Fast track, hard stop: what the critical minerals law means for your front gate

The State Development and Public Works Organisation (Critical Minerals) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 (the Bill) has cleared its Parliamentary Committee with a recommendation that it pass unchanged. While its title says critical minerals, its reach is much wider.

The Bill rewrites the State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971 — the workhorse behind Queensland's big project approvals. Its centrepiece is a new category called a State Strategic Project. The Minister for State Development may declare a project to be one if he considers it critical, essential, or a high priority for the State's economic, environmental or social objectives.

That test is deliberately wide, and the legislation is industry-agnostic. Critical minerals are the headline but mining, processing plants, energy and transmission projects, industrial precincts — and, on the Deputy Premier's own account, feedlots, abattoirs and ecotourism ventures — can all qualify.

Four points are important for rural landholders to be aware of:

1.    The declaration itself cannot be challenged.

The Bill expressly puts the Minister's declaration beyond review under the Judicial Review Act 1991. Once a project is declared that classification is effectively settled.

2.    Compulsory acquisition is now open to private proponents.

A private company can seek to have land resumed for its project.

The process has real steps, the proponent must:

• first satisfy the Coordinator-General of its financial and technical capacity
• identify the land, and
• show at least six months of negotiation with the registered owner.

A proponent must then make a final unconditional written offer covering the owner's reasonable valuation and legal costs. Only then can a regulation be recommended, subject to tabling and disallowance in Parliament. The taking itself runs through the Acquisition of Land Act 1967, so notice, objection and compensation rights survive.

Industry groups have raised concerns that the issue isn't that the steps are absent — it's that the power sitting on the table changes how negotiations are conducted. Their position is that compulsory acquisition should be a genuine last resort, not leverage.

3.    Proponents can come onto your land without your agreement.

A new Part 6A creates ’access authorities’, allowing entry to private land to investigate its suitability, or to carry out enabling works for a State Strategic Project.

Access is available only where reasonable efforts to negotiate have failed, and enabling works need Governor in Council approval, with conditions and compensation attached.  Concerningly, ’reasonable efforts to negotiate’ are undefined.

4.    Appeal rights can be narrowed.

Where a State significance notice is issued, decisions on the project are reviewable only by the applicant — not by neighbours or affected parties.

’Modification orders’ can switch off or alter provisions of other Acts for a particular project and can remove third-party merit review. Landowner consents, environmental authorities, resource authorities and cultural heritage management plans can't be modified away, but the process for obtaining them can be. Judicial review remains, though it tests how a decision was made, not whether it was right.

The Government points to those safeguards, the six-month negotiation requirement, and Parliament's power to disallow.  

If this Bill passes the house, landholders should keep written records of every approach. Ask early who is paying for your advice — and get that in writing before you sit down to negotiate.