Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin this debate by thanking the cosponsors of the legislation before us, the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006, Senator Carol Brown, Senator Nettle and Senator Troeth. I also thank a number of other women in this place who have been directly involved in getting the legislation to where it is today: Senators Webber and Moore, Senator Adams and, of course, the late Senator Jeannie Ferris, without whom we would not have got to this stage. There are many other colleagues, men and women, in both chambers of this parliament who have helped us in this debate and with the construction of this legislation, and I thank them too. I believe there is broad-ranging support for legislation of this type and I am glad to have this debate before us.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s not hard to get it here on a Thursday in general business.

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In some ways it is a historic day for the parliament.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Everyone gets it.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You never get anything; what are you talking about?

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator McGauran, Senator Stott Despoja is entitled to be heard.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s not monumental; it’s just general business.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McGauran, you have been called to order. Senator Stott Despoja is entitled to be heard in silence.

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He cannot dampen my enthusiasm today, no matter what he tries. It is very rare for private member’s bills to be introduced and debated in a way that they become law or maybe have an influence on law. That is what I hope for with this piece of legislation. I would love it to be voted on at some stage in the near future, but more importantly I would love it if the government took the initiative to introduce legislation to cover up what I perceive is a loophole in current trade practices law on transparency in advertising when it comes to certain not-for-profit groups—in this specific case, pregnancy counselling.

I said that this was a historic day; I actually think it is a ‘herstoric’ day because it continues something that we have seen in this place in recent times which gives me great joy and which I hope will continue long after I leave this place—that is, cross-party female senators working together. That is something we have seen in recent times that has given us much joy but has also worked towards very positive policy contributions.

It has almost been two years since I introduced my original private member’s bill, the Transparent Advertising and Notification of Pregnancy Counselling Services Bill 2005, into the Senate on 23 June 2005 to regulate pregnancy counselling services to prevent misleading and deceptive advertising or notification of pregnancy counselling services. Today, following the introduction of the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006 to the Senate last December, which was cosponsored by Senator Troeth, Senator Nettle and Senator Carol Brown, we have the opportunity to finally lay our cards on the table and debate the simplest issue: requiring pregnancy counselling services to be subject to comparable laws regarding misleading advertising as those organisations that are engaged in trade or commerce. What is so difficult about achieving this? We are not singling out particular organisations, as some people and services may claim. Nor would we dare suggest that or force those organisations to provide referrals for terminations. All this bill does is require all pregnancy counselling services, whether they have a certain philosophy, principle or perspective, or are anti-choice or pro-choice, to be up-front and truthful in their advertising.

I originally raised the issue of transparency in pregnancy counselling services in this chamber back in August 2004 and subsequently wrote to Sensis, the company which publishes and distributes the white pages, urging it to remove Pregnancy Counselling Australia from the emergency and community help pages of the white pages and replace it with a non-directive pregnancy counselling service. Sensis responded, highlighting that, following concerns raised the previous year, 2003, it had, in conjunction with Pregnancy Counselling Australia, already altered two previous listings. ‘Abortion trauma’ and ‘Crisis pregnancy counselling’ were altered to read ‘Pregnancy Counselling Australia (Pregnancy termination alternatives and post-termination counselling)’. This response, along with my increasing awareness of a number of other counselling services which do not mention that they do not provide termination services in their advertising and notification material, encouraged me to investigate and push for greater transparency.

What does this bill do? While I have already outlined broadly what this bill sets out to achieve—and, of course, I did that in a fuller form when my original legislation was introduced and at the beginning of my second reading remarks when the bill was reintroduced—I want to outline the objectives very clearly so that people are under no illusions. Firstly, this legislation prohibits pregnancy counselling services, whether the services provide the information in person or over the telephone, from publishing, distributing, displaying or broadcasting via internet, television, telephone, radio or like service, or by post, any material that is misleading or deceptive as to the nature of the services it provides or any material that is likely to mislead or deceive as to the nature of the services it provides. Secondly, the bill ensures that services must be up-front about whether or not they refer for terminations. Thirdly, it requires services which do not provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy to include in any advertising or notification material a statement such as ‘this service does not provide referrals for terminations of pregnancies’ or like statement. I am not wedded to a particular use of words or terminology; to make it clear is the most important thing. Finally, this legislation requires services which do provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy to include in any advertising or notification material a statement that the service does provide referrals for all pregnancy options. Basically, it does not matter what you do, you have to be up-front about it. You cannot give the impression that you do something that you do not do. You cannot deceive; you must be up-front. What is wrong with that?

Obviously, there are penalties for breaching conditions. The bill also ensures that Commonwealth funded pregnancy counselling services are ineligible to receive a grant for financial assistance unless the Commonwealth discloses whether it is a pregnancy counselling service which does not provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy or a non-directive pregnancy counselling service which provides referrals for all pregnancy options.

Additional reporting requirements contained in the bill include that the minister must report annually on the amount of each payment to the states and the name of each service provider receiving the payment and whether each service provider is a pregnancy counselling service which does not provide referrals for termination of pregnancy or is a non-directive pregnancy counselling service which provides referrals for all pregnancy options. All you need to do is disclose it. It is not about saying that the Commonwealth will only fund certain types of pregnancy counselling organisations, because I know that is a criticism that has been levelled at the bill. It does not say that; you just have to disclose what you do and what you do not do in order to get taxpayer dollars. It could not be simpler.

For the record, there is currently no pro-choice federally funded pregnancy counselling service in operation. That is something that we have heard about before in this place. During estimates I have repeatedly questioned the government about its continuation of funding to the previously anti-choice pregnancy counselling helpline, Pregnancy Help Australia, despite the closure of the counselling operations and the establishment of the government’s new pregnancy counselling hotline to the tune of around $15 million. The previous hotline, Pregnancy Help Australia, has not been providing counselling since late last year, with callers instead receiving a recorded message.

There are a number of reasons why this issue is timely. Anecdotes and information have been brought to our attention, a Senate committee has exposed some of these issues and there are many heartfelt stories that have been recorded. There are organisations, women’s groups, social workers, individuals, fathers of daughters who have been affected, police and other people who have brought to our attention a range of issues that have highlighted the fact that, if women do not have the right information up front, especially when they are in a traumatised or highly emotional state, a state of crisis, if they do not have clear, concise, honest, up-front, unbiased information, things can go wrong. This bill is making sure that the advertising at least is up-front and honest. It would put Australia at the forefront of not just women’s rights but the recognition of human rights, highlighting the commitment to transparency in advertising as well as beginning the debate on the regulation of pregnancy counselling services. Anecdotal evidence that has been presented to us over the years reinforces the urgency of this particular issue and highlights the fact that misleading and deceptive information is being provided to women.

Essentially this bill does hold pregnancy counselling services accountable for the information and the advertising that they provide. It creates a safety mechanism for protecting some of the rights of women and their families and their partners, ensuring that they have access to non-directive counselling on all three options. All three pregnancy options are pretty obvious, but for the record they are: adoption, keeping a baby or having a termination. Women have said that they have felt bullied and pressured into continuing their pregnancies, that they have been offered baby clothes and assistance in that form and through government funding if they continue. Again, there are a range of mechanisms or options people may use to try to talk to someone, assist someone or counsel someone. It is not necessarily my definition of non-directive—obviously women have the right to receive information if they request it in those areas—but what we are more concerned about are some of the anecdotes which suggest not just misleading information but downright harmful information being given to women about what would happen to them if they chose to get a referral for a termination. I am sure my colleagues are happy to put some of those issues on the record.

