Breach of Bail in Queensland
Bail & Remand — 2026-10-09 — by Sacha Sarah Smith, Civic Law
On bail and broken a condition or missed court? What can happen next in Queensland: a new charge, arrest, getting bail again, warrants, domestic violence matters and children on bail.
You are on bail and something has gone wrong. Perhaps you were not home when police did a curfew check, or you missed a reporting day, or a court date. Perhaps the person you were told not to contact got in touch, and you answered.
When you were given bail, you signed what is called an undertaking. It is a written promise to come back to court when you are told to, and to keep to the conditions the court or the police have set. Those conditions can reach into ordinary life: where you must live, a curfew, the days you must report to a police station, and the people you must not contact.
Breaking that promise can have two separate consequences. It can lead to a new criminal charge, and it can cost you your bail. Both are dealt with under the Bail Act 1980 (Qld). The law treats missing court differently from breaking a condition, and it treats children differently from adults.
Breaking a Bail Condition Is a Criminal Offence
Breaking any condition of your bail is an offence in itself, under section 29 of the Bail Act . It makes no difference whether a magistrate gave you bail or police gave it to you at the watch-house. The maximum penalty is two years in jail or a fine of $6,908.
A missed curfew, a missed reporting day, staying somewhere other than your bail address, and contact with someone you were told not to contact can all be charged.
There are two exceptions. Some people are given bail on condition that they take part in a treatment, rehabilitation or other program, or complete a drug and alcohol assessment course. Breaking one of those conditions is not an offence. The court can still change your bail because of it, but it cannot cancel your bail for that reason alone.
Missing court is not charged this way. It is a separate offence, with its own rules.
No special excuse is written into the offence of breaking a condition. The general defences in the Criminal Code still apply, though, such as an honest and reasonable but mistaken belief about the facts. Even where there is no defence, what happened and why still counts. It bears on what the court does with your bail and, if you are found guilty, on the penalty.
What Police Can Do
Police do not need a warrant to arrest you for breaching bail. An officer can arrest you if they reasonably suspect you have broken a condition, are breaking one, or are likely to. The same applies if they reasonably suspect you are harassing or interfering with a witness in your case. Arrest is a power police have. It is not something they must do.
If you are arrested, you are taken before the court. If the court is satisfied that you broke a condition, or are likely to, it can cancel your bail. That is called revoking bail, and it means you are held in custody, or remanded, until your case next comes to court. The court can instead let you go on the same bail, or on changed conditions. If the court is not satisfied that you broke a condition, you can be released on your bail as it was, or with changed conditions.
Police can also go to the court without arresting you. The prosecution can ask the court to change or cancel your bail, and the court can do either if it thinks it necessary or desirable in the interests of justice. Where you are said to have broken a condition, that application can be made without telling you first, and the court can issue a warrant so that you are brought before it.
Getting Bail Again After a Breach
For an adult, being charged with breaching bail makes bail harder to get. Ordinarily, it is for the prosecution to show the court that you are an unacceptable risk if released: that you would not come back to court, would commit an offence, would endanger someone, or would interfere with witnesses. Once you are charged with an offence against the Bail Act , and that includes missing court, the starting point is reversed. The court must refuse bail unless you show why you should not be kept in custody. This is called showing cause , and it is the same test that applies to some serious charges.
A breach does not put bail out of reach. The court still looks at the whole picture, and one of the things it must consider is how you have done on bail before. A breach becomes part of that history. Showing cause after a breach means dealing with it head on: what happened, why it happened, and why the bail now proposed will hold. Positive material — a stable address, work, family who will support you — is what the court needs to see.
Offering to wear a tracking device does not help on that question. When the court decides whether you are an unacceptable risk, the law says it must not take into account the effect a tracking device would have on that risk.
If a condition is not working for you, such as a curfew that clashes with shift work, or a reporting day you cannot get to from where you live, it can be dealt with before it is broken. You can apply to the court to change your bail. Until the court changes it, the condition stands and you must keep to it.
If You Missed Court
If you do not come to court when your bail says you must, the court can issue a warrant for your arrest. It does not have to. It can hold off issuing the warrant, or hold off having it carried out, to give you another chance to come to court.
Missing court becomes an offence once you are arrested on that warrant. The offence is under section 33 of the Bail Act , and the maximum penalty is the same as for breaking a condition: two years in jail or a fine of $6,908.
There is a defence, but it is up to you to prove it. You have to satisfy the court of two things: that you had reasonable cause for not coming to court, and reasonable cause for not coming in as soon as you reasonably could afterwards. A good reason for missing the day is not enough if you then stayed away.
In one appeal in 2018, the District Court found a 70-year-old man with no criminal history not guilty of failing to appear. The police prosecutor had told him she would let him know his next court date, and he had given her his new address. The court's notice went to his old address and came back. The magistrate convicted him, taking the view that he should have been checking with the court every week. The judge on appeal said that view was not reasonably justifiable, and found he had shown reasonable cause.
If you come in to the court that issued the warrant as soon as you can, and satisfy it that you had reasonable cause, the court can cancel the warrant. Both the defence and the chance of having the warrant cancelled depend on how quickly you come in.
If you are jailed for missing court, that time is served after any other jail sentence you receive at the same time or are already serving, not alongside it. That rule does not apply to someone who was a child when they missed court.
Some people are given bail with a cash deposit, or with a surety, who is someone who has promised the court money as a guarantee that you will turn up. If you miss court, the court can order that the money be forfeited, which means it is lost, and the surety can be ordered to pay.
When One Message Breaches Bail and a Protection Order
In domestic violence matters, you can be on bail with a no-contact condition while a protection order with similar conditions is also in place. One phone call or text message can then lead to two charges: breach of bail, and breach of the domestic violence order .
You cannot be punished twice for the same act. That rule is in the Criminal Code . In a 2018 case, a man pleaded guilty to nine breaches of a domestic violence order and nine breaches of bail, all resting on the same facts, and the magistrate jailed him on every charge. On appeal, the District Court resentenced him. He was convicted on the bail charges but given no further punishment for them. You can still be charged with both. What the rule stops is being punished twice for the same conduct.
A bail condition binds you, not the person it protects. If that person contacts you, or agrees to contact, their agreement is not an answer to the charge. If the condition no longer fits your situation, the way to change it is to apply to the court.
Children on Bail
Since 22 March 2023, a child can be charged with breaching a bail condition. Before then, the law stopped children being charged with that offence. The change applies to bail undertakings entered into after that date. A child can also be charged with missing court.
Police have extra duties before arresting a child for breaking a condition. These are in the Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld). An officer must first consider whether it would be more appropriate to take no action, to give the child a warning, or, unless the condition is about coming to court, to ask the court to change or cancel the bail. The officer has to weigh how serious the breach is, whether the child had a reasonable excuse, and the child's circumstances, and must take that other path if it is more appropriate.
Those duties do not apply in every case. They do not apply where the breach is itself another offence. Where the child's bail is for one of a list of serious offences, or for some domestic violence breach charges, police may still consider those options but do not have to.
A child's bail is decided under the Youth Justice Act . The adult rule that a charge of breaching bail reverses the starting point, so that the person has to show cause, does not apply to children.
Civic Law acts for people on bail in Cairns and across Far North Queensland, including on applications to change bail conditions and on bail applications after an alleged breach.
Bail Application
Supreme Court Bail