The Queensland Government introduced the Breach Bail, Go to Jail and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 into Parliament on 27 August 2026. It passed on 29 October 2026 and the Breach Bail, Go to Jail and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2026 received assent on 5 November 2026, without amendment to the provisions described below. It creates a new standalone offence, carrying a mandatory minimum of one year actually served in custody for people who commit certain serious offences while already on bail, unlawfully at large, or who failed to appear in court. It also makes bail much harder to get for anyone charged with one of those offences while already on bail for anything else. Part 1 of the Act (the preliminary provisions) commenced on assent; the substantive provisions described in this article, Parts 2 to 5, commence on 30 November 2026. This article was last updated on 8 November 2026.
What offence does the Act actually create?
The Act inserts new sections 29AA to 29AE into the Bail Act 1980 (Qld). The core of it, section 29AA, creates a new misdemeanour: committing a “prescribed offence” (for an adult) or a “significant offence” (for a child) at any time while you are released on bail, unlawfully at large after bail was revoked, or have failed to appear in court under a summons or notice to appear.
This is a separate charge from whatever new offence you are alleged to have committed. You are sentenced for the underlying offence in the usual way, and separately convicted of the new section 29AA offence for having done it while on bail, unlawfully at large, or on the run from a court date.
What is the mandatory minimum penalty?
The Act sets a minimum penalty of one year’s imprisonment, served wholly in a corrective services facility, with a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment. The “served wholly in custody” wording is specifically chosen to force the courts to impose it, meaning there is no discretion to suspend it, allow immediate parole release, or impose other penalties that would otherwise avoid full-time custody for that minimum year. For a child, the equivalent is detention in a detention centre.
A court still sentences you for the underlying offence separately, under the usual sentencing principles for that offence. The section 29AA charge is a separate conviction with its own sentence. The Department of Justice told the parliamentary committee that there is no requirement for the year to be served cumulatively: the default position is that it runs concurrently with the sentence for the underlying offence, and the court keeps a discretion to make it cumulative. That has a consequence the headlines miss. For someone whose underlying offence already attracts a year or more in actual custody, the new charge may add nothing to the time they serve. Children who would normally be spared custody because of their age will now spend 12 months in actual detention. And it will likely have the unintended negative consequence of sending adults to jail who might have normally received an order like probation, a fine or a suspended sentence.
How the new charge operates
The mechanics behind the new sections 29AB to 29AE matter as much as the penalty, because they decide who actually ends up serving the year.
Police and prosecutors can decide whether to charge it. Nothing in the Act requires police or the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge the section 29AA offence. Section 29AC(2) sets a deadline instead: if the charge has not been laid before the person is sentenced, or otherwise dealt with, for the underlying offence, it can never be laid. A court cannot add the charge from the bench, because in Queensland charges are commenced by complaint or indictment, never by the court. So whether the mandatory year is on the table is a prosecution decision, and it has to be made before the underlying matter is finalised. A charge that is never laid, or is withdrawn, means there is no mandatory minimum.
The plea comes after conviction of the underlying offence. Where the two charges are joined, section 29AC(6) says the person must not be asked to plead to the section 29AA offence until they are convicted of the underlying offence. Once they are, section 29AC(7) says the court “must then decide” the section 29AA charge, in the same sitting, with the same jury if there was one.
The conviction is the proof. Section 29AC(3) makes the conviction for the underlying offence admissible to prove it was committed, and the bail documents are admissible to prove the person was on bail. The charge is not an automatic conviction on paper, but it is effectively automatic: once the underlying conviction exists, the only real argument will become the sentence to be imposed for all of the offending before the court, and sentence starts at a year.
“Convicted” is defined widely. Under section 29AE a person is convicted if found guilty by a court, on a plea or otherwise, whether or not a conviction is recorded, and a finding of guilt against a child counts. A conviction later set aside or quashed on appeal stops being a conviction, which also undoes the section 29AA charge with it.
