Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I don't think there's anyone here who has looked seriously at the Mitochondrial Donation Law Reform (Maeve's Law) Bill 2021 who hasn't spent a lot of time agonising over it. For some 76 years, every single educational institution in Australia has put Aldous Huxley's Brave New World on the reading list. Brave New World is about cloning and selling cells. When we had the cell debate here previously, the late Peter Andren—a person respected, I think, by every person in this House for his integrity and his intelligence, who was a very strong atheist or agnostic—and Tony Windsor voted 23 times against cell research. I was surprised because both of them were very antireligion, and it was looked at as sort of a religious issue. I quote Peter Andren. He said, 'I just cannot look forward to a society in which human beings are bought and sold on the shelves of Woolworths and Coles.'

I think, at the end of the day, that's a pretty good call. Educators in this country have left that book on the reading list, and have been determined that that book is on the reading list, for over 75 years. A lot of scientists, with all due respect to them, get carried away and start playing God, and this really is in that sort of pavilion. So I will be opposing the bill. The late and great Peter Andren, I think, gave a great example.

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