Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I join with the Prime Minister in congratulating members on both sides of the House for the quality of the debate on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005. I have had the opportunity to watch a lot of the debate in my office as a sort of background noise to the many other things that we do. To be able to look up and see people struggling honestly to arrive at the right conclusions on this matter has been, frankly, inspirational.

I have been in politics now for a very long time—though not as long as the Prime Minister. All too few occasions like this occur in the House. It is a wonderful thing when they do. They speak well of all of us. We are not simply identikit clones of some ad agency’s decision as to what a politician ought to be; we in this place are much better people than that, and I am proud of my colleagues. On this occasion I am not only proud of my colleagues on my side of the chamber; I am actually quite proud of my colleagues on the other side of the chamber as well.

From all of this I draw very different conclusions than the Prime Minister does. I think that in the end this is a fairly simple proposition about who in our community is appropriately deputed the task of determining whether a drug is safe to be let into the community and on what terms and conditions it is let into the community. Despite the many qualities that reside in people in this House, with the possible exception of one or two, there is absolutely nobody here with the capacity to make the scientific judgments concerned.

On the other hand, it is the duty of legislators, state and federal, to determine whether or not there should be abortions—period. The decision to be taken by us, or more particularly by our colleagues at a state level, is this: under what terms and conditions should a termination of pregnancy take place and should the restrictions on that termination of pregnancy sit within the Criminal Code or sit within health regulations? And, if they sit within health regulations, at what particular point in a pregnancy is what particular action permissible?

We legislators have to have that debate. That is the one that we confront. At the federal level, because it does not often come before us in that form, the debate we confront is how it is to be afforded, how it is to be paid for. This is certainly a debate of relevance to legislators, and it is on this debate that our constituents should act upon us. These are the judgments which we are qualified to make—by our humanity and our representivity. That is the point of time at which we ought to confront abortion issues—when they come forward to us on the basis of whether or not that procedure should be permitted under law. I will say a little more about that later, but that is an abortion debate.

The question about whether or not a drug is a suitable thing for any medical purpose—and this particular drug has purposes beyond termination of pregnancies—is a matter of very difficult scientific judgment. The TGA does not simply make decisions about flu tablets. The TGA makes decisions all the time about life and death drugs—drugs which can preserve life and drugs which, if misused, can terminate life. There may be no intention to terminate life when those drugs are employed. The TGA makes decisions about drugs which can conceivably have horrendous side effects. Members of the TGA do not enter into any decision in this regard without a proper concentration on all those possibilities. By their scientific expertise, they are vastly more likely to arrive at correct conclusions about these matters than anybody in this chamber, and it should be appropriately left for them.

From time to time in the debate I have heard people make statements that these are bureaucrats taking the decisions. These are not bureaucrats. There are no bureaucrats on the TGA. They are scientists, making decisions fully cognisant of the fact that, when they make errors—as was the case in the instance of the prescription of the drug thalidomide—the consequences are truly horrible. And it does come back to them and the way in which they take their decisions. If there are horrendous side effects from the approval of this drug, it will come back to them. They will have to confront the consequences of their decisions in that regard, and they are fully conscious of it.

If this legislation is passed, I do not believe that this drug will be approved tomorrow. That will not happen. What will happen is that, if somebody puts up a proposition that they wish to make it available in this country, there will be an extensive series of scientific tests and examinations. Then the drug will be released, if it is to be released, under a set of terms and conditions which will apply to the way in which a doctor may administer it and the set of afflictions—and there will be more than just abortion considered if it is permitted—for which it is appropriate. Some people argue that it is a very appropriate cancer drug in certain circumstances.

The TGA will need to have a view about the circumstances in which it will be deployed by doctors and will have to put down some very strict guidelines associated with it. With all due respect to colleagues here—who are amongst the most intelligent and effective human beings in this country and who have the honour to serve in the great democratic palace of the nation which this building is—none of us here knows anything about that. None of us here can make that judgment. All of us can have an opinion on abortion. There is no question about that. Were there a piece of legislation here which dealt with the issue of the termination of pregnancy period, I would trust the judgment and the expertise of every person in this chamber to arrive at a correct conclusion on that to the very best of their endeavours. But that is not a subject that is before us now.

