Well it is too easy to say that this is the result that Queenslanders voted for until you get to the censorship proposal from Premier Cockup Newman.

As the addage goes, "I will defend to the death your right to hold a wrong opinion" but I won't support a politician who has a track record of unenviable disaster and plans to create a Queensland wide economic depression just to win brownie points with international bankers & kow-tow to foreign owned CSG corporations.

Perhaps The Conversation could investigate Newman's allegedly glorious Army career by interviewing some of his former serving colleagues. Then follow up by seeking the views of surviving & departed Brisbane City Council staff who watched Brisbane ratepayers have a huge debt burden built that will endure for decades after his time as Lord Mayor.

Methinks our author doth protest to much. Supression of information and censorship of health related information is rife from the NHMRC down. Just look at the unedifying spectacle of the withdrawal of the Draft Guidelines for ADHD. A processs so devoid of transparency and so tainted with the evidence of inappropriate pressure being applied that, in the eyes of consumers, the NHMRC will never have the public's confidence.
The censorship of clinical trial data, the censorship of research by the peer review process,the censorship of research by outcome based funding, the censorship (unwitting or otherwise) by the press, both lay and professional should all be cause for concern. The average punter with access to the internet will find no shortage of examples.

Thanks Mike for the article.

The gag approach by the Newman Government needs to be seen as a precursor to what would probably occur should the current 'conservative' agenda be inculcated in Canberra.

Elsewhere in the media, critics are pointing to the ludicrous nature of this gag approach.

For example, Terry Sweetman in the Sunday Mail writes...

"I can understand the government's public disquiet - and its private frustration - at funded outfits that push ideas contrary to its policies.

...It is difficult to understand how many [NGO] organisations can go about their business without dipping their feet into political waters.

The problem is there is an inescapable political dimension to most community problems because government has intruded on them (if not caused them) in the first place.

...How could those working in the health-related areas of drug, alcohol and gambling addiction not have political views (and expertise) that should be heard when legislation is widely seen as a remedy, if not a cause, of the problem."

Sweetman points to the the essence of the issue. NGO's do much of the social work because of government failure. To gag these groups because their views are divergent to government ideology makes a mockery of 'responsible' government.

Cheers

Already, this issue is a political football with a federal Minister weighing in (see <a href="http://a4.org.au/a4/node/551"; target=_blank >http://a4.org.au/a4/node/551</a>;); although the federal Labor Government refuses to fund any advocacy or peak body for autism spectrum disorders despite the massive growth in numbers (over 1% of school students by 2009, and 18% growth per year - numbers doubling every 5 years) of this mostly severe or profound disability and reports of extremely poor outcomes (see http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4428.0).

The likely "unexpected consequence" of Qld's policy is that separate (unfunded) advocacy groups will function independent of funded NGOs ... and will be less constrained in their comments.

It is hard to imagine how Qld would participate effectively in developing an NDIS with its NGOs silenced.

"This talk of censorship is nonsense. The reality is that these groups wouldn't have a voice in the first place if it wasn't for the involuntary contributions of the taxpayer. They'll still be free to lobby and campaign as much as they like, they'll just have to do it on their own dime (or 49% of the taxpayers' dime, which is still extremely generous)."

http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/queensland-stands-up-to-sock-puppets.html

Every so often NGO's are forced to go back to their objects, mission and strategic intent. This looks to be one of those times.

As long as NGOs don't think of themselves as an arm of government they have a chance at continuing to pursue their own chosen path and setting their own priorities.

If they have succumbed to thinking of themselves as beholden to the funding bodies rather than seeing them as at best allies or merely sources of revenue (when the interests of both parties are common), then they put at risk their identity and purpose, if not their long term survival.

From the government's perspective they are taking a risk that some important NGOs will stop doing government-funded programs. It's happened before and will happen again.

Mike,

Given Australia is a signatory to The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and many other charters and agreements on the topic of health promotion, could you inform us on how the actions of the Queensland government fit within the agreed commitments that have been made todate?

Specifically...

'to reorient health services and their resources towards the promotion of health; and to share power with other sectors, other disciplines and, most importantly, with people themselves' ( http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/ottawa/en/index2.html p.3 )

It appears to me that this minister doesn't have a clue as to the work that has been going on at national and international level or even within his own state. While it is a government's right to manage a budget, there are other responsibility of government that have been agreed on based on best practice. And while I'm personally comfortable being critical of QAHC, it is in grading them a 'distinction' and not the 'high distinction' required to reduce HIV and other infections. I say this knowing that every 1% improvement in performance requires a near doubling of effort.

Were this LNP government free on the homophobes, it would have been a good time (the change of government) to have a full review of all agencies involved in health promotion. Many people including those working for QAHC would have willingly participated in work-shopping the potential to increase the effectiveness of health promotion and assisted in identifying which programs had the least impact. The gun ho attitude of the Queensland LNP Government is not based on creating effective outcomes but on the deletion of funding to organisations that it perceives to be 'left-wing'. These cuts are focussed on bodies involved in the promotion of health within minorities, environmental protection, forest and land management etc. It is a razor gang on community and environmental health that will create a loss of expert knowledge that is difficult to recover at a later stage.