A 37-year-old mother of two contacted my office after a recent experience with Pregnancy Counselling Australia. She had an unexpected pregnancy and she wanted to be fully informed about all of the options available to her before she made a decision. She said:

I am pro-choice but abortion is something I have always hoped I never would have to contemplate. I rang up Pregnancy Counselling Australia and the local Pregnancy Help line looking for specific information. Now these national counselling services had absolutely no idea about services in the Northern Territory and when it came to RU486 the best that anyone could say was that they didn’t think that it was available. And these services were quick to steer me towards the disadvantages of abortion. I got told that my uterus could get perforated, that I could suffer a haemorrhage or infection, that I could retain products of conception. I could potentially risk infertility and of course there were the psychological aspects of guilt, anxiety and depression. And potentially risk not bonding with any future babies. They did not give me any statistical information at all to give an indication regarding the actual incidence of these occurrences. They did not give comparative statistics comparing the risks of these problems post termination with the incidence of the same problems in pregnancy itself.

It is hard to imagine how anyone with women’s best interests at heart would provide that kind of information without some kind of substantiation. A woman who contacted an emergency number from the front of the white pages in Adelaide also reported:

I have had an abortion before and they told me if I had another one I would never be able to get pregnant again. They said I was a definite high risk to get breast cancer and that there were plenty of couples who would adopt my child if I didn’t want it. I said to her ‘you won’t give me information about abortion will you’ and she told me ‘No I don’t believe in it, no-one here does.’

I put on record I do not have a problem with people having those differing views; you have just got to be up-front. If a woman thinks she is contacting a counselling or other organisation in relation to these issues expecting to get unbiased, up-front advice on the options available to her, of which there are three, she needs to be able to tell from the advertisement that that is the organisation she is contacting, not be misled into thinking that they provide other services or stand for something else. Another woman—

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McGauran interjecting—

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Again, another startling contribution by Senator Julian McGauran to this debate. Again, it will not dampen my enthusiasm for the legislation before us. It is incredibly important; it is needed. Another story from my electorate in South Australia illustrates why this is so important. A woman was told she should name her baby. She was also told that her baby did not have a place in heaven, and the young woman was asked if she thought having an abortion was sinful. A woman also told me of the advice she received form Birthline in South Australia. She said:

I rang them to get information about the Morning After Pill, they told me it can make me have an abortion, and that it can cause foetal defects if I was already pregnant.

These examples are a small number of the hundreds that I have seen over the years. I am not the only person in this place, let alone these organisations, who has received comparable stories. It is not about whether you have a particular opinion, Senator McGauran. I am very up-front about mine. What I am saying is: everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but do not mislead, do not deceive. Get the advertising up-front, transparent and honest—just as we would expect of everybody else in society, including businesses that make a profit and organisations that are subject to the Trade Practices Act. I want these organisations to be covered by comparable legislation so that women and others are not misled, particularly in what could be the most vulnerable and emotional state they could be in.

I am proud of the support this bill has received and the genuine commitment it has received from organisations. I acknowledge the work of people involved in organisations like Marie Stopes International, Children by Choice, Reproductive Choice Australia, Australian Reproductive Health Alliance and, of course, GetUp, who are actively involved in asking men and women of Australia what they think of legislation like this and what they think of some of the stories they have heard and collating signatures for an online petition last year. A campaign jointly sponsored by RCA and GetUp resulted in 20,000 signatures supporting legislation of this kind. I obviously also thank my cosponsors again.

It is worth putting on record some other key facts. A recent survey commissioned by Marie Stopes International produced findings highlighting that 81 per cent of women believe that a pregnancy counsellor should refer for all three options. A further 12 per cent of women confirmed that when they had been faced with an unplanned pregnancy, they relied on pregnancy counsellors for support. There are many other results in that survey that are also of interest. I might add that, during estimates a couple of weeks ago, we learnt that each call to the government’s $15 million pregnancy helpline costs around $442. These are taxpayer dollars. I acknowledge those call costs may change as the service becomes well known; women will be more interested in using it or at least more aware of its services.

Seventy-five per cent of women surveyed in this Marie Stopes commissioned survey said they did not want to talk to a counsellor before making a decision about their unplanned pregnancy. So, yes, pregnancy counselling is important—it is a valuable service, from whatever perspective it may come—but it has to be honest, it has to be up-front in its advertising and it has to be transparent. I prefer non-directive counselling—and I have a very strong view as to what constitutes non-directive counselling—but counselling is not necessary, nor should it be compulsory, for women who are in a situation where they are facing an unplanned pregnancy. The majority of women have said they do not necessarily want it. But for those women who do want it, when they go to the yellow pages or the internet or see an advertisement on the back of a bathroom door, it has to say more than, ‘Pregnant? Upset or distressed?’ It has to explain what services it does or does not provide. At least in those circumstances the woman, her partner and her family are aware of who and what they are contacting and what services and/or counselling may result as a consequence of her picking up the phone or walking in the door and meeting with someone and talking about some of those most personal issues.

The results of the Marie Stopes survey further highlight the need for the regulation of pregnancy counselling services to ensure not only that women are fully informed but also that they have services of a high standard. Across the board, regardless of people’s perspective in the Senate inquiry on this particular bill or its predecessor, there was a strong view that we could look at the regulation and quality of counselling. It did not matter which perspective people came from. Maybe the Minister for Health and Ageing, Tony Abbott, should be looking into that to ensure that, regardless of what perspective people come from, there is quality assurance. That is not my particular debate today; mine is much more simple than that. Again, it is a bill about advertising.

This bill is necessary because, although the Trade Practices Act outlaws ‘conduct that is liable to mislead the public as to the nature, the characteristics, the suitability for their purpose or the quantity of any services’, the majority of pregnancy counselling services are, of course, not bound by the Trade Practices Act because they generally do not charge for the information and other services they provide and, therefore, they are not considered to be engaged in commerce or trade.

I want women to feel safe and secure when they are calling or visiting pregnancy counselling services. I do not want people bullied, I do not want people frightened and I do not want people misled or deceived. It is one of the most delicate and, arguably, traumatic times in a woman’s life. Providing false or misleading advertising to women who are confused or unsure about keeping or not having a child is something all pregnancy counselling services should be held accountable for.

Why would anyone question this basic principle in this legislation? If they are proud of their philosophical beliefs, whether they be anti-choice or pro-choice, then what is the problem? Surely, people are still going to receive calls to this service. Regardless of their perspective, people cannot seriously deny that this is long overdue. (Time expired)

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006 seeks to promote transparency in the advice given by pregnancy counselling services. It seeks to achieve this by prohibiting pregnancy counselling services from producing or providing advertising material or advice that is misleading or deceptive. It is aimed squarely at making it easier for women to obtain truthful and unbiased advice when faced with the often-difficult situation of an unplanned pregnancy.

I am proud to co-sponsor this legislation with Senator Stott Despoja, Senator Judith Troeth and Senator Kerry Nettle. I wish to make it absolutely clear that this is a bill about promoting and ensuring truth in advertising. It is important that it is not misinterpreted as a bill that seeks to promote any one pregnancy option over another. It does not. It is simply aimed at protecting women from receiving advice that may be false, misleading or even deceiving. It is about promoting the fundamental right of Australian women everywhere to be aware of the nature of the pregnancy counselling advice they will receive.

In this sense, the bill is simply about promoting truth and not prescribing one pregnancy option over another. Anyone who thinks otherwise is incorrect. It does not matter what arguments are put forward by those who oppose the bill to try to fudge or muddy the debate. It does not matter that they deliberately declare that the bill is an attempt to do other than what I have just described and that they link it to moral arguments about the rights and wrongs of the choices women make when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy. Those arguments will inevitably be put forward today by those who oppose the bill. I wish to remind them that this bill is simply about ensuring that pregnancy counselling services disclose the truth.

It was correctly observed in the committee hearing that, up until now, in relation to the provision of pregnancy counselling services much of the focus has been on the rights of the service providers. Indeed, what this bill seeks to achieve is to shift that focus back onto the rights of the women accessing these services. This is where the focus should be.

