 December 2025 the Hon Deb Frecklington, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Minister for Integrity introduced the Electoral Laws (Restoring Electoral Fairness) 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 overarching policy objectives of the Bill are to improve and restore fairness and equality to the regulation of elections in Queensland and increase public confidence in Queensland’s electoral process. 

The purpose of the Bill is to:

• prohibit persons serving sentences of imprisonment or detention of one year or more from voting in State elections, referendums and local government elections
• apply existing caps on political donations for State elections to financial years
• remove the ban on political donations from property developers and related industry bodies for State elections, and target the ban to local government elections only
• allow loans from financial institutions to be used for electoral expenditure for State elections
• enhance the independence of registered political parties to conduct preselection ballots without oversight of the Electoral Commission of Queensland
• amend authorisation requirements for election materials and how-to-vote cards, and allow post office boxes and other prescribed addresses to be used.

Call for submissions

The committee invites submissions addressing any aspect of the Bill from all interested parties. Guidelines for making a submission to a parliamentary committee are available here: Guide to making a submission. Please ensure your submission meets these requirements.

Click here to make a submission. Through this link, you can write your submission or upload a file containing your submission. 

If you are unable to provide a written submission, please contact the secretariat to discuss other options.

The closing date for written submissions is 5.00pm on Friday, 2 January 2026. 

Submissions must include:

• the author’s full name
• if the submission is made on behalf of an organisation, the level of approval (e.g. a local branch, executive committee or national organisation), and
• at least two of the following:
• email address
• mailing address, and
• daytime telephone number.

Please ensure your submission includes the above or it may not be considered by the committee. Please note: Your name and submission may be published on the committee’s inquiry webpage, which will mean it can be viewed on the internet. You can request for your name to be withheld from your published submission, or for both your name and your submission to be kept confidential (i.e. not published). Decisions about whether and how submissions are published are at the discretion of the committee.

PUBLIC PROCEEDINGS

The committee has scheduled a public hearing, and a public briefing by officers of the Department of Justice on Friday, 16 January 2026. See timeline below for further information.

Committee’s report

The committee is due to table its report on Friday, 6 February 2026. 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.

Further information

Further information including written briefings, correspondence, response to submissions, transcripts and answers to questions taken on notice will be available under the ‘Related Publications’ tab in due course.

Timeline