I cannot think of another issue in my 25 years in politics that has, from time to time, more exercised my mind than the issue of the termination of pregnancy. My own views on this have gone through changes in the period of time that I have been a member of parliament and the life experiences that I have confronted on the way, many of which have had nothing to do with my life in parliament. I start with the premise, and I still hold the view, that abortion is killing. Therefore, it is something that cannot be conducted lightly; it is something that has to be seriously thought through. When I started in politics my view was that the legal system and the Criminal Code ought to reflect that. That is no longer my view. Tested in the experience of community opinion and community practice, I know that to persist with that view produces a large number of very unsafe procedures and great dangers to women. Therefore, I cannot continue to hold that view, the principle being confronted with the practicality.

Courts and legislators at the state level, over time, I think have arrived at a sensible modus vivendi as far as terminations of pregnancies are concerned. I have to ask myself in conscience: what is there left for me? The courts and legislators have decided that basically this is an issue between women and their doctors. I can live with that. I think that after all the testing, if you like, in the public arena, that is a position that has been arrived at. But I am neither a doctor nor a woman. So what does it mean for me? It means this for me: the acceptance of personal responsibility, should my opinion be sought by anyone, on that issue.

As a father of three daughters and as a husband it is never beyond the realm of possibility—and thank God it has never happened to me—that I will be invited to have an opinion. If any woman were to approach me and seek my opinion on whether or not she ought to have a termination, my advice would go along the lines of the moral commitments that I have in that regard, with the added statement by me that, should she decide to go ahead with the child, and it was a person with whom I had a direct responsibility, I would do my very level best to make sure that she was able to live comfortably with the decision that she took. But I would also say: ‘If you take another decision on this, I do recognise it as your right to take that decision.’ I have learned over time that that is the position that I will live with.

I get back to this bill. Nothing in this bill invites me to any of the decisions that I have been referring to in the remarks I have been making—either personal or public. Nothing in this bill invites me to do that. All this bill invites me to do is to make a judgment about whether or not it is the minister who is the appropriate person to approve a drug—any drug—or a body of scientists. For me it is a no brainer, quite frankly. It is simply commonsense that a minister does not have the scientific capacity to arrive at that judgment. Obviously, the vast array of drugs that are approved in this country do not come before this parliament and do not come before ministers, on the very sensible grounds that virtually nobody would conclude that we are the appropriate place for this to be considered. This is the appropriate place when the TGA may make, over time, an error; it is not an unreasonable thing for us to bring to this place a complaint and to use the grievance debate or something like that as a sounding board. But to be the ab initio judges of what ought to occur is actually absurd; it is just not sensible. We have to extract from this our feelings on the legal and moral issues related to abortion and just use commonsense about what is the appropriate way to approve a drug.

I think the level of focus that has been on the minister’s moral convictions has been unfair. This minister temporarily holds the position of minister for health. I can think of ministers on both sides of the House who have a very different moral outlook from him, and I can think of ministers in the future on both sides of the House who will have a very different moral outlook from him. It really is not about Tony Abbott at all or Tony Abbott’s convictions. As I have already indicated, there is some level of moral sympathy on my behalf with his convictions in this area. And I understand his difficulty, having the moral convictions that he has, presiding in the portfolio that he does.

I happen to know the situation in Britain, where there is a member of the Labour ministry who turned down the ministry of health on the grounds that she has some profound convictions in relation to abortion which mean she does not feel that she can sit easily with that. This is a law that has been passed by the House of Commons. She does not sit easily with the notion that she has to sign off payments for the procedure—so she does not take that job, on those grounds. If it is impossible, in any part of it—I would not, for example, suggest that a pacifist along my frontbench ought to necessarily be appointed by me as Minister for Defence. I would think that that person would make a very good contribution in some other area, but it is not wise to place people in portfolio positions where their moral convictions are challenged. If it is difficult for Tony Abbott to handle these things then he ought to have a word with his boss about where he ought to be situated—he ought to do that. But what he ought not to do is suggest that we have here an issue of confidence in him. This is not an issue of confidence in Tony Abbott; this is an issue of sensible statement about where decision making ought to reside in relation to the approval of drugs, dangerous or otherwise.

It is for those reasons that I take the decision to vote in the way I will. I will support the bill. I say again, as I started: I am most impressed with the way this debate has been conducted, the way views have been expressed on both sides of the House, the expertise that has been brought to it. I have learnt a lot more about the drug, I might say, than I have learnt before. I still do not think, however, on the basis of listening to that debate, that I am in any better position than I was when the debate started to be the approving authority for its distribution. Nevertheless, the research that people have done has been truly magnificent and I do congratulate all members on this. We should leave this place without any bitterness in our hearts towards any person involved in this debate but with the very greatest pride that we are elected by the people to be here.

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