This bill is necessary because services that provide counselling and advice free of charge—such as the majority of pregnancy counselling services in Australia—are exempt from operating within the confines of the Trade Practices Act—specifically, section 52, which dictates that ‘a corporation shall not engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive’. As a result, pregnancy counselling services that provide advice free of charge are not governed by any legislative restriction that mandates that they not produce or provide advertising material or advice that is likely to be misleading or deceptive. A black hole exists, because currently there is no legislative guarantee that women accessing such services can be sure that the advice they are being given is accurate. Essentially, this bill makes pregnancy counselling services subject to the same laws as organisations which engage in trade or commerce. It basically provides the necessary legislative framework to ensure that advertising material and advice given by pregnancy counselling services cannot be misleading or deceptive.

As senators would be aware, this bill is an amended version of the Transparent Advertising and Notification of Pregnancy Counselling Services Bill 2005, introduced as a private member’s bill by Senator Stott Despoja. Senators will also be aware that Senator Stott Despoja’s private member’s bill was referred to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry. The committee reported in August 2006. There was a minority report which received cross-party support. My colleagues Senators Stott Despoja, Moore, Nettle, Webber and Allison and I were the authors of that minority report, and I congratulate my fellow senators on their work for it. I welcome, too, the comments of Senator Judith Adams who, although she was not a signatory to the minority report, nevertheless supported the former bill.

That committee received a range of submissions and evidence, some of which supported the former bill, in its entirety or subject to amendments, and some of which opposed the bill. The committee report examined: the constitutionality of the bill; advertising a pregnancy counselling service; advertising in telephone directories; contentious terminology; whether the former bill was balanced; the options for dealing with an unplanned pregnancy; funding to pregnancy counselling services; qualifications and professional standards of counselling services and issues confronting women in rural, regional and remote communities.

Clearly, I cannot address today all the issues brought before the committee. However, I will address those issues that I believe are of great importance, not just to the committee members but to those who are most affected by the future of this bill—that is, the couples who need to access services and agencies and clinics, at a time in their lives when they are facing an unplanned pregnancy, and vulnerable women undergoing the sort of stress that only a woman who has experienced an unplanned pregnancy can truly appreciate.

The main issue raised before the committee, one that is very familiar to the sponsors of the current bill, is the fact that, under the law as it stands, there is no requirement for those persons who provide pregnancy counselling services to provide, in advance, a full and frank disclosure of any limitation on the nature of the advice or the referrals that they are willing to provide. The effect of this gap is that some women who, in response to the distress of an unplanned pregnancy, go to counsellors for advice or support find themselves unwilling recipients of advice that does not meet their needs and may even serve to increase their distress.

This bill is designed to prevent the situation in which a woman who wishes to consider all three options open to her—having and keeping the child, arranging an adoption, or terminating the pregnancy—instead finds herself the recipient of pregnancy counselling that is strongly directive in nature—that is, directed to the end of ensuring that, no matter what her wishes may be, her pregnancy will continue. Some providers are not only strongly directive; there are documented instances of counsellors having presented material that can only be called anti-abortion propaganda, because it has no basis in fact or is even contradicted by the findings of reputable research.

This raises a further inadequacy in the current legal framework for pregnancy and counselling services. It contains no proscription against the provision of misleading, inaccurate or untruthful information to a client and no requirement that counsellors or service providers apply professional standards in the advice that they provide and the techniques they employ, which should never be coercive.

During the committee hearings, proponents and opponents of the former bill traded accusations of bias. Such accusations may distract us from the most important consideration here. Where there is convincing evidence of the sort presented to the committee—evidence of the not infrequent provision of half-truths and scientifically inaccurate information and of a failure to provide advice on all available alternatives—the need to support this bill becomes clear. It must be passed to protect the very vulnerable women facing the distress of an unplanned pregnancy.

This bill does not seek to restrict the operation of services that provide only one type of pregnancy counselling service—namely, counselling to assist with the continuation of pregnancy. However, it does seek to ensure that such services are open about that fact. Some women will choose those services; some will not. The point is that potential service users should be able to make an informed choice on the basis of the advertising material made available by the service provider.

Some speakers in this place will have a view that this bill is not needed—that there is no need to require pregnancy counselling services to advertise what services they provide—and will ask, ‘Why would anyone provide misinformation or seek to deceive?’ Unfortunately, it does happen, and it appears to be happening more regularly.

Given the widespread interest and concern in this area, we now have a position whereby the yellow pages pregnancy counselling section offers advice to consumers in the form of an advertisement positioned prominently at the head of the section that reads:

We recommend that you fully understand the type of service each organisation offers before you contact them.

Here we have an organisation that recognises the concerns and has attempted to act. And yet the federal parliament is yet to act by simply putting in legislation that requires that pregnancy counselling services advertise their services—no more, no less.

Frankly, I can hardly conceive of how there could be any objection to the provision of openness, honesty and transparency on a matter of such importance. Yet, clearly, there are some people who disagree with the principles promoted by this bill. Do they really believe that it is justifiable to conceal the true nature and philosophy of a service that will only offer assistance and advice on pregnancy continuation because the end, of dissuading a woman from deciding to terminate a pregnancy, justifies the means—the use of a veil of deceit?

During the Senate committee hearings, the Bessie Smyth Foundation described how many women feel angry that anti-abortion agencies masquerading as impartial counselling services try and tell them what they should do and refuse to provide referral information for termination of pregnancy. This same group explained the state of mind of young women who had been to some service providers. They said that many women have been made to feel petrified about having a termination ‘because of the misinformation’ they were given.

I feel deeply for any young woman or any couple who have been misled or placed in a position where they find themselves unable to gain the information they need at what is a major turning point in their lives. This bill aims to ensure that those who need pregnancy counselling services will be able to choose those services most appropriate to their needs and values, and that they will be able to obtain the best quality information concerning all of the available options that they might wish to consider.

There are no simple answers or one-size-fits-all answers to the complex questions raised by an unplanned pregnancy. Openness, honesty and absolute professionalism should govern those who offer advice and assistance through pregnancy counselling services. Decisions made without full access to the facts and without considering all the choices available could be wrong and a person may regret it for the rest of their life. Such decisions cannot be revisited in the weeks, months or years to come. A decision to terminate a pregnancy, to see a pregnancy to term or to give a baby up for adoption is not one that should be made lightly or in haste; it is a decision that the person making it has to live with for the rest of their life. Australians must have access to open, honest information about the available pregnancy counselling services. Anything else is clearly unacceptable. They deserve nothing less than the truth. They also deserve access to transparent information about the nature of the services funded by the government. Specifically, this bill proposes that the pregnancy counselling service—whether provided in person or over the phone—be prohibited from publishing, distributing, displaying or broadcasting any material that is either misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive. This measure will ensure that such services are subject to the same standards that apply to all other services that fall under the Trade Practices Act.

The application of such a standard to pregnancy counselling services is necessary to ensure that women accessing such services are not provided with information that is skewed or distorted in any way. It is important to note that the bill also provides that it is a defence to the abovementioned prohibition if it can be proved that the people involved in providing the relevant information took no part in determining its content and could not reasonably be expected to have known that the material was in fact inaccurate or misleading. This bill provides that all pregnancy counselling services which do not provide referrals for terminations must include in any advertising or material a statement that indicates that it does not provide referrals for such services. Likewise, the bill also requires that counselling services which provide referrals for terminations must include in any advertising or material a statement indicating that the service provides referrals for all pregnancy options. These requirements are aimed at ensuring that women accessing such services are aware of the nature of the information provided by the service they are planning to access.

I realise that it is unlikely that this debate will result in a decision being made today on this bill. It is my hope that this bill will be taken up by government and afforded the same legislative time that government gave to the stem cell legislation and to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill, now known commonly as the RU486 bill, which was again introduced by cross-party senators Moore, Nash, Troeth and Allison. This amended the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 to transfer the responsibility for regulatory approval of RU486 from the Minister for Health and Ageing to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Both these bills were the subject of heated debate within the parliament and in the wider community. Both pieces of legislation were the start of a historic cooperative approach by women senators across parties, who joined together to start and push debate where there appears to be no party willing to do so.