An acquittal on the original charge does not help. The explanatory notes are explicit that the section 29AA offence “will continue to apply to a defendant even if they are subsequently found not guilty of the original offence for which they were granted bail”. This is because the offence is about breaching the undertaking not to offend while on bail, not about the outcome of the original case.
One charge per incident, and double jeopardy doesn’t apply. Section 29AA(4) allows only one section 29AA conviction where several prescribed offences arise from the same circumstances. Sections 29AA(5) and (6) displace sections 16 and 17 of the Criminal Code (double punishment and double jeopardy) so that both convictions can operate side by side, even though they arise from the same act.
Every grant of bail comes with a warning. New section 29AB requires every court and police officer granting bail, for any offence, to warn the person that committing particular offences while on bail is itself an offence carrying a minimum year in custody. But a failure to give the warning is not a defence and not a ground of appeal.
Which offences trigger it?
The Act’s Schedule 1 lists specific “prescribed offences” under the Criminal Code (Qld) and two other Acts which are captured under the new provisions. The list covers categories including:
- Homicide and serious violence: murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, grievous bodily harm, torture, wounding, unlawful striking causing death, serious assaults (for example on police or a person over 60), assault occasioning bodily harm (aggravated), kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, and unlawful stalking.
- Rape and sexual offences: rape, attempted rape and assault with intent to rape (whoever the complainant is), sexual assault where the victim is a child or the offence is aggravated, indecent treatment of a child, grooming, and repeated sexual conduct with a child.
- Child exploitation material offences: making, distributing, possessing or administering a website involving child exploitation material.
- Domestic and family violence: coercive control, and choking, suffocation or strangulation in a domestic setting.
- Property and acquisitive crime: robbery, burglary, arson, stealing a vehicle or firearm, and unlawful use of a motor vehicle.
- Driving: dangerous operation of a vehicle, damaging an emergency vehicle while driving, and endangering a police officer while driving. Drink and drug driving under the traffic legislation is not listed, but a dangerous driving charge is.
- Drug trafficking under the Drugs Misuse Act 1986, and two firearms offences under the Weapons Act 1990.
The list extends to attempts to commit one of these offences, conspiring to commit it, or becoming an accessory after the fact.
Does this apply to your first bail application?
No. This is the detail easiest to miss in the headlines: the new offence and the tougher bail test only apply to someone who is already on bail, unlawfully at large, or has already missed a court date, and is then alleged to have committed one of the listed offences during that period. The earlier bail can be for any offence at all. The Act defines a “previous grant of bail” as bail granted in connection with a charge of another offence, with no requirement that it be serious, so bail for shoplifting, a minor drug possession or drink driving is enough. What matters is whether the new charge is on the list. That is a deliberate departure from New South Wales and Victoria, where both the earlier and the later charge must be of the same type. If this is your first time being charged and you have no earlier grant of bail, the Act does not change anything about how your bail application is decided. However, if you fail to appear in court on that offence, and are charged with committing one of the above offences, then you’re in trouble.
Does the Act treat children the same way as adults?
Effectively, yes. Children are dealt with under parallel amendments to the Youth Justice Act 1992, with a mostly similar list of prescribed offences, and the test and the minimum penalty are exactly mirrored. A child charged with committing a “significant offence” while on bail or unlawfully at large, or after failing to appear, faces an equivalent “high degree of confidence” test under a new section 48AG, and can be sentenced under section 29AA if convicted. “Significant offence” is not the same list as the adult schedule; it is the existing Adult Crime, Adult Time category already used elsewhere in Queensland’s youth justice scheme.
What is the “high degree of confidence” test?
Separately from the new offence, the Act inserts a new section 16AA into the Bail Act. It applies where an adult is charged with a prescribed offence allegedly committed while on a previous grant of bail, unlawfully at large, or after failing to appear. In that situation, a court or police officer must refuse bail unless the defendant proves, to a high degree of confidence, that they will not commit another prescribed offence if released. The Act also adds these charges to the existing show cause list as a new section 16(3)(h), and section 16AA(3) requires the court to decide show cause first. A defendant who shows cause must also be able to address the “high degree of confidence” question.
