Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I commence my remarks and thoughts on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005, I would like to start by congratulating the proponents of this piece of legislation, including you, Madam Acting Deputy President Troeth. It is no small task to take on what can be such an emotional, divisive and somewhat distracting debate to try to actually bring forward a piece of very straightforward and sensible administration in this country. I would like to congratulate all four of you. I would also like to congratulate the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for the way the inquiry into this bill was conducted, given the divisive nature that the wider debate has. As has been outlined, the debate seems to have become wider rather than focused on the piece of legislation itself.

I think the result of the committee’s deliberations was achieved usually with a great deal of tolerance, respect and harmony, which is no small challenge. To the main committee members I express my congratulations. I would also like to pay tribute and give my thanks to the committee secretariat, which had to work with all of us—we brought to the table our differing ideological views, temper from time to time and even belligerence from time to time. As usual, the secretariat was ably led by Elton Humphery and I think they did a superb job in fairly tight and sometimes adverse and trying circumstances.

I rise to make my contribution in this debate and, in doing so, I need to make a confession. It is actually a little embarrassing to admit this—considering that I apparently stand here at the moment with the power to make medical decisions on behalf of the Australian public, as the legislation currently stands—but I am not a doctor; in fact, I possess no medical qualifications. I have not studied medicine or anything vaguely related to medicine, and I have always been under the apparently mistaken impression that therefore I was not qualified or best suited to make those decisions on behalf of others. So I never expected to be standing here today with the power to do so, but the legislation as it currently stands enables me to do just that.

Fortunately, I do not have to be too hard on myself, because I am actually not the only person here today who has to make that confession. I am not even in the minority. Here in the Senate we do not seem to have too many people with medical qualifications; yet each and every one of us gets to make the decision about how one particular category of drugs is to be treated. As it stands at the moment, each and every one of us individually will determine whether those drugs should be treated as safe for use in Australian circumstances. The dilemma is that, even amongst those of us in this parliament who do hold medical qualifications, the views are divided.

Under the legislation as it currently stands, it would seem that any one of us can give medical advice on this issue—only on this category of medications, not on any other—regardless of our qualifications or what we bring to the table. So we are subjected to a variety of views on these particular medications. And haven’t Australian women been treated to a wide variety of opinion over the last couple of weeks! According to our own Minister for Health and Ageing, giving rural women, in particular, access to the drug known as RU486 would increase their risk of adverse outcomes, largely because of insufficient infrastructure to help them if something went wrong during the termination or the abortion. But, according to the member for Moore—a GP and an advocate for sensible medical treatment—the health minister asked ‘a very warped, stupid question and got an equally stupid answer’. So it would seem that we cannot agree.

So whose advice should we take? Dr Sharman Stone has pointed to medical information that shows that this particular drug is a safe alternative to surgery. She has pointed out that, while rural women often do not have access to surgical procedures—particularly in my home state of Western Australia—country GPs will be able to supervise the drug’s use, providing women with more options. Meanwhile, our health minister has suggested that perhaps cold showers may be an effective solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. So whose word should we take—the current minister for health or Dr Sharman Stone, a member of this parliament who represents rural and regional women? Rarely before has the Australian public been blessed with such diversity of opinion.

If we are going to have a debate about medications and their effects on individuals, perhaps we should have a debate on whether or not to allow, say, Viagra, to be sold to unsuspecting Australians. As I understand it, an editorial in the US journal entitled, conveniently, Contraception noted that Viagra has a mortality rate of five deaths per 100,000 prescriptions. The Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee received 20 reports describing heart attacks linked to the use of Viagra which included four fatalities. Clearly, if we allow this to continue, we are taking a risk with the health and safety of Australian men—let alone the health and safety of those who have sex with them! Surely the men of Australia deserve to be protected from such a dangerous drug. No, of course they do not: Viagra has been legitimately assessed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration as safe for use by Australian men under certain circumstances—a luxury that we do not allow drugs like RU486.