It is important that transparency in this area is achieved to ensure women are able to make informed choices about who they can contact for information when deciding if they can continue with a pregnancy, when seeking support in continuing the pregnancy or when they have decided to terminate the pregnancy. This is an important issue. Women have the right to know what type of service they are going to. A pregnant woman wanting advice should be able to know whether she is ringing a counselling service that advises her on all options related to her pregnancy or only some of them, and, if she has made a decision and is seeking specific support or referral, she should be able to easily find and access appropriate services for her needs. Without clarity and truth in advertising, this seemingly simple request cannot be fulfilled.

Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to debate the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006 and to have worked with all of the other cosponsors of the bill. This is an important piece of legislation for entrenching honesty in the way in which organisations relate to the public. We all want people to be honest and that is what sits behind the basis of the laws in this country that do not allow people to advertise in a deceptive or misleading way. We all want to see some honesty in the way in which people relate their services to the public.

The cosponsors of this legislation have put it in place for incorporated entities right across the board to ensure that we have that honesty so that when people see an advertisement they know what services they will get. But we have a loophole. This legislation seeks to close that loophole. I am proud to be a part of trying to close a loophole that exists in our current legislation which enables people to be dishonest in the way they advertise. Unfortunately, we are seeing some pregnancy counselling organisations taking advantage of the loophole that exists in our legislation.

The reason why this legislation is so important is that, when those organisations do take advantage of the loophole that exists in the current legislation, it is women who suffer. Women with an unplanned pregnancy want to find support when making a really difficult decision about what they are going to do about their unplanned pregnancy. They want to be able to find support and, when they see a pregnancy counselling service advertised—in the yellow pages, in the newspaper, or wherever—which says it will provide them with the information they need that will help them make a decision, that is what they want and expect. This legislation is about ensuring that that happens.

I want to talk a little about the impact on women with an unplanned pregnancy, their families and supporters when pregnancy counselling organisations take advantage of the loophole that exists in our legislation and when they are misleading and deceptive in the way in which they advertise. I went to visit the Pregnancy Advisory Centre in South Australia, which is a government funded service which provides pregnancy counselling to women with an unplanned pregnancy. It is a great service. They provide information to women about all three options that women can pursue when they have an unplanned pregnancy. I spoke with them about some of the phone calls that they have been receiving. At the centre, they get an opportunity to see what happens to women when these women read one of these false or misleading advertisements, then ring up a service and get something totally different from what they had expected. I want to give some examples that the centre staff told me about, the experiences that they had had and of the women whom they had spoken to.

The mother of a pregnant 13-year-old woman rang the service that had advertised as a pregnancy counselling service to get some information regarding options for her daughter. She was told that if her daughter adopted out her child then it would be the worst thing that she could do. She was also told that if she terminated the pregnancy, ‘Well, that’s just killing the baby.’ It is not support for the mother of a 13-year-old who has an unplanned pregnancy to tell her that if her daughter terminates, ‘That’s just killing the baby.’ That is not pregnancy counselling; that is not support. She was told that there would be support for her daughter to keep the baby, such as cots and baby clothes. She was also told that the government would provide a few thousand dollars to keep the baby. This service is funded by the federal government, and it was advertising itself as being able to provide support to women with an unplanned pregnancy. That is not support to the mother of a 13-year-old with an unplanned pregnancy. That is what this legislation is trying to stop, to ensure that mothers like her do not have to experience that kind of disservice when they ring up to get support.

Again, a woman rang a service advertising itself as providing pregnancy counselling. She mentioned in the conversation that she had had an abortion. She was told, ‘I think you should name your baby.’ How is that providing any kind of support or genuine pregnancy counselling for a woman who rings up to talk about a medical operation that she has had only to be told, ‘I think you should name your baby.’ She was also told that her baby did not have a place in heaven. She was asked whether she thought what she had done was sinful. That is not support; it is not pregnancy counselling. An organisation that provides that kind of disservice should not be advertising itself as a pregnancy counselling service. This legislation is about ensuring that Australian women can have honesty reflected in the advertisements that they read.

It is not just about Australian women; it is also about men. The father of a 16-year-old girl from regional Australia rang up a service—again, one advertising that it would provide pregnancy counselling—when she was five weeks pregnant as a result of having been raped. When he suggested pregnancy termination as an available option for his daughter—which, clearly, she had; there are three options, and one of them is a pregnancy termination—the person at the other end of the telephone called him a murderer for stating that there are three things that you can do when you have an unplanned pregnancy pregnancy: the first is a termination, the second is continuing on and becoming a parent and the third one is to have the child adopted. He mentioned one of those three options and he was told by the person at the other end of the phone that he was a murderer.

That is what we want to prevent occurring—for the father of a 16-year-old girl in this instance. I think that the father of that 16-year-old girl has the right, when he looks it up in the yellow pages, to know whether or not the service that is advertising itself as doing pregnancy counselling is actually going to be able to provide him and his daughter with support. This is a deliberate strategy being taken by particular pregnancy counselling services. To give you an idea of how deliberate it is, I want to tell you about some research that has been done in the United States by right to life organisations. One piece of research was done in 1988. It was called Turning hearts towards life. There was another lot of market research done in 2005. What that research was designed to do was to find out how best these right to life organisations could advertise their services in order to get women who had an unplanned pregnancy to ring them without realising that they were a right to life organisation. That was the intention of the research: to find out how best they could advertise their service to mislead and to deceive women about the service they were providing. What they found in that market research was that they should put themselves under ‘Pregnancy’ in the phone book and that they should talk about being free, low-cost, confidential, caring, friendly, non-judgmental, professional, trained and able to see people quickly. These were all important things.

These were all things that women wanted. But that was not why these organisations were doing the market research; they were doing it to find out how best they could advertise things that women wanted but exclude what they were actually not providing to women—that is, information about one of the three options that women can pursue when they have an unplanned pregnancy. The research told them that they needed to be careful about what they said and that if they put the word ‘options’ in their advertisement then some women may pick that up as being an indication that they were pro choice—that they thought women should have access to the whole range of reproductive rights and look at all of the options when they had an unplanned pregnancy. What they were looking for in their research was the answer to this: ‘What do we not put in the advertisement, because if we put it in the advertisement then people may be able to determine what our particular perspective is?’

I think it is really important when we have this debate to say, ‘We’re not talking about just anyone looking in the yellow pages and trying to find a particular service.’ This is not like trying to find where the nearest squash court is. We are not talking about somebody in that headspace. What we are talking about here is somebody who is in crisis; somebody who is extremely vulnerable. This is somebody who has just found out that they are pregnant or that one of their friends or family members is pregnant and it was not planned. Some people will be wildly excited because they thought they could never get pregnant and they have found out that they are pregnant. For other people it is going to be really frightening because it was not part of their vision for their life or for their future. They are in crisis and they really want to be able to get support. They really want to access someone who can go through with them what their options are—what they are thinking, what their values are and how they going to put in place the big life decision that they are being asked to make at that point. These are people who are in crisis. When you are in crisis you need clear information to make sure that, in the jumble of your confusion about what you are going to do, you are not misled. You need clear information.

I will give you an example. Ms Brigid Coombe, the Director of the Pregnancy Advisory Centre in South Australia, gave this example when she appeared before the Senate committee into this legislation at the hearing in South Australia. I will read her words. She said:

I would like to give you an example of how easy it is for women to misinterpret information describing services on the 24-hour pages. I spoke with a woman at the centre last week who had rung Pregnancy Counselling Australia. As you will note on the White Pages, there it states, ‘Alternatives to abortion and post-abortion counselling.’ I asked her why she had rung them given that their entry states, ‘Alternatives to abortion’. She said she saw the word ‘abortion’ and in her anxious state thought, ‘That’s what I want,’ and rang them.

