David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Trade and Investment) Share this | Hansard source

This is probably one of the most difficult speeches I will make in this House because of the import of it. I've got so many conflicted interpretations of why I'm saying this. It's not because I'm in the health portfolio or because I am a Christian and a Catholic. My concern about the technology which this bill will enable is about potentially creating a whole new blended germ line of human life.

As the member for Kennedy outlined, it is amazing technology. The doctor in me, having worked in paediatrics and seen unfortunate kids with these mitochondrial diseases, understands that they are horrible diseases. I understand that. All of us understand that, and we want people not to go through that suffering. But the technology here is still experimental. It is very experimental. There are cells for everything, but your germ line cells go down through generations, so if it goes wrong you might be creating an unintended bad outcome. According to my ethics, which are independent but aligned with Christian thinking, we shouldn't be doing this.

If a family is afflicted by this disease and the mother wants to bear a child, we do have technology where a donor egg can be implanted. But it doesn't involve the destruction of experimental embryos, basically, and it's not going to potentially enable cloning technology of humans to advance, with unintended consequences to the germ line mutation. I support the amendments brought by the member for Menzies, but I won't be supporting the bill.

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