Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in this debate to comment both on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005 which is before the chamber and on the report into this legislation which was tabled by the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee earlier today. Let me say at the outset that this inquiry was very difficult. It, superficially, examined a fairly simple question—and that is whether the decision about the availability of particular abortifacients in Australia should be a decision made by the Minister for Health and Ageing or a decision made by the Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia. In practice, of course, it was impossible in the course of this inquiry to separate that simple question from the complex political, ethical, religious and moral issues which are associated with abortion. This minefield issue was further complicated by the relatively short reporting period that the committee had to deal with, coinciding with the Christmas-New Year period. Senators made particular efforts to comprehensively cover the issues confronting them in the course of this inquiry, notwithstanding those impediments. I particularly want to take the opportunity to thank senators on the committee for accommodating my personal travel requirements during that period of time.

What we have in front of us with this report is, notwithstanding those limitations, a comprehensive assessment of the evidence that was given to the committee by both sides of this debate about the operation of RU486 and the impact it would have on Australian medicine if it were to be legalised for use as an abortifacient. We have distilled the essence of nearly 2,500 submissions and letters to assist senators in making a decision on this legislation. In accordance with previous issues before Senate committees which were of an ethical or moral character—issues such as human cloning—the committee has made a decision not to make a recommendation about the bill itself. It has not decided to recommend that the Senate should either support or oppose the legislation. What it has done instead has been to give the arguments surrounding this issue clear understanding and articulation so that it is possible for senators unfamiliar with issues surrounding the operation of this particular drug to better understand what it is that they are voting on. Given the ethical and moral overlay relating to abortion that I spoke about before, it would have been quite pointless to have attempted to go beyond that point.

I hope that senators in the short time available will have an opportunity to read this report. Despite the fact that the report makes no finding on the bill, all the participants in the inquiry did form very strong views about the bill itself. My view is that the bill is a mistake and should not be supported. That view is not based on a particular view about the risks associated with RU486. I acknowledge that a very sizeable body of evidence about the risks associated with the use of RU486 in this country and elsewhere was placed before the committee. In many respects there is a need for further and better data about the operation of this drug, and those issues about the effects of the use of this drug on women’s bodies are issues which could be properly placed before the Therapeutic Goods Administration. In that respect I do not subscribe to the view put to the inquiry that the TGA is incompetent or ill-equipped to make an assessment of the physical properties—the medical risks—associated with the use of this drug in Australia.

However, the point is this: if the medical risks—the physical properties—of RU486 were the only issue to be resolved in this debate we would have no reasonable grounds to quibble with this legislation or the referral of this matter pursuant to that to the TGA. But it is not just about the properties of RU486; it is not just about the chemical operation, the clinical operation, of RU486. The issue is much broader than that. The issue is that RU486 is not just another drug. It facilitates a medical procedure that is not just another medical procedure. This drug and the procedure it facilitates are among the most contentious and controversial aspects of modern medicine today. As the group calling itself Doctors Who Respect Human Life put it to the inquiry:

Abortifacient drugs such as RU486 are unique in that no other drugs are designed to end a human life. Therefore their use demands a unique level of public scrutiny and accountability.

And, indeed, it does.

Controversial issues which arouse great passion and great contention in the Australian community are properly issues for this parliament to consider and for this Senate to vote upon. We would not delegate to a statutory body key decisions in Australian public life. We would not ask a statutory body to decide, for example, whether plutonium should be enriched in Australia; we would not ask a statutory body whether we should drill for oil on the Great Barrier Reef; we would not ask a statutory body to modify the rights of Australians in some pertinent way. But I think that if we pass this legislation today we are passing to a statutory body a seminal decision of our age: whether this new development in abortion practices in Australia should be allowed or should not be allowed.