She needed clear information but she saw the word ‘abortion’ and, in her anxiety, jumped to a conclusion and rang that service. When she rang that service she was given inaccurate and alarming information. She then went to a gynaecologist in a hospital, where she was reassured with accurate information and given information about the counselling service provided by the South Australian government. She was able to get some support to make a really difficult decision.

I want to give that example because, as I said, we are not talking about someone trying to find the nearest squash court; we are talking about somebody who is perhaps not thinking as clearly as they might otherwise because they have in front of them a really difficult life decision. This is something that they did not expect and they need assistance to get through it. As we have heard other people mention, a lot of women are able to make their own decision: in fact, 75 per cent of women who have an unplanned pregnancy are able to decide which of the three available options they are going to choose.

The women who most need pregnancy counselling are those who do not have support networks around them or who feel that they need more information or who need some reassurance about making their decisions. The people who are uncertain about which of the three options they should choose are the ones who are riffling through the yellow pages to find where they can get some support. It is precisely the most vulnerable of the women with unplanned pregnancies who are the ones looking through the advertisements to try to find out if they can get the service that they want.

What this bill says is that those advertisements should be clear about what kind of service they are going to get. It is a simple, straightforward request. Let us be clear about what people are going to provide. As I said before, I thought everyone here agreed with the concept of people being honest about what kind of service they are providing. That is what this legislation is about. It says, ‘Let’s be honest about what kind of service is going to be provided when somebody rings up that number.’ That is not currently the situation because we have got this loophole in our legislation. But that loophole is proposed to be shut by the bill we are debating today.

I spoke to a group of students at the University of Sydney some time ago about the different types of pregnancy counselling services out there and what kinds of experiences women had had when ringing some of those pregnancy counselling services. I told them, as I have just now told the Senate, about some examples where people rang up expecting to get support and found that the phone had been answered by a ‘right to life’ organisation. They were told that they would be a murderer and that they had sinned. They were told to name their baby. The consequence of that for that woman—or for the friend or family member who rang—was disastrous. When I was talking to the students at the University of Sydney they asked me: ‘How do I find out? How do I know whether or not a pregnancy counselling service is going to provide me with genuine information?’ I had to say to them, ‘Well, there is no law that requires those pregnancy services not to mislead or be deceptive in their advertising.’

It was partly as a result of those conversations that I produced out of my office a Greens guide for pregnancy counselling, which I have distributed to many different youth centres in my state. I have also distributed it to women’s health centres, which is where people go to find this information. The guide outlines which are the genuine pregnancy counselling services and which are the deceptive and misleading ones that will not provide women with information—let alone a referral—about one of the three options that they can choose when they have an unplanned pregnancy. But it should not be the case that a young woman with an unplanned pregnancy has to go into the youth centre to see a guide that enables her to determine which services are genuine or not. She should be able to see that in the advertisement. That is why we are proposing this piece of legislation.

It is an issue that other countries have had to deal with as well. In New York, just last year, a Republican member of parliament introduced a piece of legislation called the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act. It was designed to deal with precisely the same issue that we are dealing with here today. She wanted to ensure that American women would see advertisements for pregnancy counselling services that were honest about the services that they provided. That is what the four women from the spectrum of the political parties are doing today. They are trying to ensure that Australian women who see advertisements for pregnancy counselling services will know that those advertisements are honest. That is what we want, and that is why we want it. We want it because it is in the best interests of not just women but everyone for services like this to be honest in their advertising. That is why this bill is important. It is extremely important if we value things like honesty, and I do value honesty. That is why I support this bill and why I am very proud and pleased to be standing here commending this bill to the parliament. I say that if we care about Australian women and their friends and families we need to support this piece of legislation that is before the parliament today. (Time expired)

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to make a contribution to this debate on the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006. I would like to highlight the consequences and the effects of the bill.

The bill was first introduced by Senator Stott Despoja in June 2005. The Senate referred the bill to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by August 2006. It is on the public record—and there was extensive media coverage at the time—that the committee received over 6,000 public contributions to the inquiry. Supporters of the bill organised a petition, which was signed by more than 13,000 citizens and tabled in the Senate in June 2006. As a consequence, the bill that we are debating today is the second iteration of the bill. It is sponsored by Senator Carol Brown, Senator Stott Despoja, Senator Troeth and Senator Nettle.

The bill seeks to prohibit misleading or deceptive advertising or notification by pregnancy counselling services that do not charge for the information they provide. It seeks to promote transparency by requiring services to declare which pregnancy options they provide referrals for. The bill prohibits pregnancy counselling services from publishing, distributing, displaying or broadcasting by internet, television, telephone, radio or like service, or by post, any advertising material that is misleading or deceptive as to the services it provides, or any notification of its services that is misleading or deceptive as to the nature of the services it provides.

The bill requires that advertising and notifications by pregnancy counselling services which do not refer for terminations include the statement, ‘This service does not provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy,’ or a like statement. The bill requires that advertising and notifications by pregnancy counselling services which do refer for terminations include the statement, ‘This service provides referrals for terminations of pregnancy,’ or a like statement. Breaching of either of these conditions would result in a penalty and a loss of any Commonwealth financial assistance until the service ceased to engage in what would be regarded as misleading or deceptive conduct. So the bill essentially seeks to make pregnancy counselling services subject to the same laws on misleading advertising as organisations that are engaged in trade or commerce are subject to.

Given the widespread interest in and the broad general support for the bill, it is very interesting to note why we are debating this bill as a matter of general business on a Thursday afternoon. I can only conclude that our Democrat colleagues consider it to be the most crucial issue that the minor parties want to bring before the Senate prior to the winter break—and that is quite extraordinary.

Organisations in receipt of government money to provide counselling services must ensure that they can provide unbiased, expert, independent and professional advice. Surely that goes for all kinds of services. It should apply to pregnancy counselling services just as much as it applies to financial counselling services, drought support counselling services and a range of other counselling services. I do not think there is one person in this chamber who would argue against the need for balanced and independent pregnancy counselling services to ensure that the full range of options is made available to women.

The bill represents a genuine attempt to ensure that women who find themselves pregnant are able to access counselling that helps them make informed decisions about their future—and, of course, every reasonable person would want that. But I doubt very much that the legislation, as drafted, can achieve its intended purpose. At the end of the day, I am convinced that this pursuit of truth in advertising for pregnancy counselling is a nonissue. This opinion is based on my consideration of these matters from the perspective of the Trade Practices Act—which has been quoted by several speakers as the purpose for bringing in this bill. The Senate economics committee considered the act in its deliberations. The second bill reflects some of the considerations of misleading advertising and deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act, but, as I am sure the ACCC and ASIC will attest, such conduct can be very difficult to prove.

Prohibition of misleading advertising is contained in section 52 of the Trade Practices Act and it is mirrored in each of the state and territory fair trading acts. It is also mirrored in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act in relation to financial services. The prohibition applies to statements about existing facts, predictions about the future, and even silence. Such conduct must convey or contain a misrepresentation and not merely be confusing. Intent is irrelevant in determining whether a contravention has occurred. Prohibition applies to material viewed on a website and to online conduct, including advertising, writing, conducting business and putting information on the internet about business products or services. General corporations are liable under the Trade Practices Act. Licensed service providers are liable under the ASIC Act 1989, and all other organisations are liable under the state fair trading laws. To ensure that there is no misleading or deceptive conduct in pregnancy counselling, the establishment of a regulatory regime would be required—and, without that, this bill is meaningless. Such a regulatory regime, I would argue, would involve significant costs—money which could be better directed to direct counselling services or to strengthen the capacity of the sector more generally.

