Queensland parliament passes ‘unprecedented’ gag on abortion debate | Abortion

The Queensland parliament has been banned from debate on abortion for four years after an ambush motion by the premier, David Crisafulli, in a move labelled “unprecedented”.

The motion also requires any “motion or amendment” seeking to have the house “express its views” on abortion be ruled out of order.

Opposition and crossbench MPs labelled the move “extraordinary” and “unprecedented”.

There was no notice of the move before Crisafulli introduced the motion into the parliament after question time. Just half an hour was set aside for debate before he used the Liberal National party’s majority to ram it through.

All 50 LNP MPs present voted for the motion, with 35 Labor MPs and three Katter’s Australia party MPs voting against it.

Crisafulli said his motion ended a “disgraceful … US-style scare campaign”. The issue dominated the recent Queensland election campaign.

“I said from day one, it was not part of our plan,” Crisafulli said.

“I said there will be no changes. And despite that – Labor knew this – and despite that, the social media tsunami, the grubby phone calls continued unabated. They spent millions of dollars on a disgraceful scare campaign.”

Abortion dogged the LNP during the election campaign.

Crisafulli failed to rule out a conscience vote on the issue, despite being asked dozens of times to do so. Many of his MPs have confirmed they are anti-abortion.

The opposition leader, Steven Miles, said the move was “extraordinary”.

“Mr Speaker, these are extraordinary scenes. I thought I’d never seen anything as extraordinary as what they did at the last sitting. But this, with no notice, no discussion, no advice to the media that it was even coming, such a grubby, grubby treatment [of a serious issue].”

Several Labor MPs pointed out that the motion prevented the parliament from expanding legislative protections for abortion services.

“If there is further developments by the TGA to further strengthen scope of practice for health professionals, to make it easier for women, this house could not debate that issue,” Labor MP Shannon Fentiman said. “If women need more protection from attending abortion clinics, those reforms would not be possible.

“This is appalling, it is unprecedented and they should be ashamed for being so obviously, so obviously against women’s rights in this state that they have to gag their own members for four years. Shame.”

Crossbench MP Robbie Katter has repeatedly vowed to reintroduce the party’s “babies born alive” bill, which regulated abortion providers, a move that would almost certainly have forced a vote on the issue.

At a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Katter said it was the start of a slippery slope.

“Can they just – anything they don’t want to see debated for this entire parliament put a similar motion in – and say, we don’t want to see that debated for the rest of this parliament?” he said.

“It offends every inch of democracy that there is in this state.”