Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel
The Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel (OQPC) supports democracy, 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 was established as a statutory authority under the Legislative Standards Act 1992 on 1 June 1992. Subject to the Minister, the Premier of Queensland, OQPC is controlled by the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel.
Key achievements for 2017–18
- Provided high quality drafting services to deliver the government’s legislative program within required timeframes.
- Drafted national scheme legislation on behalf of the Australasian Parliamentary Counsel’s Committee.
- Completed the full transition to the new Queensland legislation website and redeveloped the OQPC intranet.
- Completed stage one and two of the indicative reprints project to help the Queensland community understand how proposed amendments would affect legislation introduced to Parliament.
Our performance
The following service standards in DPC’s Service Delivery Statement were used by the department and the government to assess overall performance of the Legislative Drafting and e-Publishing service.
| Legislative Drafting and e-Publishing | Notes | 2017–18 Target/Est. |
2017–18 Actual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service area: Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel | |||
| Effectiveness measure Client satisfaction with legislative drafting services provided by the Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel |
1 | 85% | 86% |
| Client satisfaction with the quality of access to legislation available online | 1 | 85% | 89% |
| Efficiency measure Average cost per hour of legislative drafting and publishing output |
2 | $140/hour | $136/hour |
Notes:
- This service standard informs on overall satisfaction with the services 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. In 2017–18, DPC introduced a new satisfaction scale in its survey. This has resulted in the establishment of new baselines.
- This is a new efficiency measure and informs the average cost per hour to draft and publish Queensland legislation. The methodology has been calculated based on the annual budget for OQPC and the number of full-time equivalent positions in OQPC.
Strategic Plan 2017–21
| Objectives | ||
| Deliver an effective and efficient legislative drafting service for Queensland legislation | Make Queensland legislation and information about legislation readily accessible | Maximise organisational capability and agility |
|---|---|---|
STRATEGIES Identify and adopt best practice in drafting Bills, amendments to Bills and subordinate legislation, having regard to fundamental legislative principles. Contribute to the drafting of national scheme legislation and the work of the Australasian Parliamentary Counsel’s Committee. |
STRATEGIES Identify and adopt best practice in the publication of Queensland legislation. Make up to date consolidations of Queensland legislation publicly available for each day of change. Launch a new Queensland legislation website with a range of enhanced features. Develop and maintain open data arrangements for the release of Queensland legislation. |
STRATEGIES Cultivate a high-performing integrated and innovative workforce. Nurture strategic relationships with clients, partnering entities and other stakeholders. |
MEASURES OF SUCCESS Client satisfaction with drafting services. Legislative program delivered on time. |
MEASURES OF SUCCESS Client satisfaction with access to legislation. Consolidations published within 5 days of the commencement date. |
MEASURES OF SUCCESS Employee opinion survey results in areas of job empowerment, innovation, organisational leadership and agency engagement. |
At a glance in 2017–18:
- 56 government bills
- 11 private members’ bills
- 31 amendments during consideration in detail
- 217 items of subordinate legislation
- 315 total legislative instruments
- 8969 total pages drafted
- 816 total reprints
- 32 total other legislative publications
- 137,974 total pages reprinted
- 2629 total pages of publications
- 7,099,556 total legislation web hits
* Tandem running of old and new website in July, August, September
Future directions for 2018–19
- Support the Queensland Government’s objectives for the community by providing high-quality drafting services and timely delivery of the government’s legislative program.
- Support democracy by providing high quality drafting services for Bills and amendments of Bills for private members.
- Contribute to the drafting of national scheme legislation and the work of the Australasian Parliamentary Counsel’s Committee.
- Provide the authoritative source of Queensland legislation by preparing consolidations of Queensland legislation, including indicative reprints in a timely way, and publishing this material to the Queensland legislation website.
- Enhance access to Queensland legislation and legislative information by continuing with public website developments, including additional subscriber notification options, additional user generated reports, electronic publishing of pre-1991 legislation and providing legislation in open data format.
- Develop a dedicated OQPC website to promote services provided by the office for the government and the Queensland community.
- Implement stage three of the indicative reprints project to include tracked change functionality.
Organisational Structure
- The office is located at 111 George Street, Brisbane. The current structure is summarised in the organisational chart below:
- Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel
- Legislative Drafting
- Legislation and Business Services
- Legislation Editing and Publishing Services
- Information and Technology Services
- Corporate Services
Case study
Queensland legislation website
The Queensland legislation website launched on 25 September 2017, providing Queenslanders with access to authorised Queensland legislation and related information—Bills introduced, Acts as passed, subordinate legislation as made and point-in-time reprints (consolidations) of Acts and subordinate legislation.
The benefits of the new website include a more up-to-date and faster access to legislation, additional features such as hyperlinking between and within documents, and a new layout giving users greater flexibility.
The website is the final component of the e-Legislation system developed by the Office.
It builds on the other two components of the system launched in early 2016— the XML-based FrameMaker drafting tool and the Queensland Integrated Legislation Lifecycle System (QuILLS) database used for OQPC’s legislative drafting work.
During the website’s development, OQPC received valuable input from the Stakeholder Reference Group comprised of senior policy officers from several client departments, a representative of the Clerk of the Parliament, a representative from the Law Society, a legal academic, and two law librarians from the Supreme Court and a law firm.
Future developments of the new website and QuILLS database are planned to deliver even better access to Queensland legislation and more features for website users.