Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make it very clear at the outset that I will support the legislation. My mind is made up, and it did not take long. I want to thank Senator Patterson and the other senators who have put a lot of effort into this for persisting with it. I very much hope, of course, that the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 passes.

I was going to do quite a considered, written piece, but I thought that might be a bit egotistical and decided I would simply stick with what I thought and let it speak for itself. So my speech may not take up the time that it otherwise would have if I had laced it with rhetorical flourishes and a lot of material that is clearly on the record already and well understood by those who have an interest.

But I do want to acknowledge the assistance that I have had from reading a book by a fellow called Richard Holloway, who when he wrote the first book that I want to refer to tonight was the Bishop of Edinburgh and the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. He was also the Gresham Professor of Divinity in the City of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. But, perhaps more importantly for this discussion, he did serve for seven years on the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority—I think from around 1992 onwards. I do not say by that that he was appointed by a Conservative government. I have no idea who appointed him. I have a deep suspicion that a Conservative government was in power at that time and would have had the capacity to stop it or bring it to an end before seven years if he was considered unsatisfactory. It depends on how long Major lasted. Thatcher left in 1990. We will leave that point aside.

The first reason I support this legislation is that I have a primary, basic view that science offers great hope to humanity—to all of us, to the planet. It is all very well for some people to say, ‘You’re offering false hope,’ if they are not in the position of someone who has not much left but hope. For some people I think it is probably an overstatement to say that hope is all they have left, but it is a large part of what they have left. And to assert that that is false, to sort of come in and cut it into ribbons and shreds, when you yourself have no way of knowing whether that is true, is to my mind a callous and incalculably cruel thing to do.

I do not think the hope that is expressed by people who have some particular disease or disability, and others, is always a selfish hope, either. It is not something they necessarily hope for themselves. Everybody in a position of some sort of disability or disease must have, in some small if not large portion of their mind, a hope for themselves. That is perfectly understandable; it is the normal human condition. But I think the hope that these people express when they want this legislation passed is a hope for a better place in the future on the planet—better opportunities, better health care—for people who follow them, not for themselves. So that is my first reason. It is pretty simple: science offers hope to humanity. We have the capacity to control that. That is what we are elected to do. That is the discussion we are having now. It is not a very complex proposition.

Secondly, I believe Australian scientists are at the forefront of this technology. Yet other nations are expanding this field of research. So we can make a choice. We can say to the Australian scientists, ‘You’ll be locked out of this if you stay in Australia,’ and we can risk losing them. You may say that is not the end of the world—people leave Australia all the time; other people come here. But if they leave and the research is not done in Australia then I think Australia is held back. So it is not only that I do not want to hold Australian scientists back; I do not want to hold Australia back. I think by legislating to limit our opportunities we would be doing simply that. I do not say that we should let the scientists do as they choose. That is the role of this chamber and other bodies as well: to exercise some caution. But I do say that scientific discovery should, as Holloway says, be a cause for celebration and caution rather than for denunciation and rejection.

The next reason I support this legislation is in part to do with previous legislation that I have supported. We already allow the use of eggs fertilised by semen, spare IVF eggs that are frozen, to be used in research. These are the eggs that might otherwise, had they been left where they were, at some point have ended up a human. And we have allowed the research that fertilised them in-vitro. They are frozen, they are spare, they are not going to be used and the people who own them donate them to research. We condone that here. That is what the Australian parliament has agreed to do. So the logic is lost on me as to why we would not then allow eggs that are not in fact fertilised by semen but which have some material removed, which is then replaced with some other material in-vitro, to be used. If anything, quite frankly, to me that might be a preferable situation. I certainly say that, if it is all right for the one we now approve, it is all right for this other one.

The Bulletin magazine a couple of weeks ago had an article in relation to these issues. They produced a photograph that is worth mentioning; it is one of the best I have seen in a long time. It was, as I recall, a human embryo at three days. It was a cluster of I think about 14 cells on a pinhead. It was a fantastic photograph. Obviously, it had been digitally enhanced to make the colours attractive and draw the eye to the page, but, nonetheless, this particular cluster of cells would fit on a pinhead. I think that is about 5,000 on a 5c piece. It is most certainly human tissue, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a human. There is a tremendous difference between each of us as humans and a piece of skin or some other piece of tissue that is human tissue but not of itself a human.

So we have to resolve all of these issues; we have to come to some agreement about how to go about it. Holloway has one explanation of why we might want to do this. He says:

If we reject the role of God as a micromanager of human morality, dictating specific systems that constantly wear out and leave us with theological problems when we want to abandon them, we shall have to develop a more dynamic understanding of God as one who accompanies creation in its evolving story ...

And that is what we are a part of: the evolving story of humanity. I am not sure that Holloway’s analogy, ‘like a pianist in a silent movie’, works, but he perhaps is more informed in these matters than me.

We are there as part of that evolving story. That is what we have to face: the constant evolution. We have to face it and deal with it. It is mankind’s destiny to constantly search for certainty and to never find it. It is in our make-up that we will always be looking to make things better. If we do not accept that then we cannot understand why we are here. Surely one of the reasons we are here, among possibly many others, is to try to make the world a better place. That means change, and it means uncertainty. We would all like to live without the doubt, without the apprehension and without the occasional moral panic that might strike, but that is not to be. It may be that some of us here—those who are 53 or older; I am 53, so people my age or older—