State parliament rejected protests from the Catholic Church to pass new laws on Tuesday.

Other states continue to debate similar proposals, and in several jurisdictions clergy remain exempt from prosecution for failing to report child sexual abuse.

"(The Queensland laws) create a new offence of failing to report and failing to protect a child from institutional child sexual abuse," Queensland justice minister Yvette D'Ath said.

"The new laws also clarify that priests will not be able to rely on the seal of confession to avoid the reporting of abuse."

Brisbane's Catholic Archbishop Mark Coleridge had protested that the laws would fail to make children safer.

"Clergy have died because they have refused to submit to the claims of the state and preferred to defend the rights of the penitent before God and the rights of God before the penitent," he wrote in a submission to parliament.

"This legislation is bound to fail in this regard."

In some states the Catholic church has confirmed that priests would rather go to prison than break the seal of confession.

Queensland's Anglican church has previously confirmed its rules allow clergy to comply with mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse.

The bill was brought before parliament after a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Australian Associated Press