John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005 has been the subject of a highly emotionally charged debate since it was introduced last year. It is important in this second reading debate that we understand very clearly what this bill will do and will not do. This is not a bill to import or approve the importation of RU486; that decision can only be made by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. This is not a bill to remove parliamentary scrutiny of any decision by the TGA about RU486; that scrutiny does not currently exist.

This is not a bill to change the laws concerning abortion; those laws are state matters. This bill will remove the Minister for Health and Ageing’s power to veto—alone and without consultation—any application to the TGA to evaluate RU486. It will end the anomalous situation where, amid all the many dangerous and potentially deadly drugs prescribed by Australian doctors and used in Australian hospitals daily, RU486 has been removed from the responsibility and oversight of the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Supporters of this state of affairs say that the potential side effects and risks of RU486 are too great to leave the decision in the hands of the TGA.

No-one has suggested that the TGA ought not to assess the risks and efficacy of chemotherapy drugs—drugs with awful side effects. No-one has suggested that the TGA ought not to assess the risks and efficacy of medications for heart disease, immune system disorders and cholesterol, all of which have side effects and all of which have risks. That is why we have a Therapeutic Goods Administration. That is why the Therapeutic Goods Administration looks carefully at drugs brought before it.

Many pharmaceuticals studied by the TGA have the potential, if prescribed wrongly or carelessly, to cause injury or death. Yet those drugs do not need the health minister’s approval for an application to the TGA. For those drugs, the TGA’s expertise is perfectly acceptable. The reason for the inconsistency is that RU486, among its other possible uses, such as treating fibroid tumours, endometriosis, Cushing’s syndrome, meningiomas and some kinds of breast cancer, can be used to cause a deliberate miscarriage of pregnancy—a non-surgical abortion. That is the reason this drug has been treated so differently. Concern over risks and side effects is an alibi for the real reason: the determination to keep this option closed to Australian women.

Although the majority of Australians consider that a woman’s decision to continue or to end a pregnancy is a private one, there is still a minority who would like to block women who have made the decision to have an abortion from access to safe termination services. In this minority there are those who have treated this bill as an opportunity to raise a question most Australians consider settled. This simple question of process—that experts, not politicians, should decide if a drug is safe and appropriate for import—has become a proxy for a campaign against Australian women’s right to control their own fertility and choose for themselves whether to continue or end a pregnancy.

So while the question of access to safe and legal pregnancy termination is not the question before the Senate today, for complete transparency I will go on the record as saying that if it were the question before us today I would vote in favour. It is not my right or the right of any politician, or indeed any person, to decide for any woman whether she can end a pregnancy. That is her decision. That is her choice. Nor is it the role of any politician to sit in the consulting room and tell a doctor how to treat their patient or to stand over the TGA and tell them which drugs they can or cannot assess. No question of Australian health should be determined solely on the private moral views of the health minister of the day.