Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak about the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006, and in consultation with my colleagues Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, Senator Carol Brown and Senator Kerry Nettle. This bill has come about on the basis of the hard work being done by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs and I applaud the foundation and the fundamental basis for this bill that the committee laid down. I was not on that committee but I would like to thank the senators who worked on that committee to make this information available.

This bill is founded on the basis of three choices that should be available to pregnant women, and those choices are: autonomy, the right of governing oneself; informed consent, the ability to make a choice on the basis of authoritative information supplied; and gender equity. Pregnant women should be able to get protection from misleading advertising. There is no trade practices attachment or necessity for many counselling services because, although corporate entities must not mislead, many counselling agencies are not corporate entities as they are free or come at a subsidised cost. It is important to note in the context of this debate the figures that my colleague Senator Stott Despoja noted in the result of a survey carried out by Marie Stopes International, that 75 per cent of women with an unplanned pregnancy do not want or need counselling. They make decisions alone or with the assistance of their partner, their family and/or their general practitioner. So we are thinking here of the 25 per cent of the total of women with an unplanned pregnancy who need to go to a counselling service to seek further advice. Nevertheless, of that entire group studied in the survey, 80 per cent of those women felt that there should be counselling for all three options. Ninety per cent of the women in that group thought they should be able to have access to an abortion in all or some circumstances.

The options available to a pregnant woman are three: adopt the baby after it has been carried to full term; terminate the pregnancy, or abort; or have the baby and rear the child. When women do seek counselling, with these very important consequences in mind, they want integrity and they want quality of care. So where would a woman go for choice?  As Senator Brown mentioned, one of the options is to seek advice from the yellow pages. I would like to take three examples from the yellow pages.

Pregnancy Counselling Australia provides those important words of being free, being confidential and being compassionate. When you are a woman in the first days or weeks of contemplating an unplanned pregnancy, those are the qualities you look for. But Pregnancy Counselling Australia, in its advertising, does not say that it is associated with the Right to Life group, which of course does not include abortion in the three options. The National Pregnancy Support Helpline, which calls itself a non-directive agency, and which has been set up by the Commonwealth government, again is a free call, so it is very accessible. But it does not actually refer for any of the three options and, on occasions, it has referred women to the internet. If women wanted to access the internet, they would do so in the comfort of their own home, as we say, without needing a call to the National Pregnancy Support Helpline. There is a third organisation, which uses the word ‘abortion’ in its visual advertising but does not refer for it. So if this were one of the options that you were contemplating and you thought, ‘Perhaps this organisation will help me,’ you would get there and find out that it only refers for adoption of the full-term baby or having the baby and rearing it yourself. So it does not refer for three options. What those organisations should say—and this is the whole point of this bill—is: ‘This organisation does not refer for termination of pregnancy’ or, ‘This organisation does refer for termination of pregnancy,’ so that before women actually get there and walk in the door, or make the phone call, they have advice on what the agency is about.

We are not dealing with any sector of the population here. These are people in crisis, as Senator Stott Despoja said, and they need clear, unequivocal information. They are not necessarily going to get it from every organisation that is in the phone book. What we want to say is: ‘This organisation does refer,’ ‘This organisation does not refer.’ The services, as Senator Brown correctly pointed out, should be used by the woman to make a decision—her decision, not one that is mandated by the service. As she so correctly remarked, up until now the focus has been on the service and the amount of money given to it or not given to it by the Commonwealth government. What we want the focus to be on is the client, the customer—or, as GPs call them, the patient or the client. False information provided by any of those services to a woman in this fragile state can lead to emotional complications which could affect the rest of the pregnancy and it could delay her final decision, with repercussions for both the mother and the child.

Now let us look at the bill. The main purpose of this bill is as with any trade practices type legislation—and that is what this is—we want to stop misleading and deceptive notification and advertising. If corporate entities and most large retail outlets have a false or misleading advertisement in the paper, they need to correct it immediately as to the false price being advertised or the particular brand not being available. Without making this choice seem in any degree flippant or light-hearted, that is exactly what these counselling organisations should be providing—that sort of information. So we want to stop misleading and deceptive notification in advertising, we want to promote transparency and full choice, we want to improve public health and we want to minimise the difficulties associated with getting advice.

In this bill there are penalties for providing misleading and deceptive information, and services should have to realise that if they provide deceptive and misleading information there will be a penalty. I am anticipating arguments, from people who will oppose this bill, that we are favouring one type of ideology over another. We have dealt equally—I repeat: we have dealt equally—with all types of services. So this bill is not aimed at one particular view of dealing with pregnancy. We have said, ‘You must advertise and you must notify for one type of service or another or indeed all three.’ Who could argue with that?  If people want to extend or falsify our arguments, they in turn are being misleading and deceptive about the types of arguments that we are mounting. This is a machinery-type bill. It is not about promoting ideology for dealing with pregnancy in one form or another. It is a machinery bill which will put another piece in the jigsaw, if you like, of information that should be available to pregnant women.

We also say in the bill that financial assistance from the Commonwealth government would not be payable if these conditions were transgressed. As we know, some pregnancy services are provided with finance by the Commonwealth government. We have also said that the minister is to report annually on the payments to and the performance of pregnancy counselling services.

Some people will see this as an extension of bureaucracy and an overwhelming burden on the minister. It could not be any more difficult than obtaining the present figures for different types of services funded by the Commonwealth government because, currently, these figures are almost impossible to obtain in a legible form and in a form which makes sense. It is no more difficult than providing those figures. It would be a minute part of the Minister for Health and Ageing’s reporting, but one part which would place a standard on those services so that they can do their job properly. It is all about transparency and accountability. That is something we would want for all Commonwealth funding arrangements. I commend the bill to my fellow senators, and I thank my cosponsors for their hard work and cooperation in bringing this bill before the Senate.