Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I will be voting against the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial Responsibility for Approval of RU486) Bill 2005. Much has been said in the Senate and the media regarding what this debate is about. To me, this debate is about making abortion more readily available than it is. I will not vote for a bill that could potentially make access to abortion more readily available than it is now.

The effect of the bill is to remove the capacity for the Minister for Health and Ageing to declare a product a restricted good under the Therapeutic Goods Administration Act and to repose all power in the TGA in relation to potential restricted goods. The only product currently declared a restricted good is RU486 in its application as an abortifacient. RU486 induces a miscarriage leading to an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy; therefore, this debate is about abortion.

I understand that there will be abortion in this country and I do not support a return to the dark days of backyard abortions and the like. But I do think late-term abortions are wrong. I do think it is a travesty that, in hospitals around Australia today, babies are being born and living after 21 weeks of gestation and, in other parts of the same hospital, babies of the same gestation and longer are having their lives brought to an end. I do believe that a woman having to see her doctor and go through a surgical procedure performed by a doctor gives her time to pause, reflect and change her mind.

The hope of the proponents of this bill is that it will remove to the TGA a decision that is currently in the hands of the Minister for Health and Ageing. They believe that RU486 should not be treated differently from any other drug. But the proponents of this bill are missing a vital element: RU486 is not like any other drug. It is not a therapeutic product; it is an abortifacient. It ends life. It does not assist people to get better, grow older, improve their quality of life or remove pain, like other therapeutic products. It inhibits therapy, it induces miscarriage and it leads to the death of a potential human being. For that reason alone, this power should remain with the health minister.

The people elect us to make tough decisions. We have to stand or fall by those decisions at the ballot box. The same cannot be said of the good officers of the TGA. The TGA has the remit to assess and regulate therapeutic products. It is an agency of technicians and scientists, not of ethicists. Every member of this House is many things, including an ethicist. RU486 is an abortifacient. Its use necessarily involves an ethical or moral decision. It is not aspirin or penicillin or a new surgical device. It is not like any other drug. To treat it like any other drug is to propagate a fallacy. As politicians it is our job to make these decisions. The public expects leadership from us on ethical matters. Our opinion informs theirs and vice versa. They elect us to lead, not to dissemble.

It is worse than the ostrich with its head in the sand for us to pass off decisions of this nature to the TGA. It is irresponsible. It is worse than a crime of omission; it is a crime of commission. There are amendments being put that would both have the effect in different ways of making a decision of the health minister, in the case of the member for Lindsay, or a decision of the TGA, in the case of the member for Bowman, disallowable instruments in either house of parliament. I will support either of those amendments in turn because they are an improvement on the member for Moore’s bill. They at least contain an element of parliamentary oversight and, in the case of the member for Lindsay’s amendments, a degree of ministerial responsibility. They recognise that there is an ethical aspect to the use of abortifacients and that we have a responsibility as politicians to use our judgment and experience to decide on these matters.

We are all informed by our experiences, our upbringing, our education and our knowledge—and, in many cases, our faith. Sometimes in this debate there has been a tendency to imply that someone who has a particular viewpoint holds it because they are of a particular religious persuasion. It is an ignorant point of view. Those who do not have a particular religious faith—be they atheists, agnostics or simply lapsed Christians—do not have a monopoly on dispassion. They do not hold the holy grail of objectivity. Those people are as informed by their experiences, upbringing, education and knowledge as anyone else.

I do not hold to the view that a Christian cannot approach the issue of abortion objectively any more than I subscribe to the view that an atheist is someone who does not have a value system that places a premium on human life. Both attitudes are insulting and wrong. But I do believe that Christianity has been the single most important force for good in the history of mankind simply because its central tenet is to do to others as you would have done to yourself. That does not mean that churches that represent Christianity are not without fault, but the implication that a health minister cannot be trusted with decisions on abortifacients because they happen to be a practising Christian is shallow and false.

Incidentally, the simply truth is that there has been no application to register RU486 as an abortifacient in Australia throughout the tenure of the first two health ministers of this government. The move to take away this power began before any application was made to use RU486 as an abortifacient in this country. The power to declare an abortifacient a restricted good should remain with the minister. The longstanding Westminster principle of the executive being responsible to the parliament for their decisions will be maintained by voting to maintain the status quo—and I would urge the House to do so.

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