Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)   notes the study published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health (Vol. 31, Issue 6, pp 551-7, December 2007) by Yazahmeidi and Holman, School of Population Health, University of Western Australia, ‘A survey of suppression of public health information by Australian governments’ which found that:

(i)

just under one-third of academics had witnessed the suppression of health information by Australian governments in the past 5.5 years,

(ii)

more than one-fifth had experienced such events personally,

(iii)

no state or territory in which the survey took place was immune,

(iv)

governments most commonly hindered research by sanitising, delaying or prohibiting the publication of findings but ‘there was no part of the research process beyond their reach’,

(v)

most of the affected researchers believed that their work had been targeted because it drew attention to failings in health service delivery, uncovered bad news about the health of a vulnerable group, or pointed to a harmful exposure in the environment, and

(vi)

in most instances the government agency seeking to suppress the health information succeeded and, consequently the public was left uninformed or given a false impression; and

(b)   calls on the Government to take up the recommendations of the study with state and territory governments, including:

(i)

adopting policies that match or exceed the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s ‘Guidelines for managing conflict of interest in the public service’,

(ii)

adopting a charter by government health agencies and research and academic institutions that supports the independent role of health researchers in evaluating the health system,

(iii)

establishing parliamentary ombudsmen or ombudswomen in mediating the resolution of complaints by researchers concerning suppression,

(iv)

promoting a culture that avoids blame and values constructive criticism,

(v)

promoting the role of institutional ethics committees in scrutinising the ethical behaviour of government agencies and researchers who work together, and

(vi)

establishing a surveillance system to monitor the occurrence of suppression events and report on their trends.

Question agreed to.