The fact is that this is an important decision for the Australian community and therefore it is an important decision for the Australian parliament. The point has been made in this debate this afternoon that the decision about abortion was made long ago by parliaments at the state and territory level in Australia and that therefore this parliament, the Commonwealth parliament, has no choice but to follow suit, to rubber-stamp the use of chemical abortifacients in Australia to facilitate the existing decision to allow surgical abortion in Australia. It is true that surgical abortion has been allowed in one form or another in Australian states and territories for some time by the decisions of state and territory parliaments, but chemical abortion is a whole new beast. It is a different concept and deserves different consideration.

Chemical abortions essentially occur outside hospitals, clinics and doctors’ surgeries. Of course, the administration of the drug is designed to occur in those places, but the operation of those drugs takes place in women’s homes, in women’s workplaces and in all sorts of other places where access to appropriate medical assistance may not be as fulsome as it is in clinics and hospitals. In any case, I do not think that this parliament can be snookered in its decision-making role by a decision made perhaps decades ago by state and territory parliaments. The question of whether medical abortion, chemical abortion, should occur in Australia is a decision which today falls on the shoulders of the Australian parliament by virtue of this legislation. We therefore need to make that decision and not defer it to somebody else to make.

Incidentally, all the state and territory parliaments which over time considered the question of access to surgical abortion in Australia had their debates. They debated whether women in those particular states or territories should have access to that kind of procedure. In a sense, by passing this legislation today we would not be having that debate here, except marginally; we would be asking a professional body, a body of technocrats—without being disparaging of them—to have that debate and make that decision. I do not doubt that the scientists, the doctors and so forth who make up the professional body which advises the Therapeutic Goods Administration are well placed to be able to assess the technical operational questions surrounding RU486, but they are not equipped to make the ethical, social and political decisions which would surround the use of RU486 in Australia.

Abortion is a profoundly different procedure from other medical procedures. As I said, in all Australian states and territories there is specific legislation governing the circumstances in which an abortion may occur by surgical means in those states or territories, but there is no legislation governing, for example, a hysterectomy, a tracheotomy or a varicose vein procedure. Why? Because abortion is different. Abortion has an overlay which goes beyond the mere properties or the mere possibilities presented by medical science. It is an issue which is uniquely controversial and uniquely difficult and which uniquely demands the attention of Australian law-makers. As, again, Dr van Gend from Doctors Who Respect Human Life put it in the course of the inquiry’s hearings:

... RU486 is uniquely contentious in its action, raising serious moral issues and obviously therefore requiring a special level of scrutiny and accountability by our elected representatives.

That, of course, is the point. We make those decisions. We are paid to make those decisions. They are difficult decisions—absolutely difficult decisions—but they are decisions that the Australian community expects its elected representatives to make and therefore we should not shirk that responsibility.

I want to conclude by making reference to the fact that there has been intense debate in front of the committee about these issues. At times the proceedings of the committee were very difficult. I do not think that on all occasions we covered ourselves in glory in the way in which the proceedings themselves actually occurred. It is fair to say that there were points when witnesses were not treated with the respect that perhaps they should have been because of the passion and intensity with which these issues came before the committee and continue to vex the Australian community. But that merely reaffirms how important it is that we continue to overview this sort of decision and that we are part of that decision, not merely the mailbox that sends that decision to a body which is not elected and not accountable to the Australian community.

I do not tend to quote members of the Greens party in this place, but I will quote Senator Christabel Chamarrette, who was a Green in the Australian Senate. She said when the 1996 amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Act were being debated:

There is not only a health issue in the narrow sense—that is, whether the drug is safe—but also a question of whether the availability should be limited for ethical or policy reasons in the context of social policy. This debate is yet to be heard.

…         …         …

I ... affirm the right of this parliament to have scrutiny over such issues.

If this bill is passed today, we give up that scrutiny; we no longer have a role in scrutinising that process or that decision. That would be a sad development, in my opinion. The Australian community are certainly divided by this issue, but their divisions and passions about this issue—the fact that they do not agree about it—is no excuse for us to overlook that disagreement and pass the decision on to somebody else. It is our responsibility, and for that reason I believe we should reject the legislation before the house today.