Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Each of us who holds the relatively unique privilege of serving in this place as a representative of the Australian people is entrusted with the most significant gift the Australian people can bestow: the responsibility of shaping our future. The decisions taken today mould our tomorrows, just as yesterday’s decisions delivered us today. This responsibility is no doubt recognised by all of us. Some in this place, though, are more burdened by it than are others. Indeed, some feel the strain more on some days.

For me, the load is particularly heavy in regard to this legislation, the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, as it was on previous conscience votes such as RU486 and the original debate on embryonic stem cell research. Standing in the here and now and cast oneself forward, projecting the circumstances, trade-offs and pressures of the future, is a very inexact science. How can any of us possibly know what our tomorrow will be like on the basis of our today? But therein is the responsibility. Absolutely, our task is not easy. Considered judgement is required. Ultimately, however, each of us must shoulder that, as each day passes, the shape of our surrounds will be a reflection of the decisions we have taken.

How fundamental, therefore, must be the principles, the philosophy and the framework we use to guide us on this blind journey into the future? In politics, in building and shaping our nation, it is a complete disservice to this institution and to the Australian people to meander through each of the issues with neither an eye to the past nor an eye to the future. This bill dealing, as it does, with some of the most fundamental concerns for every single human being is as significant a decision, I suspect, as I am to make.

In researching and preparing for this debate, I have reviewed much material, heard many speakers, read hundreds and hundreds of emails and letters and taken numerous phone calls. What struck me most fundamentally—this was somewhat into my consideration of the bill—was that my eyes were opened to the fact that we examined the central tenet of this whole matter back in 2002. My comments in that debate of 2002 absolutely and completely hold for this debate. At the risk of seeming stupid, self-indulgent or some combination of both, I will quote substantially from my previous remarks:

Fundamentally there can be no greater responsibility placed upon the people’s representatives than to determine the parameters of decency and sanctity with respect to humanity. To me it is a moral absolute that each and every individual is a most precious life, a life to be respected. Life, however, remains a terrific enigma.

In approaching this bill I was initially envious of those who professed from day one to know this bill to be right or to be wrong. I was hopeful that I might have the same insight, the same clarity and the same absoluteness. Since then, however, my view has changed. As I delved into the issues, both technical and ethical, I realised this to be a complex issue beyond any I have faced previously, and beyond any I hope to address in the near future. To innately know this issue to be right or wrong, to have formed an immediate opinion without considering the weighty issues that exist on both sides of the argument is, in my humble opinion, intellectually and morally elitist.

The principal struggle for me, the exhausting wrestle with conscience, is that I find both sides have the moral imperative. Indeed, throughout this debate I have teetered from one side to the other. Some may quickly judge this to be a weakness of spirit. That is wrong. It is a reflection of the merit that exists on both sides of this debate. In seeking to tip my judgment, I concerned myself with the science—the embryonic stem cell versus the adult stem cell fight. Ostensibly, this has been a fight punctuated by newspaper headlines launching the claims and counterclaims.

Unlike most in the community, I have had the unique opportunity of having a parade of this country’s and other countries’ eminent scientists and ethicists, comprising those in favour and against, to whom I could pose my questions and from whom I could reap the benefit of decades of collective knowledge. For the record, it is my view that there is a strong scientific basis supporting embryonic stem cell research. I directly questioned those scientists opposed to embryonic stem cell research and asked them to put aside their ethical considerations and to answer purely on the basis of science whether the possibilities espoused by embryonic stem cell advocates were bad science. Resoundingly, the answer was no. Embryonic stem cell research does present possibilities that adult stem cell research does not. This was an important discovery for me. I wanted to be satisfied that there existed a sound, scientific basis for researchers to even ask for the ability to conduct this research before I tackled the ethical considerations of the debate. I sought the technical views of those whose life work has been adult stem cell research, as well as those who work with embryonic stem cells.

However, the fact that there is a scientific benefit to this research does not of course clear the path of all uncertainty. It does not signify a green light for any or all experiments involving human embryos. For me, however, it does serve to reduce this debate to the deliberation of the morality of embryonic stem cell research. In resolving this issue, I would turn to the actual object of the bill.

