Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is not often I get up in this place, but today is the day. I rise to speak to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005. We have been debating a lot of the short-term effects, the medical effects, the science, tomorrow’s headlines and the political outcomes. I want to talk about the 50- and 100-year outcomes of the issue we are dealing with today. The world’s greatest vocation without a doubt is parenthood. No-one can understand the greatness of that vocation unless they are a parent. You do not understand what you mean to your own father and mother until you are a parent. I never understood it. Sadly, my father died before I had the opportunity to understand the pleasure he would have got as I walked up the footpath. You do not understand. You always know what mum and dad mean to you but you never understand what you mean to mum and dad until you have your own children. I think this advance in technology is going to turn the world’s greatest vocation into a social convenience over a long period of time. There is no question that with affluence comes the idea of convenience.

As I said, I do not want to get into the science. Simple, short messages send the message. The AMA says this pill is safer for rural women because it is safer than childbirth. Well, that is probably a scientific statement of fact. It is also a bit of a dog whistle out there if you advance for 50 years the idea that somehow childbirth and parenthood were meant to be a matter of convenience. There is great sacrifice in parenting. There is great sacrifice in giving birth. We have gone from a time in the 1700s when 25 per cent of children died at birth or in the first 12 months. We now have technology that allows us in Australia to do away with 40 per cent of our children before they are born. So I do not want to get into that. What I want to talk and remind everyone about is what the long-term effects can be.

Can I move to—and people may think I am straying from the issue here—the one-child policy in China. At the time that was implemented, they thought that was a great way for China to deal with the population issue. But it is going to cause the greatest social disruption to China. They think pollution is a problem? Wait till they start dealing with that. In India, they have gender selection as a policy. That is going to have an enormous effect 50 years down the track. It is as simple as clear-felling a forest: you do not look at tomorrow’s headline or the plantation that goes in; you look at where you are in 50 or 100 years time. If you clear-fell a forest, it takes 300 years to put it back to how Mother Earth wanted it. Then there is global warming. We all drive cars and all drivers know—and I am one of them—that when we drive the car we are destroying the planet, but because of the social convenience we drive the bloody car. The 100-year outcome is that we have now decided that we are almost too far down the track and it is irreversible.

It is cute to say RU486 is a therapeutic good. RU486 is designed to knock babies over, effectively in pregnancies of less than 49 days, or seven weeks, and even up to 12 weeks. Now, I said that to a doctor in Sydney the other day and the mob around me started to go mad because I called it a baby; they said, ‘It’s a foetus.’ I said, ‘Doctor, will you answer that question for me? Because I know the answer.’ He said: ‘I will. I’m a doctor who’s been dealing with pregnancies for 25 years. I have never had a woman come into my surgery and say, “How’s my foetus doing?” They always say, “How’s my baby doing?”’ This drug is designed to knock over babies. I asked him: ‘Do you think the technology will improve? We’ve improved our tractors and headers. Do you think we’ll improve the technology with this pill?’ He said: ‘Sure. We’ll have a pill that will knock ’em over at 28 weeks in due course.’

This debate is a nice attempt at a Trojan Horse about whether it is the government’s decision, the minister’s decision or an independent body’s decision. It is never going to be, while we have our present system, a minister’s decision; it is always the government’s decision and the government has to wear it.

An example of giving away a decision for government, I think, and I am sorry if this seems a long way from the mood of this debate, is film censorship. Last year we had that show, whatever the name of it was, on Channel 10 or whoever it was—I know I rang the bloke up and gave him a bloody earful. There was full-frontal nudity, with a bloke playing with himself on TV. I rang up and said, ‘Don’t you think that’s going over the top?’ Channel 10 said: ‘No. It’s not breaking the law, because the film review mob’—an independent body—‘said it’s all right.’ Give me a bloody break! The 50-year effect of this will be to destroy what we know as family.

It is cute to say that all the other things in the abortion debate have been put to bed. These things are never put to bed. And no-one wants to talk about the mistakes we have made in the past. Oops, we over-allocated the water licences in New South Wales. We are now paying the penalty. But, at the time, everyone thought it was a bloody good idea when they issued the licences. We mined the aquifer deliberately in the Namoi. Now there is a class action against the government because they—oops—made a mistake.

No-one will convince me that, like the one-child policy in China, the RU486 issue will not seriously interfere with global demography, because what will happen for a start is that, as this becomes more convenient—and the National Union of Students have already put it on the record that they think this is a great innovation—it will slowly but surely destroy the vocation, as it were, of parenthood. The long-term effect, with the growth of affluence, will be that in affluent countries there will be more of a temptation to use it. I am not going to get into the merits of it, because I am the least qualified person in this place to talk about the rights of women over their bodies. I do not want to get into that. I just want to let everyone know where it will all finish up. It is a given, it seems to me, that this will happen.

It is a given, to me, that eventually euthanasia will be legalised in Australia. It is legal in the Netherlands now. There are sensible arguments about it: Senator Macdonald and I have just had a discussion about prolonging life with technology and how sometimes that can be very unfortunate. Unfortunately, once you let these genies out of the bottle you cannot confine them to their original purpose. In the Netherlands now, whether you like it or not, 55 per cent of the people who are euthanased are euthanased without their consent or knowledge. It is an administrative tool for hospital administration to clear the beds out. Fifty-five per cent of the people euthanased are euthanased without their consent or knowledge. Don’t give me that other crap! Eventually euthanasia will be legalised in Australia. It is trendy; it is the way it will go. And guess what will happen? There will be a pill, and it will go to the TGA, not to knock over babies but to knock over people. And we will sit there and say: ‘Well, that’s a matter for the TGA. They’re an independent body.’ I rest my case.