Three details of the drafting are easy to miss. The test binds police officers deciding watch-house bail as well as courts, so the first refusal will usually happen at the police station. Where bail is granted, the court must state its reasons in the order and a police officer must record them (section 16AA(4) and (5)), which makes granting bail the exceptional, documented decision. And the confidence required is that the person will not commit a further prescribed offence, meaning another offence from the list, not any offence at all; the risk of minor offending or of breaching a condition is dealt with under the ordinary unacceptable-risk test, which section 16AA(6) keeps running alongside the new one.
This is a significantly higher bar than Queensland’s existing “show cause” test, under which a defendant charged with a serious offence must show why their detention is not justified, but can still succeed if they can overcome the ordinary risk factors set out in section 16 of the current Bail Act. “High degree of confidence” is a stricter form of words the Act itself declares, in section 16AA(7), to be incompatible with Queensland’s Human Rights Act 2019 (a declaration that automatically expires 5 years after commencement unless Parliament renews it).
Where does the “high degree of confidence” test come from?
The Act borrows the phrase from other jurisdictions. The Bill’s explanatory notes explain that the test “or equivalent” is used in New South Wales, the Northern Territory and, in a limited way, Victoria. Each of those versions is narrower than what is in this Act, however, so it will be interesting to see how Queensland courts approach this definition when considering what those words actually mean.
New South Wales introduced the phrase in April 2024 in section 22C of the Bail Act 2013 (NSW). It applies only to 14 to 17 year olds charged with car theft or serious break-and-enter offences (since widened to “performance crime” offences) while already on bail for the same type of offence. Their provision asks whether the bail authority “has a high degree of confidence the young person will not commit a serious indictable offence while on bail subject to any proposed bail conditions”. Two features can be immediately distinguished from the Queensland Act. Firstly, section 22C(3) says that the onus of establishing bail should be refused “remains with the prosecution”, and the Attorney-General told Parliament the test “does not impose an onus of proof on the accused person in the way that the show cause test does”. Secondly, it was enacted as a temporary measure. It was extended once in 2025, and again on 24 September 2026 after a statutory review recommended keeping it, so it now runs to April 2028. And, more importantly, there is no NSW equivalent of this provision for adults.
The Northern Territory introduced their own version in May 2025. Where the Territory’s presumption against bail applies, section 7A(2AB) of the Bail Act 1982 (NT) requires the court to have “a high degree of confidence, when considered in isolation from” the ordinary bail considerations, that the person will not commit a prescribed or serious violence offence “or otherwise endanger the safety of the community”. The words “in isolation” are what the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency has called an “impossibly high threshold” in a High Court challenge filed in December 2025, which argues the laws punish people before any finding of guilt. Written submissions in that case closed in September 2026, the Commonwealth has intervened, and no decision had been given as at the date of this article. Queensland’s Act does not copy the “in isolation” wording, so a win for the challenge would not automatically invalidate section 16AA, though the Bar Association of Queensland has said the Queensland provisions are susceptible to constitutional challenge.
Victoria uses an analogous phrase. Since 31 March 2026, section 4F of the Bail Act 1977 (Vic) treats an accused as an unacceptable risk unless the decision-maker is satisfied “there is a high degree of probability” that they would not commit one of six offences (armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion and carjacking, plus the aggravated forms of the last two), where the new charge was allegedly committed while on bail for one of the same six. Statistics from Victoria Legal Aid show that the 2025 Victorian bail changes resulted in a reduction in First Nations adults granted bail at a first application from 56 to 47 per cent.