Bear in mind that this is with respect to the 2002 bill. I then said:

There are two principal limbs to this bill. The first is an absolute prohibition on human cloning. This is a prohibition I have no difficulty supporting and, further, I believe no person in this chamber has difficulty supporting. In the world today, I am always mindful of the rapid advances taking place, advances that only a couple of years ago we would never have envisaged, advances that have completely eradicated some diseases and that present the potential to continue to improve the physical quality and duration of life. There are, however, always those who, in their quest for the scientific breakthrough, pierce community standards of acceptability—standards that my colleagues and I are elected to promote, to fight for and, ultimately, to enforce. Human reproductive cloning falls outside of these standards.

Having reread my contribution to the Research Involving Embryos and Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill, I am struck by how far all of us in this parliament have travelled in four short years. Human cloning was repugnant to the members of this parliament in 2002. Now, it would seem, it is not. And what is the basis for this change? Why now do so many who previously voted to ban human cloning now seem likely to support it, as indeed did the Senate? The justification used is summarised in the Lockhart review. In responding to the central issue of this debate, the report summary says:

A further argument was that it is wrong to create human embryos to destroy them and extract stem cells. Human embryo clones are human embryos and, given the right environment for development, could develop into a human being. Furthermore, if such an embryo were implanted in the uterus of a woman to achieve a pregnancy, the individual so formed would certainly have the same status and rights as any other human being. However, a human embryo clone created to extract stem cells is not intended to be implanted, but is created as a cellular extension of the original subject. The Committee therefore agreed with the many respondents who thought that the moral significance of such a cloned embryo is linked more closely to its potential for research to develop treatments for serious medical conditions, than to its potential as a human life.

I cannot possibly support this fractured logic. I do not know when life begins. I do not know if it begins at the point of conception, some hours or days later or weeks after that. For this very reason, I cannot possibly support a shallow and, in my view, morally repugnant argument that claims that it must not occur within the first 14 days and, furthermore, even if it does, it does not matter because what we are talking about is a cloned human intended to be used for research for the extraction of stem cells.

Surely this intellectually deficient argument can be exposed as the pathetic excuse it is by simply posing the following questions: what if research were to demonstrate that even greater scientific breakthroughs could be reached if only the embryo were left to develop to 28 days, to 36 days or to 72 days? Would supporters of this bill be comfortable with that threshold? Where does this magic number of 14 days come from? And what of the intention argument put forth by the Lockhart committee? The test as outlined by Lockhart is that a human embryo clone created to extract stem cells is not intended to be implanted but is created as a cellular extension of the original subject. But what if an embryo is created with the intention of extracting organs and with the intention of being implanted but not of being born? Am I to assume that, if science could demonstrate potential breakthroughs from implanting the embryo, it would therefore be ethical to harvest that embryo basically up until the point of birth?

I desperately, dearly want to hold out to all of those who are sick and to those inflicted with disability and disease the promise of potential cures and medical advances, but I cannot with good conscience support the development of this research on the basis contained in this bill. The goal of proponents I absolutely share, but I cannot support the means to secure it in the way that this bill does. Embryos created through ART for IVF are clearly created with the intention of fulfilling the life of the embryo to as great an extent as possible. Embryos that are created by a sperm and an egg are done so with the knowledge that the life created at some point in that cycle is to hopefully be realised through IVF. In fact, the committee is so sensitive to this point that a prohibition exists on the creation of an embryo by a sperm and an egg for any purpose other than artificial reproductive technology. And yet the committee seriously says to this parliament—a line that has been adopted by other members of this chamber—that an embryo created through therapeutic cloning, which would have exactly the same outcome if implanted in a woman, is somehow morally different and to be treated differently.

It is remarkable that this parliament should accept therapeutic cloning, on the basis of scientific breakthrough, as being in some way morally defensible when four short years ago we were united in saying it was morally repugnant. I question what this parliament would do when, in four years from now, the scientific community comes back to this parliament and says, ‘Please grant us the opportunity to grow these embryos for 72 days or for 140 days because we could have some terrific scientific breakthroughs then.’ Embryos that would be created under this bill would be created with the intention of being destroyed for research. Some arbitrary 14-day threshold and intellectually deficient argument do not even come close to justifying this massive shift from the position adopted by the parliament only four years ago. It is my sincere hope that this bill fails.

See this speech in context