Legislation

Environmental offset framework

The Queensland environmental offsets framework includes:

• Environmental Offsets Act 2014, which coordinates the delivery of environmental offsets across jurisdictions and provides a single point-of-truth for offsets in Queensland.
• Environmental Offsets Regulation 2014, which provides details of the prescribed activities regulated under existing legislation and prescribed environmental matters to which the Act applies.
• The Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.15 (PDF, 1.21MB) which provides a single, consistent, whole-of-government policy for the assessment of offset proposals to satisfy offset conditions. This is the current version of this policy; all superseded versions are below.

Previous versions of the policy are:

• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.14 (PDF, 1.21MB)
  (30 June 2023 to 7 December 2023)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.13 (PDF, 1.21MB)
  (23 November 2022 to 29 June 2023)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.12 (PDF, 1MB)
  (7 April 2022 to 23 November 2022)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.11 (PDF, 1.2MB)
  (10 November 2021 to 7 April 2022)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.10 (PDF, 1.21MB)
  (3 March 2021 to 10 November 2021)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.9 (PDF, 1.17MB)
  (22 August 2020 to 3 March 2021)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.8 (PDF, 1.13MB)
  (6 February 2020 to 22 August 2020)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.7 (PDF, 1.54MB)
  (9 August 2019 to 6 February 2020)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.6 (PDF, 1.23MB)
  (29 June 2018 to 8 August 2019)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.5 (PDF, 1.0MB)
  (9 May 2018 to 28 June 2018)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.4 (PDF, 984KB)
  (3 July 2017 to 8 May 2018)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.3 (PDF, 976KB)
  (12 May 2017 to 2 July 2017)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.2 (PDF, 1.24MB)
  (1 July 2016 to 12 May 2017)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.1 (PDF, 1MB)
  (19 December 2014 to 30 June 2016)
• Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy Version 1.0 (PDF, 795KB)
  (1 July 2014 to 18 December 2014).

A range of measures are in place to protect koala populations in South East Queensland. One of the safeguards requires community infrastructure projects to avoid, mitigate and offset any loss of koala habitat—required under the State Government Supported Infrastructure Koala Conservation Policy (SI Policy) (PDF, 360KB). The SI Policy is applied to the planning and delivery of all Queensland Government supported infrastructure projects within the South East Queensland regional planning area that is not otherwise regulated or exempted.

Prior to the introduction of this offset framework, which came into effect on 1 July 2014, the previous offset framework consisted of five offset policies. Copies of the five superseded offset policies can be obtained by visiting the online library catalogue and searching for the following titles:

• Queensland Government Environmental Offset Policy
• Policy for Vegetation Management Offsets
• Queensland Biodiversity Offset Policy
• Marine Fish Habitat Offset Policy
• Offsets for Net Gain of Koala Habitat in Southeast Queensland Policy.