Despite my relative lack of medical experience, I have been able to learn some facts about RU486. I will share some of them with you so that you too may become a qualified medical expert. In the United States, RU486 has been available since 2000. Since then, 400,000 medical abortions have been carried out in the USA. The number of deaths occurring in these instances is approximately one in 100,000. Those of us on the committee were given this information in graphic detail. In the same country, the number of women dying during childbirth—a statistic that was not shared with us—is 12 in 100,000. Here in Australia the maternal mortality rate is an average of 8.2 deaths per 100,000. That is better than in the USA—absolutely—but is still much higher than deaths allegedly involving RU486. Indeed, in Australia alone, there were eight deaths in 2003 resulting from childbirth or subsequent complications. As the committee heard, childbirth can be an extremely risky proposition for some women.

Despite my lack of medical qualifications, I am quite competent in the field of counting. These numbers show quite obviously that, rather than banning RU486, the health minister—if he is concerned about deaths—should seriously think about addressing the dangers of childbirth, because it would seem to be far more risky to Australian women than having a look at the use of RU486. I again quote my fellow Western Australian, Dr Washer, the member for Moore, who said: ‘One-third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Are you going to ban pregnancy in country towns?’ We have the capacity in country towns to deal with a miscarriage but, according to others, we do not have the capacity to administer this drug in country towns and look after the women.

This is another thing I have learned during my recent crash course in medicine: if someone takes this drug, the risks being talked about—infection, bleeding and death—have nothing to do with mifepristone. It is not the drug that causes them; it is ending the pregnancy. Ending a pregnancy, whether by delivery, spontaneous abortion—a miscarriage—or by election, through a medical or surgical abortion, is associated with certain risks. Both a term delivery and a miscarriage at six weeks bring with them a risk of infection and/or bleeding. So it seems to me that those who are concerned about this drug should stop pointing out to everyone that country women often do not have access to adequate medical care and actually start fixing the problem.

I am going to move away now from the medical story and focus on something that everyone in this chamber knows a lot about—that is, politics. That is why we are here today. It seems to me that this debate has had very little to do with medical facts and women’s health. Certainly, those that have approached me to ask me to vote against the legislation have brought very little to the table on those two counts. I cannot help thinking that if safety were a concern we would not be talking about this today. The decision would be left to the same people who approve heart medication, cancer treatments and other such challenging drugs. This debate is about politics. This is about either putting decisions about the health of Australian women in the hands of one person or deciding that all drugs should be examined by the same professional body and exposed to the same expert assessment. This is about a small minority of people who wish to impose their views on the rest of the country.

Whilst Senator Patterson and those of us that support this legislation say, quite rightly, that this debate should not be about abortion, because it is about the role of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, many have tried to make this debate about abortion. As we all know, and as has been mentioned, the abortion laws—women’s right to abortion—are determined by various state and territory governments. It is not the province of any federal legislator or the federal parliament to determine what should or should not be in the criminal codes of our various states and territories. In my home state of Western Australia we have changed our regime for access to terminations on numerous occasions—most recently when the changes were brought about by Cheryl Davenport, a former Labor member of the legislative council. We have decided in Western Australia that a woman seeking a termination on medical grounds will not be committing a crime. It has at last, some years ago, been removed from the Criminal Code.

This debate should not be an abortion debate. If people want to have an abortion debate they should appeal to their state legislators to change their laws. It is not the province of the federal parliament to dictate that. We should not even be discussing that matter today. This matter is about the TGA being able to make an informed decision, based on evidence, about a certain category of medications. It is not a matter for politicians to decide based on ignorance or a desire to enforce their moral code on the rest of us. Australian women are also capable of considering philosophical problems. We need to let them do just that.

So I stand here today to show my respect for the Therapeutic Goods Administration, a professional body comprised of experts who should never be referred to, cheaply, as faceless, unelected bureaucrats. These are sound, ethical and expert people providing the best advice that anyone in Australia has access to. It is those in the medical profession and at the TGA on whom the Australian public rely for accurate and comprehensive advice about their unique health matters—all of their health matters—and we should not be excluding one category. More importantly, I stand here today to show my respect for the women of Australia. I am going to allow each and every one of them to make their own decision about what is best for them for their health, their lives and their families if and only if the TGA says that these medications are safe for use.