Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, Member for Moreton. It was indeed shameful—and you would know only too well that this is being replicated in Queensland. Members might recall that confidentiality clauses were included in many of the purchaser-provider contracts that were drawn up between the Howard government and not-for-profit service providers.

Those clauses carried with them a requirement that the organisation in question could not make public comment about their service or program without first obtaining the approval of the relevant department or minister, so I imagine in many instances critical comments were only too willingly received by the relevant department or a minister. The clauses in question were well understood in the not-for-profit sector as a mechanism—a very crude mechanism—by which the Howard government could prevent or reduce their capacity to advocate for groups to whom they provided services. They were also well understood to be a mechanism for reducing criticism of the Howard government as a whole and its policies.

I am very pleased to say that since 2008 it has been government policy not to include gag clauses in Commonwealth agreements in order to remove any restrictions on the not-for-profit sector from engaging in policy and debate. But, of course, what was old is new again in Queensland. The Howard government approach to gag clauses is being used by the Newman government in Queensland and last year a spokesperson for the Queensland health minister confirmed that in funding agreements with some community service organisations the Queensland government had introduced conditions that would restrict those organisations from advocating for state or federal legislative change. Those conditions reportedly also stipulate that the organisations must not include on their website links to other organisations that advocate for state or federal legislative change.

At this stage I gather that the conditions have been confined to those organisations which receive a majority of their funding from the Queensland government. But to complete the set, we also have the Newman government refusing to give permission to the federal education minister to visit a state school last week.

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