Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I listened with interest to the member for Hinkler in his contribution. I thought he made some pertinent points, but none more pertinent than the point he was making about why we are in this building. We are in this building to represent constituents from our electorates. The member for Hinkler mentioned that we all have roughly 88,000 constituents that we are here to represent. I have been listening to the debate on this particular issue with some degree of interest over recent days, and very few people have actually referred to what their constituents are saying.

I will be treating the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 no differently to any other legislation. I tend to be a little bit amused at particularly the members of the parties who have this great feeling of freedom when there is a free vote issue—or, as some prefer to call it, a conscience vote. I am not here to represent my conscience; I am here to represent the conscience of the people who elect me. I think that point that the member for Hinkler made really does need to be held in the minds of many of us. Just because the Prime Minister says that members of parliament can do as they theoretically, at least, were elected to do—that is, represent their constituents—this seems to be an extraordinary set of circumstances, in that all of a sudden people start to think about the issues. But most of the people who have spoken have spoken about their own views on this issue—about the sanctity of life, about cloning, about the 14-day period, about the 28-day period, maybe, and about the adult stem cells and the embryonic stem cells—and a lot of them have become instantaneous scientists.

I do not pretend to be any of those things. I have very little real knowledge of how this issue could be extended into the future in terms of scientific analysis, but I do intend to represent my electorate on this issue, because I have asked my electorate what its view is. Obviously, I cannot speak to every person within the electorate, but, as I have done on many other issues, whether they be about the sale of Telstra or many of the resource issues or the various health issues that I have spoken on, I have always referred back to the people who elected me.

In this case, the people who have contacted me and showed their views to me are opposed to this legislation. That does not mean that everybody in the electorate is opposed to it; of course not. But the majority of people who have taken the time to contact and relay information to me or my office have voiced a view that they would like me to vote against this particular piece of legislation. And that is what I intend to do.

I find it almost amusing and to some degree hurtful that some people in Australia cannot get a debate in this place on dental care being part of our healthcare system. We can allocate all of this time to a free vote on an issue—an important issue; it is about life, but so is dental care about health and obviously about life—but very little debate takes place in relation to dental care. I find it difficult to come to terms with the other issues that we face from day to day, one of which comes to mind immediately: the way in which old soldiers who served in the Second World War are being treated differently to old soldiers who served in the Second World War but went overseas, in terms of the allocation of a gold card. They are things that we could be doing very constructively to assist those people in the latter part of their life, but the government seems reluctant to go there and investigate the options that would be available.

Here we are participating in a free vote. Only yesterday there was a massive change in the wheat industry, and in the next six months, potentially, various policy changes are going to take place. When asked whether the lives of people who depend on those decisions would be taken into account, whether a conscience vote of wheat growers as to their own future and the mechanisms of the export of their product would be taken into account, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister ruled it out. They cannot have a free vote. Why are we having a free vote on this? Why do the wheat growers of Australia not have some say in their future lives and in the lives of their children? A lot of the arguments put in debate on this legislation have been about helping people in the future, about children and various illnesses that could be fixed by this legislation.

In conclusion, as I have already intimated, I will be opposing the legislation, not necessarily because of my private view or my conscience but because the majority of people who have taken the time to express their view to me or to my electorate office oppose the legislation.

See this speech in context