There is an important issue at stake here. I do not intend to go back to the arguments of the inquiry into the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006, but, in fairness, I would like to make some brief points. The first point is about terminology. Much of the debate around the original bill, which remains just as relevant to this bill, focused on the difference between so-called directive and non-directive counselling. The implication is that ‘non-directive’ refers to counselling with abortion referral as an option, while the more prescriptive term ‘directive counselling’ is defined by the lack of an option of abortion referral. However, this interpretation of non-directive counselling is at best a misrepresentation in its suggestion that best practice counselling inherently involves an ability to refer for an abortion.

In terms of the inquiry into this bill and the submissions received, I would like to quote from the submission by Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, a consultant ethicist. He makes a very important point when he writes:

... the definition of non-directive counselling in the Transparent Advertising and Notification of Pregnancy Counselling Services Bill 2005, and Part 2 of the Bill which contains prohibitions with respect to counselling services that do not refer for termination of pregnancy, would seem to be based on a mistake concerning counselling services in general, and not just pregnancy counselling.

Referral for medical services is a function of medical practitioners and of other health professionals. Referral for specialist medical services is a function of medical practitioners. Counselling services do not normally have a referral function unless medical practitioners undertake them. The effect of the Bill, therefore, would be to limit Government funding of non-directive counselling services to medical practitioners—

it would limit government funding to medical practitioners—

and to prohibit the advertising of all other non-directive pregnancy counselling.

Further, he writes:

Pregnancy counselling services should not be seen as exclusively medical services. There is a need for women to be able to explore non-medical options. There is also a need for women who may want to continue a pregnancy to have access to support services. To medicalise pregnancy counselling would suggest that medical interventions are the only services available.

I think that is a very important point. In fact, I would argue that non-directive counselling is, by definition, unbiased, which is the argument that has been put against this use of the term in the bill. I was very pleased to see that the Commonwealth, when adding pregnancy counselling services to the Medicare regime, argued—and I am quoting from the Department of Health and Ageing website:

It is important that women are able to access non-directive counselling when they are uncertain about a pregnancy and that they are able to do so quickly.

This is a really important issue that needs to be understood in the context of the bill. Services are being defined as being ‘directive’ if they do not provide referral for the termination of pregnancy and ‘non-directive’ if they provide referrals for termination. But, if you have had anything to do with counselling services, you will know that being non-directive in counselling has little to do with whether or not referral is provided, and that it could be argued that providing a referral to a distressed client constitutes pressure to take a certain path. Non-directive counselling actually refers to being able to allow a client to be self-determining in their decision-making process. It is a practice that counsellors use so that the client takes time to think through the issues raised and discussed so that she can make her own choice, having explored what supports are available to her.

One of the arguments that we have heard already this afternoon about directive and non-directive counselling is the issue of the role of counselling versus referral for termination. As I said when I quoted Dr Tonti-Filipini, referral for termination is the role for a medical practitioner who assesses the woman’s medical reasons for termination of pregnancy. The role of the counselling service is to assist a woman to be fully informed of her options, the consequences of those options and the supports available to her if she were to continue with any of these options. Counselling should be about exploring the options, with time given to the client to make her decisions based on her own values, beliefs and supports. Other elective surgeries are dealt with in this way, with transparent, independent counselling provided, so why would we not consider pregnancy counselling in the same way?

It is really quite important for people to understand that the bill defines non-directive counsellors as those who provide referrals for termination. Most commonly, services that provide referral for termination are also termination providers or services with connected business interests. So this counselling, at best, could be seen as pre-abortion counselling, and not independent counselling to explore all options regarding the decision whether or not to continue a pregnancy. There are very strong practice arguments for not referring to medical practitioners who work within termination clinics, and counsellors have an obligation to ensure that their clients receive both independent counselling services and independent medical advice.

Last year in the debates around RU486 we talked about the absolute agreement—more than 90 per cent of people in Australia believe this—that abortion levels in Australia are too high. So it is very important that we ensure that counselling services around pregnancy support include ensuring that people get information that gives them options other than abortion. And yet this is what this bill is trying to address in a difficult and convoluted way. It is an unintended consequence of the way it has been drafted.

The argument in this bill is that, currently, counselling services that do not charge fees are not regulated in any way that might prevent them from engaging in deceptive behaviour or misleading advertising. It is of great concern to me that there are counsellors and counselling service providers who are not governed by legislation and are not bound to operate within the parameters set down by professional bodies. This is an issue that extends far beyond pregnancy counselling, to a range of services that particularly target vulnerable people.

Traditionally, if we talk about misleading and deceptive practices, they generally fall into four categories. Let us think about these categories in the context of the bill that is before us. They are, firstly, pretending to sell something that you do not have while taking money in advance; secondly, supplying goods or services which are of a lower quality than the goods or services paid for, or failing to supply the goods or services sought at all; thirdly, persuading consumers to buy something that they do not really want through oppressive marketing techniques; and, finally, disguising one’s identity in order to perpetrate a fraud.

You can see that, in the debate that we have had so far, those arguments are implicit in the arguments that are being put in support of the bill. I absolutely agree that anyone seeking pregnancy counselling services should not be exposed to such fraudulent and deceptive practices. But we also have an argument that is being played out here that pregnancy counsellors should be value free. We know that that really is a nonsense. The staff of all reputable services are trained to adhere to the Australian Association of Social Workers code of ethics. There is a professional standard about this. But the campaign that has been around this bill has implied a very simplistic position that counsellors should be value free. All counsellors come to their role with a value and a belief system, just as we all do here. There is no such thing as a value-neutral or value-free counselling environment. This is acknowledged by health professionals who offer counselling, such as social workers or psychologists, but they are required, within their supervision, to reflect on their personal value and belief systems to ensure that they do not engage in directive counselling. But the view expressed in this bill of what is seen as directive counselling is very simplistic in terms of the understanding of values in the counselling environment.

We get to this argument about protecting women from misleading and unconscionable conduct—although not in the sense of the expression which I know Senator Brandis would use in respect of the Trade Practices Act—but I still remain very unconvinced that the bill will protect women in the way that proponents suggest. Truth and transparency in advertising is an issue that is much better addressed through professionalising the counselling services, accreditation mechanisms, registration processes and the development of professional standards, guidelines and codes of ethics to support high-quality impartial counselling services. I repeat: I am very unconvinced that the bill will have the effect of addressing this important matter. With regard to the argument that there are no avenues for consumers to make complaints about unprofessional services, I point to the range of state and territory consumer protection and health protection bodies which can serve this purpose.

Let us look a little more at the issue of deceptive advertising. The bill requires pregnancy counselling services to include the statement: ‘This service does’—or does not—’provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy.’ It is certainly entirely reasonable to require all services to declare the services that they provide, but why should any agency or business be required to advertise for services that they do not supply? Whether or not a prospective client determines from the advertising that the services he or she needs are not available from a particular agency is really a matter for the client. An agency that declares the services they offer is being neither deceptive nor misleading. If it declares that it offers alternatives to abortion, what else can that phrase be taken to mean other than exactly what it says? Surely it is a simpler approach that agencies that do make referrals for abortions should advertise that fact and state their own services. As I said, I really believe this truth in advertising argument is a nonissue.

I am sure it would be in the public interest if the Commonwealth published a comprehensive list of pregnancy counselling agencies that include not just the ones mentioned by other speakers but those clinics that currently advertise pregnancy counselling services but provide only termination services with no further counselling—in fact, they are the people who provide no support to a woman who wants to continue her pregnancy, and profit from those who do not. (Time expired)

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know Senator Barnaby Joyce wanted to speak on the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006, as did Senator Guy Barnett. Both want to make some statements that they are pro life but unfortunately the schedule will not allow them to get up tonight. This bill purports to advocate truth in advertising about abortion. If that were really the case, abortion providers would tell women of the lifetime of emotional and sometimes physical pain that abortions can instigate. Everyone who considers abortion should first read Melinda Tankard Reist’s book Giving sorrow words, which is about women who have suffered so much as a result of abortion. However, this bill comes from another angle. It is an attack on church groups who, as everyone knows, do not support abortion. They have a legitimate role in providing counselling. Often they are the only ones who are there for people in difficult circumstances. They are at the coalface of helping people in distress. They do not mislead in their advertising; they do not tell porkies.