Queensland applies a similar test to the Victorian formulation in section 13(3) of the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003, where the Supreme Court can only find that a prisoner is a serious danger to the community if it is satisfied “by acceptable, cogent evidence” and “to a high degree of probability”. That standard has been considered at length by Queensland courts for two decades, but it has the important distinction that the onus rests on the State to prove it applies to a sentenced prisoner. In the case of this Act, it reverses the onus, and places the burden on a defendant who has not been convicted of anything and is - by law - presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
What have the courts said about the test so far?
The only judicial commentary on the exact phrase comes from decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and the themes are consistent.
In R v RB [2024] NSWSC 471, Lonergan J described it as “a test unknown to the criminal law”. Nothing in the NSW Act, and nothing in the Queensland Act or its explanatory notes, says what the words mean or what matters should be taken into account to inform the assessment.
In R v BH [2024] NSWSC 1577, Yehia J said the section “involves an evaluative judgment requiring the Court to reach a state of satisfaction regarded as a ‘high bar’ but not a state of certainty. The Court does not need to be certain that the young person will not commit a further relevant offence. However, the test is a more onerous one than the ‘show cause’ requirement which applies to adults”. Her Honour also noted that “‘probability’ and ‘confidence’ are not completely synonymous”, so the phrase is not simply the familiar “high degree of probability” standard under another name.
In TB [2025] NSWSC 38, Lonergan J summarised the view of three judges of that court: the obligations owed to children under the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act “appear to have had violence done to them by the enactment of s 22C”, which “requires children to be treated less favourably, and their liberty treated less favourably, than if the same circumstances applied to a person aged 18 or older”. Queensland’s Youth Justice Act carries its own charter of principles, and the same tension will arise here for children caught by the new section 48AG.
The NSW Government’s stated evidence that the test is “working” is that the bail refusal rate under section 22C is more than double the rate for youth offences generally. The Law Society of NSW’s reply was that this counts refusals, not reoffending, and that the extension went ahead “without publishing the evaluation of the provision that was promised”. No jurisdiction has yet published data showing the test actually does anything to reduce offending on bail.
What Queensland’s legal profession told the committee
Submissions to the committee closed on 7 September 2026, and more than 200 have been published to the date of this article. Most are short submissions from individuals from the community in support of the Bill. However, every legal and professional body that made a submission opposes it, for good reason.
The Queensland Law Society calls the high degree of confidence test “an unprecedented and conceptually unstable standard of proof”, points out that section 16AA gives no list of matters relevant to it (unlike section 16(2) for the ordinary risk assessment), and relies on the same NSW decision quoted above. It also says the new section 29AA offence is “procedurally unworkable” and risks “capturing a much broader cohort of low-level offenders than intended”. The Bar Association of Queensland adds two practical objections: the test “does not take into account the strength of the prosecution case”, and it leaves no room to weigh time already served on remand. It considers the provisions “susceptible to constitutional challenge” and notes that the Northern Territory’s equivalent is already before the High Court. Legal Aid Queensland describes it as “a test unknown in criminal law with the significant potential to be unevenly applied”, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service says it is broader than any interstate version and “would make Queensland an outlier”.
The Victims’ Commissioner supports the Bill’s intent but asks whether the agencies making bail decisions have the resources to assess risk properly. The Public Advocate simply asks for a support person for defendants with cognitive disability who face the test.
The Parliamentary Committee recommended on 16 October 2026 that the Bill be passed with no amendments. It found the Bill incompatible with the Human Rights Act 2019 but accepted the government’s “exceptional circumstances” justification. The Labor Opposition’s statement of reservation supports the Bill and confines its criticism to capacity and frontline safety, noting that adult prisons were already at 136 per cent of built cell capacity in 2025-26, that no modelling of the extra remand demand has been released, and that the Police Union warns watch-houses are already holding people for extended periods because prisons cannot take transfers. The Greens member dissented. The department’s answer on the meaning of the test was that it is “high, but not unattainable” and that its interpretation “will be a matter for the Courts”. Parliament passed the Bill on 29 October 2026 without amendment, so the objections above did not change the final text.
Our view of the “high degree of confidence” test
Three things about the Queensland version deserve attention.
