(Adopted May 2026)
Principles
The Queensland Greens believe that:
1. All individuals have a right to a safe, peaceful existence, free from harm and fear of violence.
2. Crime prevention strategies, programs, and education must be evidence-based, proactive, community-led and holistic.
3. Building community-led systems that prevent and reduce violence and harm have greater efficacy than law enforcement, prisons, and child authorities.
4. The over representation of First Nations peoples in the criminal justice system in Queensland is unacceptable and avoidable, and must end.
5.The over representation of disabled people, including people with mental health conditions, and substance users, in the criminal justice system in Queensland is unacceptable and avoidable, and must end.
6. Young people have the right to a safe and happy home, free from abuse and neglect.
7. Young people have the right to community and to culturally appropriate community justice programs and services.
8.Substance use is a health issue, not a criminal issue. Drug use and possession should be legalised or decriminalised.
9.Coercive control is unacceptable in our society and constitutes a significant and devastating part of domestic violence.
10. Queensland should have strong effective evidence-based weapon control.
11. Youth justice policies must be restorative and transformative, focusing on education and rehabilitation, not punishment.
12. The age of criminal responsibility should be no lower than 14 years.
13. We should aspire to have no youth incarceration.
14. We must address the structural flaws within the existing child protection system which fail children and families and do not address the underlying causes of crime.
15. Children failed by the child protection system are unacceptably and avoidably over represented in the justice system in Queensland, and this must be ended.
16. Journalists, activists, protestors, whistleblowers, and researchers must have strong affirmative legal protections against raids, intimidation, and legal threats.
Aims
The Queensland Greens will:
1. Provide prevention strategies removing structural circumstances that create crime, which are culturally and linguistically appropriate and led by lived expertise, including:
1.1. Literacy and numeracy programs, education, training and work opportunities;
1.2. The creation and expansion of publicly-funded drug and alcohol treatment and rehabilitation centres (including youth-specific centres) that are voluntary to access, free, and accessible;
1.3. Services breaking the cycle of social disadvantage that often results in child abuse and neglect;
1.4. Services for First Nations peoples, disabled people, and people from disadvantaged socio-economic groups.
1.5. Early intervention programs, such as community based, residential, counselling and other support services.
1.6. Post release support accessible in all communities urban and regional to deter re-offending.
1.7. Evidence-based programs to engage young people in prosocial and
development activities in their communities and schools.
1.8. Evidence-based diversionary programs for young people, as an alternative to the carceral system.
1.9. Evidence-based, community-led programs for First Nations young people
2. Address domestic violence including sexual assault and coercive control by:
2.1. Introducing an adequately funded and integrated approach, with services available throughout the state.
2.2. Implementing evidence-based ongoing prevention, education, and
accountability programs aimed at law enforcement and the judiciary. These programs should be led by frontline services and informed by the lived expertise of victim survivors and oppressed peoples.
2.3. Providing protection, safety, and equality for young people in the
prevention of and response to domestic violence, including access to their
community and to culturally appropriate programs and services, in accordance with the Human Rights Act (QLD) and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. Priority must be given to family support, including the option to stay with
extended family and/or within their communities.
2.4. Increasing educational campaigns about domestic and intimate partner
violence that incorporate an understanding of intersectionality, including support, programs, awareness, and training with acknowledgement of people who are LGBTIQA+, men, disabled, elderly, and youth survivors.
2.5. Changing cultural attitudes to coercive control.
3. Introduce specific programs to combat violence and harm against people on the basis of their race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation, intersex status, disability, or other marginalisation. These programs must be led by people who have experienced the relevant marginalisation.
4. Support ongoing research of the causes of over-incarceration of specific populations, with separate oversight committees for each population composed of and led by people from the relevant population, to be implemented at federal and state level. This includes but is not limited to: First Nations people, disabled people, and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people.
5. Continue to support a well-resourced and independent Crime Statistics and Research unit within the Queensland Government Statistician's Office.
6. Undertake thorough investigation of laws including "hate crime laws", that lead to the over incarceration of First Nations peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse people, disabled people, and LGBTIQA+ people. Investigations of the laws will be led by representatives from the respective community.
7. Maintain the decriminalisation of sex work and sex workers’ rights.
8. Implement drug law reform including the full decriminalisation or legalisation of drug use.
9. Support the ongoing provision and expansion of drug harm reduction programs including safe consumption facilities, drug checking/pill testing facilities, Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST), free take-home naloxone, and needle and syringe programs. These services and facilities must be accessible in all regions.
10. Support trials of alternatives to the carceral system in communities in Queensland. Trials must be performed with full participatory community engagement, involvement of all community stakeholders, and with a shared power structure.
11. Ensure sufficient funding for independent, free legal support and advocacy organisations including Legal Aid, Community Legal Centres, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services to:
11.1 Increase capacity for and accessibility of advice, representation, community legal education, and law reform; and
11.2 Increase the diversity of representation available.
12. Provide sufficient funding to compliance bodies to ensure non-government legal and advocacy services are independent and meeting ethical and service standards.
13. Increase the scope of independent legal support and advocacy organisations so that they are able to advise on more areas of law.
14. Where necessary, provide appropriate support to allow for independent legal support and advocacy organisations to ethically represent both parties in a dispute.
15. Strengthen legal protections for research.
16. Ensure legal protections for research, investigation, and responsible disclosure of institutional problems and security vulnerabilities.
17. Empower and support youth advocates to advise and engage in decision-making that impacts young people.
18. Continue controls over gun use and ownership by:
18.1. Banning the importation, ownership, possession and use of semi-automatic
handguns with exemptions for Government owned guns.
18.2. Maintaining amnesties on the surrender and buy-back of licensed firearms in perpetuity.
18.3. Maintaining public education campaigns in support of the gun buy-back scheme.
18.4. Requiring QPS to accurately monitor firearm ownership and safe storage of firearms.
18.5. Removing firearms from private security agencies.