This bill is a direct attack on them for daring to have a different view on whether abortion is a valid alternative to carrying a pregnancy to full term. This is an ideological bill that seeks to punish, censor and repress. It is intolerant. From a practical viewpoint, this bill does not achieve what it sets out to do. The explanatory memorandum says that the bill:

... would require services which do not provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy to declare this in their advertising and notification material, and services which do provide referrals for terminations to state that they refer for all options.

It also aims to redefine non-directive counselling into a counselling service which ‘will provide referrals to termination of pregnancy services if requested to do so’. So non-directive becomes directive. Independent neutrality becomes pro-abortion. The fundamental practical flaw in this bill is that its central concern is about referrals to abortion providers. It wants everyone to either offer referrals to abortionists or to state publicly that they do not provide such referrals.

That seems to be the overall thrust of the bill before the Senate, which ignores the most basic feature of abortion practice in this country. No referral is needed. Abortionists are not specialists requiring a referral from anyone. Anyone can go at any time to an abortion provider without a referral from anyone. Referrals have no official role in abortions. This bill fails to recognise that, which undermines its whole rationale. You need only go to the yellow pages in the Canberra telephone directory to see this. One advertisement under ‘Pregnancy counselling and related services’ says: ‘No referral necessary.’ Another sells its wares with the line: ‘Abortion four to 20 weeks, asleep or awake.’ Another says: ‘Abortion—same day services available.’ Another says ‘Same day consultation and procedure under intravenous sedation; approximately two-hour visit.’ In the yellow pages there is even a separate category, called ‘Pregnancy termination services’, so there is no doubt that everyone is very aware where they can go to if they want an abortion. It is very clear.

There is no need to persecute religious based groups for not providing abortion referrals, or for not saying they do not provide abortion services, when it is so obvious who does provide them—and referrals are not even needed. If we legislated to force providers of other services to state what they do not provide, we would be forever regulating in this parliament.

There are serious flow-on ramifications of the way this bill has been drafted. The definition of a pregnancy counselling service as a ‘service that provides advice to women and their support persons about pregnancy’ makes the group caught by this definition extremely broad. It would include all Catholic schools and hospitals, for example, because they would in the course of their activities provide advice about pregnancy. Under this bill, they would be forced to put up signs or make statements like, ‘This service does not provide referrals for terminations of pregnancy.’ Even IVF and fertility clinics would have to put up such signs, because of the broad definition within this bill.

If the movers of this bill were really concerned about women having all the information necessary to them when considering the fate of a pregnancy, they would have included the mandatory provision of an ultrasound with every counselling event. Then the woman would be able to see the life within her and be better informed as to what an abortion would mean to that new life. If the movers of this bill were serious about misleading advertising in pregnancy support services, they would insist that counsellors warn women of the pain that they may carry all their lives at the memory of an abortion.

The government’s move to offer pregnancy support counselling was a long overdue and most welcome initiative. Women facing unintended pregnancy will at last be given assistance with non-directive counselling by health professionals, independent of abortion clinics. The provision of a Medicare counselling item will allow women to be supported and informed about the choices and assistance available to them. I fully support more information being on the table about alternatives for women facing unintended pregnancies, because there has not been enough.

Most Australians are concerned about the high rate of approximately 90,000 abortions a year—or nearly one-third of all pregnancies. We pride ourselves on being a compassionate society, yet until now those 90,000 women had virtually no professional independent advice they could turn to for support, assistance and information. Despite the sensitivities and controversies of the recent debates on abortion, it is all worth it if we can move forward with such a progressive step as the government’s pregnancy counselling package. The new measures are expected to cost $51 million over four years. The helpline is expected to cost $15.5 million over four years. Medicare funded counselling is expected to cost $35.6 million over four years.

In contrast to the intent of the bill before us, the government’s measures will improve the availability of timely, confidential, professional pregnancy counselling for Australian women and their partners, including those in rural and remote areas. These measures are being implemented in consultation with professional groups. Training programs have been developed to support GPs, other health professionals and phone counsellors, with pregnancy counselling skills. The government has adopted a broad, compassionate, practical and generous approach to helping women facing unintended pregnancy. The bill before us, in contrast, is narrow, ungenerous and impractical. Its real agenda is to tie the hands of those who do the most to help. I will not be supporting the bill.

Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start my contribution by commencing where Senator Stott Despoja did, and that is by congratulating the co-sponsors of this important piece of legislation, the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006, and by expressing the wish that the cross-party work between women in this place continues. In the five years that I have been a member of this place, one of the things that I have enjoyed most has been working with the other women in this chamber, no matter which political party they belong to. I particularly want to congratulate my good friend Senator Carol Brown for assisting in bringing this important piece of legislation forward today.

A report in the 23 April 2007 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine showed further evidence that neither induced nor spontaneous abortions were associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women. This followed a 2003 international expert panel convened by the National Cancer Institute, which reviewed and assessed research regarding reproductive events and the risk of breast cancer and concluded that, based on existing evidence, induced abortion is not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. Obviously this is very good news for the many women who experience terminations and miscarriages.

But there are still some pregnancy counselling services who insist on telling vulnerable women that they risk breast cancer if they have an abortion. Were they to charge for this supposed service, they would be in clear breach of the Trade Practices Act. But, because they provide this service for free, there are no legal methods of preventing them from exploiting vulnerable women or punishing them for making false and dangerous claims to those women. That is the very reason that I rise to speak today on this important piece of legislation.

There has been a lot of talk recently about Australian values. I am sure that all of us in this place are largely in agreement that at the very least Australians value honesty, freedom and a fair go. We are generally of the view that the best person to make decisions about how to live is the person whose life it is—that is, after all, the basis of a free society. But people cannot make informed decisions if they make them on the basis of misleading or false information. That is why we prosecute companies who make false claims in advertising a product or mislead people about the nature of the services that they are paying for—and that is all we are attempting to do here today. We are making sure that when a woman is faced with an unplanned—some say unwanted or difficult—pregnancy she is able to choose the service that is most relevant for her.

Some providers have tried to claim that they choose to outline the risks of abortion in the interests of providing full information so that women can make a fully informed decision. On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable claim, but a quick look at the websites of these agencies shows how this argument has been twisted. Looking at sections on continuing a pregnancy, you will see a discussion about the possible effects on a woman’s life—on her educational and employment concerns, her feelings about her family and the father of the child and her feelings about becoming a mother. There is no talk about the many risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, including—rarely, I admit—death, and nor should there be. These are issues for her to discuss with medical professionals and not with telephone counselling services.

However, click on the pages concerning abortion and you will find mountains of statistics and talk of steel instruments and infections in an attempt to scare women out of considering a relatively safe procedure—indeed, safer than childbirth. If abortion is as dangerous and damaging as these false providers believe it is, they should not need to resort to misleading women. If they are genuinely interested in educating women, they should be honest enough to provide women with information about the many health risks that come with pregnancy also, no matter how small those risks are.

Some claim that this bill seeks to prevent anti-abortion providers from continuing in their role. This is simply not true. Many women have never considered and would never consider terminating a pregnancy. They do not need a service that will discuss that option. Genuinely pro-life organisations can continue to help these women by providing support and comfort, whether those women choose to keep their baby or put it up for adoption. But many women are open to all options—examples of which have been discussed earlier today in this chamber—because the pregnancy they are concerned about is unplanned. They are therefore genuinely undecided. These women need to know that the service they ring or visit is open-minded and honest and will not judge or coerce them into making a particular decision. All this bill requires is that services that do not meet this description not pretend that they do. Is that so much to ask?

