Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I know that abortion is an issue on which there is a spectrum of views represented in this chamber. For many, if not most, people in this chamber, those views are a product of deeply held convictions about what is right and what is wrong. For my part, I am deeply committed to a woman's right to choose. I have been since the beginning of my involvement in organised politics—in Queensland in fact—and I don't believe that the issue has become any less important over the intervening years. I am here as a senator for New South Wales. It is our most populous state and it is still illegal for a woman to have an abortion.

Laws of this kind are not just legacies or things which sit on the statute books with no real effect. Just a few years ago, a Brisbane couple were prosecuted for purchasing drugs to induce a termination. Even in jurisdictions where abortion is legal, women often face difficulties in accessing it. For instance, just this year we've heard tragic stories that arose from the lack of service providers in Tasmania. Women in rural and regional Australia struggle with ongoing challenges in accessing and receiving appropriate care. This is despite the fact that abortion is one of the most common medical procedures for Australian women to seek over the course of their life. One in three pregnancies in Australia is unwanted and one in five is terminated.

Women seek assistance with an unwanted pregnancy for a wide variety of reasons. No woman does so thoughtlessly; no woman does so without carefully reflecting on her own circumstances. Over 70 per cent of terminated pregnancies are the result of failed contraceptives. Others have found themselves in a more complicated situation. One-third of women who contacted Children By Choice for pregnancy options counselling were at that time experiencing domestic violence. One-fifth of women were the subject of reproductive coercion. I say all of this to make the following point: abortion law reform is not merely academic. Abortion law reform is an issue that has real and significant consequences for the lives of Australian women. It deserves and needs to be handled in a serious, considered and deliberate manner.

Abortion law reform has succeeded where a Labor government—and it always has been a Labor government—works with advocates to build a coalition for change around a well-developed policy proposal. In Victoria, for instance, the Brumby government declined to proceed with a private member's bill in 2008. Instead, the government tasked the Law Reform Commission to provide advice on options to modernise and clarify the law and reflect current community standards without altering current clinical practice. It then built one of those options up into a detailed and functional piece of legislation and garnered the necessary support. The bill eventually passed unamended.

Likewise, the legislation tabled in Queensland this year to decriminalise abortion came after an extensive and detailed process that included a referral to the state Law Reform Commission. What these state governments have in common, a decade apart, is a real commitment to achieve meaningful progress on abortion reform. That was a pattern repeated when the Northern Territory Labor government decriminalised abortion in 2017, when the Tasmanian Labor government decriminalised abortion in 2013, when the ACT Labor government decriminalised abortion in 2002, when the WA government decriminalised abortion in 1998, and even when the South Australian Liberal government liberalised abortion way back in 1969. That is how you create change on an issue as contentious and difficult as this. You take work with advocates and the community to build a broad coalition of support. You spend time to develop a properly thought-out and detailed proposal that reflects the community's view and is capable of being supported in the parliament. You reach across the aisle to generate majority support. It is a delicate and involved process. It is the difference between Penny Sharpe and New South Wales Labor successfully legislating for safe access zones in New South Wales this year and the unsuccessful attempt at decriminalisation led by a minor party in New South Wales last year.

A motion such as the one before us today represents a very different approach to the careful work that I have described. Today's debate concerns a high-level statement of principle about abortion law, not a proposal for change. The absence of detail in a debate of this kind makes it much easier for opponents to argue against a straw man rather than deal with the circumstances most commonly faced by Australian women.

In a debate of this kind in this chamber, there is little opportunity or reason for the participants in the debate to be lobbied, to talk, to deliberate or to change their minds of their own accord. After all, this is not even a jurisdiction which has legislative responsibility for criminal law as it relates to terminations. In a debate of this kind, there is no real opportunity to build relationships between stakeholders or to build a campaign to change. There are some risks though, if few benefits, because failure is not benign. There is a view sometimes in politics that says, 'Keep knocking and eventually the door will open.' That works on some issues, but for an issue like this there are real costs to unsuccessful attempts for reform.

I do want to speak briefly about some of the things that we can do at a Commonwealth level to ensure that women's reproductive rights are respected and supported. We need to improve reproductive freedom through decent sex education. Young people need to learn informed by science and knowledge and through discussions about relationships on how to have fun, healthy, respectful relationships when they're ready. Through Medicare, we need to ensure that people are able to access effective contraception and we need to ensure that all across our country vulnerable women can access health care when they need it.

If you are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, you ought to be supported. If you wish to avoid pregnancy, you ought to be supported. If you wish to end a pregnancy, you ought to be supported. A strong public health system needs to take responsibility for supporting women in their choices. Our systems need to ensure that women are not subjected to violence at home, that they not subjected to coercion, that their choices take place in an environment of genuine freedom.

Labor women understand that, to support women, these are the tools available to us in the Commonwealth parliament. We have unfinished business here. There are things that we can do. I say to my colleagues: this is an area where we ought to proceed carefully and that success is dependent on hard work, on community work and on collaborative work in the context of the parliament.