Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

I feel impelled to add a contribution to this debate about Senator O'Sullivan's general business motion regarding abortion, and I must express how disappointed I am in Senator Hinch's personalisation of it. Simply because another senator has a different point of view, he targets him as a 'middle-aged white male'. Are you ageist? Are you sexist? Are you racist? That is the question, Senator Hinch, because it stinks of hypocrisy.

The substantive motion here—and I take the point of Senator Collins, that, if you go back into the ideal world of what formal notices of motion were about, they were meant to be uncontroversial, blunt instruments. The reality is that in the 12 years I've been here they haven't been used in that manner. In fact, they are used now as debating points, where everyone gets to make a one-minute statement, and they raise all manner of contentious issues for debate. The tortuous language that is used obviously stops people from supporting them because of one particular political point or other that is made. So, in effect, they have lost their original intent, Senator Collins. I would put that to you.

I also respect the fact that Senator Collins is not someone who should be lectured to about this, because she's a person of very strong values. But I will reject entirely the merits of the argument that late-term abortion has any business in this country—not only the horrors of it, as Senator O'Sullivan has pointed out, and the grotesque nature of it, and we note that some of our international colleagues have also outlawed it, but the reality that you are dealing with a human right here. And the trite response that a woman should be able to do with her own body what she wants ignores the fact that this is dealing with late-term abortions. It is where you've known you're pregnant for 34 or 35 weeks and you decide you're going to have a termination. I don't know anybody who really thinks that's a credible argument, but maybe you can put that forward.

The second point about this motion that I think is really important is the horror of gender-specific abortion. People are choosing to terminate their pregnancy based on the gender of the child that is in the womb. We saw that just on the weekend. To those on the Left of the political spectrum, those who support the transgender movement: you should be horrified, because it undermines every single one of your arguments. How do you know, just because of the genitalia of the child, what they're going to identify with later on? That is essentially what your argument is. Yet you're going to defend the right of a parent to choose to terminate their pregnancy and kill a child—an unborn baby—because it is a boy or because it is a girl. I find that horrific.

This is not in effect about the merits of abortion or otherwise. There are many people who would defend the right of a woman to have a termination, particularly early in pregnancy. But please outline the justification based simply on the genitalia, or how you can justify a partial-birth abortion—a late-term abortion where we can see the child. It is fully formed. It is kicking. This is when parents are celebrating that this child is there and it's wonderful and a new life is going to be brought into the world. How can anyone justify the killing of a baby at that point?

We know there are extremists out there, people like co-Greens-founder Peter Singer, who say that a child is not a sentient being even after it's born. He's happy for you to take its life then—even after it's born. Where do we draw the limit? At what point do we accept that a child can live outside of the womb and is a human life? For me, it would be different to where many other people would draw the line. But there has to be a point where we accept that this is murder of a child. It is murder of an unborn baby that could exist outside of the womb, and it shouldn't be done on what I would say is the simple demand, or the selfish demand, of an individual involved.

I support this suspension of standing orders because I think we should be able to have a conversation about the horrors of what we're discussing now. We need to be able to bell the cat on this because too many people who just say it's the woman's choice are ignoring the realities of what actually takes place. So I'm standing with Senator O'Sullivan on this. I know I stand with millions of people around Australia who find this grotesque and horrible. We shouldn't be supporting state governments advancing the cause of gender-specific late-term abortions, because it undermines our very humanity and the dignity of every individual.