A woman’s time is just as valuable as her money, in my view, and she does not need to have either of them wasted by misleading advertising. I do not believe that this is too great an imposition on any provider. But, more importantly, the right of providers to attract women to their service by whatever means necessary must not override a woman’s right to make decisions based on facts—not on lies and deception—whether that decision is in choosing the provider to speak to or whether or not to proceed with her pregnancy.

I would like to make it very clear that there are many pro-life agencies that provide a compassionate and high-quality service to many women. They do not try to mislead women and trick them into using their services. They rely simply on being very good at their job of counselling women who are experiencing difficulties. There are also some very vocally anti-choice organisations that make it clear that they oppose abortion and want to dissuade women from that option. I do not necessarily agree with their views and am happy to debate their arguments with them, but I am also happy to acknowledge that they are very clear in their motives. But not all agencies are respectful of a woman’s ability to make choices about her health and her future. Some agencies use language that, to someone like me, is very obviously code for anti-choice agencies; but to a woman who is unfamiliar with these tactics it may sound very welcoming and compassionate.

For instance, at the moment in the Perth yellow pages there is an ad for an agency that says:

Are you pregnant? Alone? Needing Help? Need someone to talk to? Confused? Scared? Not sure what to do? For 24 hour assistance phone the Pregnancy Help Line—

and it gives you the phone number and then it says:

and speak to someone who cares.

Not once in that ad is it disclosed that that agency will try and actively dissuade you from choosing one of the three options, it will not refer for one of the three options and, in fact, it will behave in the way that I have alluded to earlier. It will say such things as ‘if you choose abortion as the option, you may never have any more children, as there is an increased risk of infertility; you will get breast cancer’—and the lies go on. Not once in that ad is it made obvious that that service provider does not and will never support one of the three options.

However, if I were a young and vulnerable 16- or 17-year-old woman, and fortunately I am not, and were to read that ad, I would presume that words such as ‘needing help’, ‘want someone to talk to’ and ‘confused’—‘confused’ particularly—meant that you were going to canvass the full range of options about the decision I had to make in a non-judgemental, non-directive way. However, at the moment when agencies like that say to vulnerable young women, ‘We don’t support you having a termination; if you do, you’ll get breast cancer, you’ll never carry a pregnancy to full term,’ and other ridiculous statements, there is nothing we can do. Because vulnerable young women do not pay for that counselling, that agency cannot in any way be prosecuted for its misleading, deceptive and cruel behaviour towards them.

If people in this chamber think this is not an issue that we should be concerned about, that it is all quite clear and people should be allowed to behave like that, as Senator Carol Brown said earlier, it would seem that even the yellow pages publishers themselves no longer agree with that view. They seem to think there is something going on out there and that people are being a bit deceptive. They are concerned that people who use their phone directory to find a particular service are able to find the service that is right for them.

If that were not the case, why else would Sensis themselves go to the trouble of placing an ad right at the front of ‘Pregnancy Counselling & Related Services’ in every edition of the yellow pages published this year throughout Australia that says:

We recommend that you fully understand the type of service each organisation offers before you contact them.

How are we meant to understand the full type of service that each organisation offers when they published ads like the one I have mentioned:

Are you pregnant? Alone? Need someone to talk to?

How are we to get an understanding from that ad that this service automatically dismisses one of the only three options available to young women? It is deceptive, but there is nothing we can do about it. Even if some of the other speakers in this debate do not agree with my view on that, it would seem Sensis themselves actually do.

To pretend that there are providers out there who try to trick women out of continuing with their pregnancy, as has been alluded to by Senator Fielding, is an absolute nonsense. To imply that there are only two kinds of provider—one that pushes abortion, and one that pushes pregnancy—is ridiculous and offensive to providers on all sides of the debate. Indeed, there are quite clear ads in the Perth yellow pages from providers that actually do provide abortion. Those ads are very clear. They say they will refer. Some of them do not actually advertise in the counselling section; they advertise in the abortion section—unlike what Senator Fielding was alluding to—because they actually provide the service.

In coming to this debate, we must separate our own very personal views about abortion from the issue at hand. The issue at hand is the need of pregnant women to be provided with a supportive environment that respects their decision-making abilities. That is all we are asking for today—for respect for decision making and open and transparent advertising by those that advertise those services.

It is a pity Senator Fielding is not still here. During his contribution earlier I was saying to someone that I did not actually recall Senator Fielding being at all of the committee hearings into the first draft of this legislation. So it is interesting that he has a view about the conduct of the entire inquiry and how it was carried out. I will concede that from time to time things did get a little bit heated—on both sides of the debate; not just in what people perceive as my side or Senator Fielding’s side. Sometimes they did get a little heated and I did not envy the job of the chair in dealing with those issues. But I do not recall him being there for all of the hearings—

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was there for some of them.

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was there for some of them, indeed, Senator Barnett. But some of us on this side are getting a little tired of Senator Fielding coming in and quoting committee reports as if he was an integral part of all inquiries when in fact we rarely see him at them. A year or so on it does get a little bit hard to bear.

I recall the Festival of Light in Adelaide getting very defensive about the services they offer, because they do provide some of the advice I was alluding to earlier. One of the things I do agree with Senator Fielding on is some of the evidence given by the Caroline Chisholm Centre. I would urge all service providers, including those from Pregnancy Help Line, to look at their recommendation that all counsellors should be trained professionals registered with their relevant professional body. That may be a way out of this. It may be a way of ensuring that we deliver a truly professional standard of counselling.

That was in evidence given by the Caroline Chisholm Centre, and it is something that I agree with. To do that, of course, those services would have to be government funded or they would have to charge for their services, because there are not many professionals of that calibre who are prepared to operate a 24 hours a day, seven days a week phone line free of charge. Having said that, when the Caroline Chisholm Centre raised that as an issue, the Festival of Light—in Adelaide in particular—did not like that idea. They did not like the idea that they may actually be compelled to use professional counsellors who are registered with their relevant professional body—counsellors who have recognised tertiary qualifications in how to provide non-judgmental, non-directive counselling, as would be implied by an ad that says:

Are you pregnant? Alone? Need someone to talk to?

People like the Festival of Light do not like that idea at all. Why would you not want to use professional counsellors? Why would you not want to use professionals? Why would you not agree, if you refuse to discuss one of the three options and refer to one of the three options, to advertise accordingly? People like me are left to draw one particular conclusion—because you do want to mislead and because you do want to manipulate vulnerable women, particularly young women, into phoning your service to then try to guide or coerce them into a decision that you as someone who has never met them before in your life judge to be in their best interest. It is not my job to judge what is in their best interest and it is certainly not the job of some of these people volunteering on some of those counselling lines. It is our job in this place to ensure that people do not mislead or deceive and that we do have an open and transparent process.

The only protection these services have at the moment is that no-one pays, and because no-one pays they can get away with an awful lot of bad behaviour. If it were a commercial transaction they would find themselves in court very quickly. Imagine if these people were offering to sell you something and then they said, ‘We only want to sell you two-thirds of it but not the other third.’ It is deceptive, it is misleading, and it is exploiting some vulnerable women at a very vulnerable stage in their lives. It is our role as legislators to separate our personal views on termination from the issue at hand, as it was our role when we discussed the RU486 bill to separate our views on termination and unplanned pregnancies from the way drugs are treated in an administrative process of access and who is best able to determine safety. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could object to such a simple notion as transparent advertising for counselling services.

Debate interrupted.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate having expired—

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I seek leave to record my opposition to the bill.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Barnett, there has not been a vote. There being no vote I am not sure there is a process for you to record your opposition. The time for the debate has expired.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I appreciate that, but I would like to put it on the record that I oppose the bill. I am not voting on the bill but I am recording my opposition. I know there are others who would like to do the same.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Barnett, your opposition is already on the record. Because the time has expired, you do not have a right to speak.