Mr TANNER (12:11 PM) —I rise today to express concern about misuse of government funds for party political purposes. Of particular concern is the need for full and frank disclosure by the Minister for Health concerning his relationship with the international group, Phil Noble and Associates. This company, which is based in South Carolina in Washington, specialises in the use of the Internet for political fund raising and campaigning.

In 1997, the Department of Health and Aged Care issued a contract for $126,000 to an Australian company called Canberra Liaison Internet and New Technologies. The purpose of this consultancy was to provide `advice on the Internet for provision of department information'. It is understood that the company was established by the Canberra lobby group, Canberra Liaison, for the sole purpose of winning this contract and that they then subcontracted the task to Phil Noble and Associates. Canberra Liaison's principal, Jon Gaul, is a long-term strategist for the Liberal Party and worked out of the Liberal Party headquarters throughout the 1996 election campaign. Jon Gaul has previously been a beneficiary of government funded political largesse, receiving a substantial payment for compiling a secret report to assist Peter Reith in his assault on waterfront workers. The Phil Noble and Associates web site makes it clear that the group's main activity is providing Internet tools and services for political and public affairs professionals. They have no specified health experience and the major clients listed are political parties.

The firm's founder, Phil Noble Jr was recently given a special award as the international political consultant of the year by the Australian Association of Political Consultants. This group had nothing to offer the Australian Health Department and it appears that no other health organisation in the world has seen them as the relevant expert body. The fate of their work for the health department is very unclear. The project was meant to last three or four months but no report was produced and no major changes were made to the health department's own web site. A proposal for a new web site, called the `Health Insite', has spluttered along for the past two years.

The original prototype Health Insite had photos of the minister on each page and connections to his personal web site. It was scrapped after it apparently tested very badly with the initial users. A new design is now being trialed, but the minister must explain why this project is still in the prototype stage when he has promised on several occasions to open a new reliable service providing authoritative health information to the public.

It came as something of a shock when I found that this very same group had also advised the minister in the design of his personal web site which was actually put together in Melbourne. It is not clear whether the health minister paid for the advice from Phil Noble and Associates for development of his personal web site but, whether he was paid or not, it is a serious conflict of interest for a minister to personally obtain services from a company which his department is employing at the same time.

I note also that the minister's web site was named by Phil Noble's politics online web site as one of the top 10 international political sites. The minister was recently quoted in the Australian on 28 October last year boasting of the success he had had in using the site to communicate with his constituents in the last election, emphasising its value to him in the last 48 hours to change the views of young voters.

Since these matters started to be commented on in the media, I note that the minister has added a disclaimer to his web site which states:

These facts leave a number of serious questions that the minister must answer. What is the relationship between the minister and either Mr Phil Noble or Mr Jon Gaul? What were the circumstances leading up to the issue of a contract by the health department in 1997 to Can-berra Liaison Internet and New Technologies for $126,000? What work was completed for the health department by this contract and what service to the Australian public was provided as a result? Who funded the web site that the minister established in 1997 and were these funds declared to the Australian Electoral Commission? Did any of the beneficiaries of the health department contract donate services to the minister for personal political campaigning? I hope that the minister is in a position to make a personal explanation of these matters.