Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to take the opportunity to place on the record of this House my support for the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006. I am using this opportunity to outline for the information of those for whom this is a particularly important debate how and why I have reached my position and not, as is usual in this place, to attempt to persuade others. I actually am of the view that there will not be one member of this House voting on this bill who has not applied both their judgement and their conscience most seriously to the questions before us in this bill over the last few months, so I would not seek to persuade anybody. I just want to take the opportunity to indicate why it is that I have reached the decision that I have reached.

I note that this amendment bill is the result of the Lockhart report, which was an outcome of the 2002 bill. While not wanting to go through all the ins and outs of the process by which we have reached the debate today, I do want to acknowledge that many people have said, ‘What has changed since 2002?’ One of the realities of a democracy is that some of the people making the decision have changed. I was not here in 2002 when the original bill was enacted. So for me it is a case that, over time, as the people who represent the broader community in this place change, the application of our judgement and conscience may well reach different decisions. So I think it is important and useful that we all take the time to put on the record what we were thinking at the time, because it can be informative for those who come after us who may confront similar decisions. Certainly I have taken the opportunity to look at some of the comments that were made in regard to the decision that was reached in 2002.

Before I start on the explanation of my own thinking, I also want to acknowledge the fact that many people have been lobbying us from my own electorate, across the nation and, indeed, internationally, presenting their concerns and their views in relation to their preference for how I should vote in the debate. By and large, as I believe the member for Canberra said, I have taken the opportunity to respond to all of the individuals within my own electorate who have written to me, and I have read the contributions of those from outside my electorate. I ask them to forgive me for not directly responding, but I am sure they would understand that, with the amount of contact that we have, it is simply not realistic to achieve that. However, I made sure I responded to all those within my electorate, including senior representatives of the various church denominations in my electorate.

By and large, I found that all of those people presented their views, their beliefs and their wishes in a particularly considered and, I have to say, civil manner, and I responded to them in the same way. To be quite honest, it would be quite out of character for me not to do so, but I did. Those who were unhappy with my response and continued the conversation with me did continue it in a civil way. I think that is an important and valuable thing that we should not lose through these difficult decisions that we make. They are the most difficult decisions, and the reason why they end up as conscience votes is because they do not simply encapsulate policy; they encapsulate personal, ethical frameworks. For some of us, those frameworks are constructed from a belief in a supreme being, reflected in a particular religious adherence—in some cases, a subdenomination of a particular religious adherence. I do not hold such a belief. That does not mean, as I said in the RU486 debate, that I lack morality or that I lack a moral framework. I certainly brought to bear in this consideration the moral framework that guides my life.

Complex issues are associated with these types of debates, particularly when they relate to science, so we bring our judgement to them. So few of us have a well-developed scientific background; however, we do our best in our most earnest endeavours to attend the briefings that are provided to us here and, indeed, in other places. We also look at the literature and the debates that have gone before us. Tonight I want to address the conflicts that I had to resolve within myself in order to assess how I would vote on this particular bill.

The first conflict is one that occurs with any scientific issue: the reality that science consistently challenges us as a society, as a community, about what we think is appropriate. Being a high school history teacher in a former life, I well remember students of mine particularly enjoying the Middle Ages and our discussions about the fact that for many decades the Middle Eastern countries had far more advanced medical practices than the European countries had. The main reason for that was that we held a moral abhorrence of scientific or medical experimentation on cadavers. The dead body was seen as sacrosanct and people were not supposed to carry out any sort of medical experimentation on it. So we remained largely ignorant of the internal workings of the body. Of course, that changed over time. But there has been a consistent conflict between science and morality in our society. Indeed, in this century many similar issues have confronted us.

Obviously, abortion, with its various processes and the limitations and controls we want on those processes, consistently confronts us. Indeed, the development of contraception in its various forms confronted us with a similar dilemma and we had to work through that. IVF, as many other speakers have mentioned, again confronted us with the fact that scientific advances were pushing us to question the framework of our society and what we saw as acceptable and not acceptable.

I do not believe that we have become a soulless community as a result of our struggles since the Middle Ages to 2006 to answer these questions and to come to resolutions that have enabled science to serve humanity. I think what is important is that each time this happens we do struggle, with sincerity and serious application, to come to a view that enables our society to remain a civil and humane one. At the end of the day, for me, they are the tests.

The other conflicting issue that I have looked at, which has been raised in this debate—and I have to say that I did not find it quite so difficult to resolve—is the one put about that this is embryonic versus adult stem cell research: that, indeed, adult stem cell research has delivered and that there has been no identifiable delivery from embryonic stem cell research. I think the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, who is at the table and who spoke before me, dealt with this issue very well.

The reality is that adult stem cell research has been going on, I understand, for over two decades now and embryonic stem cell research has been going on for about four years. So I agree entirely with the assessment that other speakers in this debate have made: it is inappropriate to make claims about embryonic stem cell research that we cannot justify by evidence, but it is equally inappropriate to deny the possibilities of embryonic stem cell research without the evidence. That issue has been resolved for me in that manner.

That leads to what has been called the ‘provision of false hope’ to people with serious debilitating diseases or injuries that have had a traumatic effect on their lives. For me, with scientific development and the discussion around potential breakthroughs, there is always this dilemma. We have just dealt with a much more mundane but just as difficult process regarding funding for a vaccine for cervical cancer, which was developed by Professor Frazer. We deal with these things all the time, and I think we can certainly deal with them in that way in this debate.

The next issue that I had to resolve was: is this destroying a life to potentially save or improve a life? I cannot conclude that an embryo of up to 14 days—the time proposed during which it will be used—is a life. I agree that it has the potential for life. But I am one of those human beings that discard eggs every month and I do not particularly agonise about that. Such eggs are potential lives. I think each individual has to make an assessment about where that line is, from within their own framework—and I am attempting to explain how I arrive at my assessment. For me, the proposed stem cell source that is the subject of this bill—being a woman’s egg with the nucleus removed and replaced by, for example, skin cells, in order to regenerate an appropriate match for a particular person with a particular illness—is not the same as a fertilised egg in my body or in any other woman’s body. Indeed, in that respect, I have to say that I am quite comfortable with the position of this bill.

I acknowledge in this place that each time we might be confronted with a proposed extension or amendment of that definition—and people talk about the slippery slope—I would again have to apply, as we are doing now four years after the original bill, a rigorous assessment of what was proposed, how it was to be implemented and how I felt about that. I do know that in cloning I have a line that I am not happy crossing.

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