Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

Family First is strongly opposed to the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006 because it seeks to overturn the current system of pregnancy counselling and replace it with one which pushes agencies to become involved in abortion referrals. The bill seeks to do this in four steps. First, it identifies community groups that the bill’s sponsors disagree with—those being pregnancy counselling groups that do not refer for abortion. It then takes the definition of their work, which is non-directive pregnancy counselling, and redefines it in the bill to what is, in effect, directive counselling that includes abortion referrals.

The third step is to accuse anyone of being misleading and deceptive who does not meet the new definition. Finally, the bill’s sponsors aim to penalise any group or person who does not bend to their will. Family First is extremely concerned about this bill and its consequences, particularly in the light of the harsh penalties it contains. The consequences of failing to meet the bill’s requirements are severe indeed: fines for individuals of $220,000 and fines for incorporated bodies of $1.1 million.

Let us look at the community groups. The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee reported on an earlier version of the bill last year. The committee majority report did not support the bill. It was interesting in the committee hearings how much the senators focused on pregnancy counselling groups they did not agree with. In fact, I recall asking the chair whether senators could confine their questions to the bill itself, rather than the operations of the various groups they took issue with.

It is disturbing that the bill effectively accuses the many good people working in pregnancy counselling agencies—many of them volunteers—of being deceptive. It accuses these people—mostly women—of lying to the women who approach them. Family First deplores this behaviour by the bill’s sponsors, which is motivated by the fact that others do not share the same ideological views.

It is instructive to look at one of the bill’s sponsors’ websites, which lists what it calls ‘genuine’ pregnancy counselling services as opposed to what it calls ‘deceptive’ counselling services. The bill corrupts the notion of non-directive counselling. It says that to be non-directive you have to be willing to direct your client to an abortion clinic. There is nothing non-directive about that. Unless a pregnancy counselling service is willing to comply with the bill’s support for abortion, the service has to include in all its advertisements and public material the statement: ‘This service does not provide referrals for all pregnancy options.’

Even the Department of Health and Ageing disagrees with the bill’s dodgy definition of non-directive counselling, saying:

Counselling is really about the process of supporting decision making and ensuring that the counsellor assists the client to explore their feelings in relation to the issue. The issue of what happens once the client has made the decision and whether there is ongoing referral is a different issue from whether nondirective counselling is being provided.

Family First believes it is important to stress that pregnancy support agencies that declare a conscientious objection to providing a referral for abortion do still provide information to women on all their options, including abortion. All they do not provide is a referral. Mrs Garratt from Pregnancy Help Australia said:

All our counsellors are trained to say, ‘We cannot provide you with a referral for termination services. We can, however, talk to you about your options and give you information about abortion procedures, et cetera, if that is what you want to do.’

Ms D’Elia from the Caroline Chisholm Society stated:

We do not refer for the termination of a pregnancy. We are not medical practitioners. That is the role of a medical practitioner. But we are happy to talk about all the options that are available for a woman to explore. We do explore all three options that are available. If someone was to ask for a referral for termination we would say that it is really important for them to seek further counselling and support from their GP or local hospital. We do not provide a direct referral to a termination clinic; we believe that it is important for there to be the intervention of a medical practitioner in that process.

Further, the Caroline Chisholm Society argued:

We would be very clear that we are not directive within our counselling and yet having to state that openly works in the reverse, if you like. By stating that I am not a non-directive service under your definition then in fact what I am stating is that I am directive, and my social workers would walk out on that basis, and rightly so, because they would be misrepresented by the organisation if I were to sign a form that effectively said they were directive counsellors.

In conclusion, Family First believes that much of what the sponsors say in support of their bill is in fact a complaint about the quality of pregnancy counselling. It is worth noting that in the Senate committee inquiry there was unanimous agreement that the standard of pregnancy counselling in Australia could be improved. Family First believes this should be a priority to ensure all women get the help and support they need. Instead of targeting particular groups for ideological reasons, we should invest our energies in establishing a proper standards and accreditation system so women do not feel rushed to make a decision, so counselling services are separate to abortion clinics and so all women are aware of practical alternatives to abortion.