John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

My contribution to this debate will be relatively short, and I hope very much to the point. It has, as the previous speaker said, been a difficult issue. I have indicated publicly in the past that I was unresolved in my own mind as to how to vote. I have not found this quite as easy an issue to reach a conclusion on as some of the other conscience votes that the parliament has had in recent years.

I was heavily influenced in that state of indecision by the enormous respect I held for the late John Lockhart, whom I knew quite well. He was a person of immense intelligence and great personal decency, which I know he brought to the conclusions of his review. Sadly his life ended very abruptly—abruptly in the sense that he died a few weeks after the report was tabled.

There has been a lot of discussion about the basis people are using to form their views on the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 and the extent to which one’s religious background and religious teaching can influence the conclusion they reach. As somebody who comes from what might loosely be called the mainstream of Protestant Christianity, I can recognise that Christian people of good conscience can reach diametrically opposed views on this legislation. I happen to have an enormous regard for Senator Kay Patterson, who sponsored this private member’s bill.

As always, a free vote brings out the best in parliament. I can respect very deeply the argument about the relief of human suffering, and I have wrestled with it, as has a person in the church whom I admire a great deal. Bishop Tom Frame indicated, when he spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago, that as an Anglican bishop he was unresolved. He said: ‘I’m still unable to come to a conclusion that sits comfortably with my conscience. I’m not convinced that scientific experimentation on embryos is morally acceptable, but I’m sensitive to the needs of those who might benefit from the outcomes of the research.’ I do not think I could put my own view on this issue any more succinctly or any better than that.

I am not convinced, based on the evidence that has come forward in this debate, that the reasons behind why this parliament near-unanimously—or was it unanimously—voted in a particular direction some years ago have changed. I do not think the science has shifted enough to warrant the parliament changing its view, and for that reason I am going to vote against the bill. I am also, for another reason, going to vote against the bill—that is, I think we live in an age where we have slid too far into relativism. There must be some absolutes in our society. That is, in some senses, a religious or Christian view, but it is also an ethical view and it is a view of society that a person of no faith can hold very strongly.

I am not so censorious of alternative points of view in our community as to believe that you cannot, on balance, reach different points of view, but in the end you have to, as an individual, make a judgement on this. My own view is that to vote in favour of this bill is to embrace a relativist view of society and of the value of human life and what leads to it. This does, to use that cliche, get us perilously close to if not on to the slippery slope. It is a very big step indeed; it was a step this place was not willing to take some years ago, and I, therefore, will vote against this legislation.

If there is an amendment that has been mooted in the name of the member for Bass I will certainly vote in favour of that amendment and I hope that some who, whilst being on the other side of the debate, when it comes to the final crunch will consider supporting that. But after a lot of personal searching and some discussion with people close to me whose opinions I respect, but which I do not necessarily always follow, I have decided to vote against this legislation for the reason that, in the end, you have to take a stand for some absolutes in our society. I think what we are talking about here is a moral absolute, and that is why I cannot support the legislation.

See this speech in context