It is stricter and applies more widely than the law it is based on. New South Wales confines the test to children, leaves the onus on the prosecution, and uses it for a cohort that show cause does not normally apply to. Queensland’s section 16AA applies to adults, shifts the onus on the defendant, and applies in addition to show cause. That is, a person must first show cause under section 16(3), and if they can, they must still satisfy the court to a high degree of confidence that they will not commit a further prescribed offence while on bail. The Act also drops the words “subject to any proposed bail conditions” that anchor the NSW test. We expect Queensland courts will still ask what conditions can be imposed to address risks, because section 16AA(6) preserves the ordinary operation of section 16, but the drafting means it is an uphill battle for defence lawyers to win.
The meaning of the test is not defined in Queensland. Our expectation is that the Supreme Court of Queensland is likely to adopt the NSW reading: a demanding, forward-looking evaluation, higher than show cause, short of certainty. Until that happens, and there are published reasons or standards applied by the Supreme Court, anyone refused bail under the new test in the Magistrates Court should be looking at a Supreme Court application as soon as possible, rather than waiting for circumstances to change.
The test will need stronger, proven evidence. Confidence about bail has to relate back to something the court can point to: confirmed accommodation away from any complainant or co-accused, employment or study that can be verified, treatment that has already started rather than been promised, a surety with real money at stake, and conditions such as a curfew and reporting that answer the specific risk alleged. That is already what a well-prepared show cause application looks like. If those conditions can be satisfied, the court must then consider if they have a high degree of confidence that the defendant won’t commit a further prescribed offence on bail. And those applications are the ones that are usually complicated by things like a poor criminal history, drug offending, or homelessness. As a result, the borderline applications that currently succeed under show cause today are the ones that will probably fail under section 16AA.
Most importantly, whether any of this reduces offending on bail is unproven. The interstate evidence so far shows more people on remand; it does not yet show fewer offences. That is a policy question for Parliament. Does it just simply delay re-offending to 12 months later? Does it serve to simply institutionalise young people and adults, leading to worse outcomes and more offending? These are questions that are not addressed, and which should be what matters most to our society. Either way, what is not in doubt is that from commencement the people caught by the test will be in a materially worse position than they are today, which is a reason to get advice early rather than after a second charge is laid.
When did this become law?
The Bill was introduced on 27 August 2026, the Justice, Integrity and Community Safety Committee reported on 16 October 2026 recommending it be passed unamended, and it passed the Legislative Assembly on 29 October 2026 without amendment. The Breach Bail, Go to Jail and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2026 received assent on 5 November 2026. Part 1 (the short title and commencement provision) started on assent; Parts 2 to 5 (everything described in this article) commence on 30 November 2026.
What should you do if you are currently on bail?
If you are already on bail, timing matters, because the two halves of the Act apply depending on your circumstances. The new section 29AA offence applies only where the bail was granted, or the summons or notice to appear served, on or after commencement (new section 53(3)). The stricter bail test in section 16AA applies to any listed offence allegedly committed on or after commencement, regardless of when your existing bail was granted (new section 53(2)). So a person granted bail in October 2026 and charged with a schedule offence in December would face the high degree of confidence test but not the mandatory year; a person granted bail after 30 November who does the same would face both. Either way, if you are worried about a possible new charge while you are on bail, or have already been charged, getting advice before your next court date, not after, is what matters most.
What this doesn’t change
The Act leaves most of Queensland’s existing bail framework in place. The ordinary presumption in favour of bail, the existing “show cause” list (with the one addition described above), and the “unacceptable risk” test in section 16 of the Bail Act all continue to operate as they do now for everyone else. Read our full explainer on how bail actually works in Queensland for that existing framework, including what happens if bail is refused and how a Supreme Court application works.
If you or someone you love is on bail and facing a new charge, or has been charged with breaching bail conditions, contact us for confidential advice about your bail application, available 24/7 for urgent matters.
This article is general legal information, not advice about your situation.
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