Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Minister for Workforce Participation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to reject the amendments moved by the member for Bowman. We have already rejected the amendment moved by the member for Lindsay, which did not change the status quo. Sadly, the amendments by the member for Bowman do not change the status quo, which has now persisted for more than 10 years. In 10 years, not a single pharmaceutical company has applied to have RU486 evaluated because the 1996 Harradine amendment politicised the process. His amendment exchanged the scientific evidence based evaluation of the drug by the TGA with a unilateral decision by the health minister of the day.

It is not our task as elected representatives in this place to decide by what medical method a woman is given a pregnancy termination by her doctor. If we followed such logic to its conclusion we would be deciding by what surgical method a termination was performed. That is not our task as elected members in this our great democracy. Why? It is because abortions are a lawful procedure under certain circumstances in every state and territory, and that debate was settled some 30 years ago. This debate is not about women’s access to terminations. All of us would prefer, of course, fewer unwanted pregnancies and all of us, because of the personal trauma that is associated with having to have a termination, would want to work towards reducing the factors that lead to unwanted pregnancies. But this bill is not about better sex education and counselling. That is a debate for tomorrow. Nor can we ever accuse this parliament under our leadership of shirking any difficult decision.

The bill being debated here today ensures that our parliament can again be assured that Australian doctors have the safest and best possible options available to help women patients who need to have a termination. It is as simple as that. The Laming amendments continue to politicise the decision about what the TGA recommends as the best, most safe options available to doctors. For example, we now have before the government three requests for approval of RU486 for use by individual doctors for their own patients. These three applications were lodged last December when the clinics saw the process had a chance of being returned to scientific assessment.

Under the Laming amendments, each of these cases would be brought before the parliament and you could virtually guarantee they would be debated, even if the TGA had approved their applications. Ultimately, you would expect those debates to end up with the right outcome, but they would, I am quite sure, make our pharmaceutical companies in Australia think twice about trying to have a general application for this drug brought before the TGA. I repeat: it is not our political task to assess the safety of this or any drug. The TGA are amongst the world’s best and were set up to handle the evaluation and monitoring of all drugs in Australia. It is their business. We need to reject these amendments, well meaning as they are, and simply get on with the job.

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