Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel

The Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel (OQPC) supports democracy and the strategic direction of the Queensland Government and delivers on the government’s objectives for the community by providing legislative drafting services to all Queensland public sector agencies and access to legislation on the Queensland legislation website (www.legislation.qld.gov.au).

OQPC’s objective is to draft and provide access to Queensland legislation to the highest standard. OQPC was established as a statutory office under the Legislative Standards Act 1992 on 1 June 1992. Subject to the Premier, OQPC is controlled by the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel. The office publishes its own strategic plan and is included as a service area in the DPC Service Delivery Statement each year.

Key achievements for 2019–20

• OQPC supported democracy and the Queensland Government’s objectives for the community by providing high-quality drafting services and timely delivery of the government’s legislative program. Some significant legislation drafted and introduced within the reporting period included:
• Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
• COVID-19 Emergency Response Bill 2020
• Criminal Code (Child Sexual Offences Reform) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
• Electoral and Other Legislation (Accountability, Integrity and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2019
• Environmental Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020
• Justice and Other Legislation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Amendment Bill 2020
• Public Health and Other Legislation (Public Health Emergency) Amendment Bill 2020
• Resources Safety and Health Queensland Bill 2019.
• Some significant legislation enacted in the reporting period included:
• Local Government Electoral (Implementing Stage 2 of Belcarra) and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2019
• Medicines and Poisons Act 2019
• Motor Accident Insurance and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2019
• Personalised Transport Ombudsman Act 2019.
• Some significant subordinate legislation drafted and made in the reporting period included:
• Economic Development (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020
• Education Legislation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020
• Environmental Protection Regulation 2019
• Environmental Protection (Great Barrier Reef Protection Measures) and Other Legislation Amendment Regulation 2019
• Fisheries (Commercial Fisheries) Regulation 2019
• Health Legislation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020
• Justice Legislation (COVID-19 Emergency Response—Documents and Oaths) Regulation 2020
• Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020
• Retail Shop Leases and Other Commercial Leases (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020
• Transport Legislation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020.
• Other key achievements of OQPC during the reporting period included:
  • Supported democracy by providing high quality drafting services for Bills and amendments of Bills as requested by private members
  • Contributed to the drafting of national scheme legislation and the work of the Australasian Parliamentary Counsel’s Committee
  • Provided the authoritative source of current Queensland legislation by preparing consolidations of Queensland legislation, including indicative reprints, in a timely way and publishing this material on the Queensland legislation website. 
• OQPC enhanced access to Queensland legislation and legislative information by: 
  • Delivering the final phase of the public website’s application programming interface to align with the Queensland Government's Open Data Initiative by providing the authorised Queensland legislation statute book in a form that can be programmatically searched and queried, with results supplied in human-readable XML format
  • Migrating the public legislation website to a more available and resilient cloud platform and proactively monitoring the public legislation website for increased public inquiries from COVID-19 related legislation, significantly increasing resources to cope with peak inquiry periods
  • Developing the InQ reporting application to streamline legislation production and planning activities
  • Delivering significant enhancements to the legislative production system QuILLS
  • Planning for and development of upgrades to the legislative drafting system and supporting the departmental hardware renewal program.

Our performance

The following service standards in DPC’s 2019–20 Service Delivery Statement were used by the department and the government to assess overall performance of the Legislative Drafting and e-Publishing service area.

Notes:

1. This service standard informs on overall satisfaction of the service area and is derived from an annual client survey. Clients are Ministers, Chiefs of Staff, Directors-General and their departments’ Cabinet Legislation and Liaison Officers and senior policy officers. 
2. This service standard informs on the average cost per hour to draft and publish Queensland legislation. The calculation methodology applied to determine the average cost per hour is the total operational expense per annual period, plus a percentage of centralised costs, divided by the total cumulative recurrent standard hours per annual period. The 2019–20 Actual is over target due to FTE vacancies in the service area relative to total operational expense per annual period resulting in a higher cost per hour.

The Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel’s Strategic Plan

The OQPC Strategic Plan 2019–23 is shown below and is available at www.legislation.qld.gov.au/about

At a glance in 2019–20:

• 34 government Bills
• 7 private members’ bills
• 39 amendments during consideration in detail
• 128 indicative reprints
• 349 total legislative instruments
• 7198 total pages drafted 894 total reprints
• 894 total reprints
• 152,086 total pages reprinted
• 7,528,603 legislative website page views
• 269 items of subordinate legislation
  

Future directions for 2020–21  

• Pursue excellence in legislative drafting and access to legislation by adopting best practice in making Queensland legislation easy to find, easy to understand and easy to use and maintaining open data arrangements.
• Cultivate a highly skilled and high-performing workforce by giving our people a range of opportunities for ongoing professional and personal development.
• Make effective use of our technological resources and explore future drafting and publishing solutions to enhance the services we provide.
• Further develop a healthy workplace culture.
• Continue to work with key partners towards a process for the clear ordering of priorities within the government’s legislative program.

Organisational Structure

• The office is located at 111 George Street, Brisbane. The current structure is summarised in the organisational chart:

• Parliamentary Counsel
  • Deputy Parliamentary Counsel
    • Legislative Program (x2)
    • Technical Development (x1)
      • Legislative Drafting Services (x4)
  • Executive Director Legislation and Business Services
    • Legislation Editing and Publishing Services
    • Information and Technology Services
    • Corporate Services

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