Our role as a water regulator: compliance approach and principles
We are responsible for Queensland’s water management laws and regulate activities under the:
- Water Act 2000
- Water Regulation 2016
- River Improvement Trust Act 1940
- Water Supply (Safety and Reliability) Act 2008
The responsibilities fall under the three regulatory functions.
Sustainable water management: Protecting rivers, aquifers, and ecosystems by monitoring water usage and ensuring sustainable extraction practices.
Public health: Overseeing drinking water quality by setting standards and monitoring water service providers working in partnership with Queensland Health
Safety: Ensuring the structural integrity and safety of dams through setting standards, emergency preparation, mandatory inspections and maintenance requirements.
As regulator, we ensure that everyone understands how we:
- manage water
- measure water
- enforce water laws.
Our compliance approach
We approach compliance by guiding, informing, enabling, monitoring and enforcing.
We promote voluntary compliance through a range of educational activities. These increase the capacity and capability of the community. They include:
- providing information, resources and tools to be clear about the obligations for our regulated water community
- holding site visits, meetings, workshops and events
- promoting and reinforcing good regulatory and business practices, including promoting the benefits of complying and the potential consequences of non-compliance.
Where compliance is not achieved, we take a risk-based approach to decide how best to respond, which includes taking enforcement action when needed.
Our principles
The regulatory work we do is guided by a set of principles.
- consistent and fair: we have a consistent and fair approach to how we achieve compliance
- outcomes and risk-based: we use a proactive, outcomes-focused, targeted, risk-based approach for our compliance activities
- supportive: we encourage the community to do the right thing and empower staff to make decisions within our regulatory and governance framework
- adaptive: we monitor our progress and adjust our actions as needed
- accountable and transparent: we do what we say we are going to do, are transparent in our decision making and talk openly about priorities, activities and the results of our work
- safe and well: we support safety and wellbeing of our staff and communities
- responsive: we are timely in how we communicate about compliance and in responding to non-compliance.
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More information
- Regulatory Strategy 2022-2024 (PDF, 551.5KB)
- Compliance plan 2022–23 end of year report (PDF, 11.1MB)
- Compliance plan 2023–24 (PDF, 4.8MB)
- Read previous plans and report
- Read about how Queensland’s water system works
- Read about the Rural Water Futures program
- Read about the Queensland Murray Darling Basin
Contact us
Call 13 QGOV (13 74 68) to find your closest business centre.
Last updated: 09 Apr 2024