The LNP have been given temporary custodianship over the actions and expenditures of government in Queensland. My projections based on current trends in Queensland are that if HIV isn't immediately brought under management that is effective in ending the growth of the spread of infection by 2030 X4 the current affected individuals, some 8,000 people will be carrying the virus. If this is reproduced nation wide the cumulative cost of HIV will go from $7 billion to $28 billion. It is critical that health promotion be an empowered sector of the health system and not subject to the whim of a political elite.

Don’t advocate – big brother knows what’s best

Governments for years have attempted to make funding conditional on recipients toeing the party line. It’s an old fashioned concept and perhaps that’s why it’s struck a chord with Campbell Newman’s administration.

NGOs have apparently been told that any who receive more than half their funding from the Queensland Health Department won’t be able to advocate for legislative change at federal or state level as a condition of acceptance of funds. The move is a reinvention of the wheel – only in Queensland’s case the thinking behind it may hark back to the Neolithic era and the origins of the concept of using round things to move heavy objects. Despite evolutionary process, the Newman government’s approach may even be less sophisticated than something that took place more than five millennia ago.

The idea of gagging advocacy groups when they are more needed than ever is a return to the dark ages. The truth is that such a government, despite its delusions of infallibility, doesn’t necessarily know what’s best. That’s why governments regularly go to NGOs asking them to comment on or investigate issues relating, in this case, to public health.

Consider the recent work of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) which launched an action plan to counter the incidence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder – an issue of which governments have largely been unaware. Consider also that as part of its initiative, FARE has devised a diagnostic tool to assist in collecting data on FASD, thereby allowing the collation of important data that might help counter the occurrence such a tragic condition.

In the same vein, why did the Australian National Preventative Health Agency recently approach NGOs for input on the case for establishing a minimum price for alcohol? And why did a New South Wales Legislative Council committee seek comment from NGOs on the provision of alcohol to minors? If, as the Newman administration believes, governments know it all, they wouldn’t need NGOs.

Governments ask NGOs for assistance because they are the closest to the people at the coalface and therefore have first hand knowledge of how something might – or might not – work. If the Newman government thinks it can continue to approach NGOs funded through its health department to investigate and comment on issues without expressing an opinion to others in the same field, it’s showing its appalling ignorance of how advocacy works.

And, if funding is so restricted, will organisations from the health industry sector even bother to avail themselves of it? The answer, given the nature of the sector, is invariably yes. But what use will they be if they find themselves hogtied to a funding agreement that prevents them from effectively doing their job?

The Newman government is reported as saying that NGOs should confine themselves to their “core” activities. If NGOs simply carry out their work to the letter of their funding agreement, it will result in a criminal waste of corporate knowledge, of years of experience.

Such NGOs, should they choose to operate under such draconian dictates, may as well retreat to a dark cave and grow mushrooms. The only warning ADCA can offer is that they be careful of which cave they choose; they might find the Queensland cabinet lurking in its darkest recesses.

Here in the UK the National Health Service is being dismantled, something UK politician Tony Benn told Michael Moore in the film Sicko would lead to revolution if a government announced it was doing it.

That is why the British government has avoided announcing this at every stage, lying about it from day 1 of the election campaign and accompanied by the press, particularly the BBC in acting to prevent most people in the UK from even knowing what is happening to the NHS, which is being reduced to a logo and a source of income for private healthcare corporations.

You may be up for an important struggle to make sure people know what is going on. If England and other parts of Europe are anything to go by, I would concentrate the greatest parts of your campaigning efforts precisely on an information campaign.

https://repository.uwa.edu.au/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=14938&local_base=GEN01-INS01

It is cause for concern when a democratically elected government suppresses embarrassing information by hindering public health research or the publication of research findings. We conducted a survey of Australian public health academics to estimate the level of acts of suppression of research by Australian governments, to characterise these events, and to gather views on what interventions might be effective in curbing them.Methods: A total of 302 academics in 17 institutions completed a postal questionnaire in August 2006 (46% of 652 invited). The instrument sought details of suppression events they had witnessed since 2001.Results: There were 142 suppression events, including 85 personally experienced by 21.2% (n = 64) of respondents. The rates were higher in 2005/ 06 than in earlier years. No State or Territory was immune from suppression. Although governments most commonly hindered research by sanitising, delaying or prohibiting publications (66% of events), no part of the research process was unaffected. Researchers commonly believed their work was targeted because it drew attention to failings in health services (48%), the health status of a vulnerable group (26%), or pointed to a harm in the environment (11%). The government agency seeking to suppress the health information mostly succeeded (87%) and, consequently, the public was left uninformed or given a false impression. Respondents identified a full range of participative, cognitive, structural and legislative control strategies.Conclusion: The suppression of public health information is widely practised by Australian governments.Implications: Systemic interventions are necessary to preserve the integrity of public health research conducted with government involvement.