Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

We have had the privilege to listen to very good contributions on both sides of this debate. It has been a very impressive, quality debate with people making strong, powerful and compelling arguments on both sides of this issue. This has led to people talking about the significance of conscience votes and the role of political parties. For my own part, I have no fear about conscience votes—I think there are certainly occasions when they are appropriate and they add value to the parliament and to the broader community. You can seek to run a parliament on the basis of conscience votes for legislation; however, you cannot run a government without political parties. Governments need to be able to govern and to be confident about their legislative framework and the operation of their legislative mandate.

Let me commence by saying that I think the less intrusion we have of religious convictions into our political and legal systems the better. One of the greatest challenges we face in our time is the challenge of religious fundamentalism. But the fact that I do not believe that our law should be shaped by people’s religious views does not mean that there are no moral or ethical issues at stake here or that without religion it is open slather and scientists can do whatever they like.

Today we are debating the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006. This is an amendment bill to legislation that we passed just four years ago, which is very recently indeed in the grand sweep of history. Back then, the House said that we would allow stem cell research in relation to embryos which were going to be destroyed anyway, but the House was adamant that we would not allow cloning. Members lined up to denounce this idea. Now we say that we are going to allow cloning for research purposes though not for reproduction. So what has changed in four years to warrant the parliament moving so quickly to overturn a position arrived at unanimously so recently? In my view, not enough. It is said that the research world is moving quickly, and it is, but it is not moving so quickly that the research carried out has actually given us any cures. Precisely because it is moving quickly, no-one is able to stand up in this place and say that adult stem cell research will not prove efficacious in the years ahead. We simply do not know what is around the corner.

If you look at the Patterson bill before us, it says that under no circumstances can a human embryo or a human embryo clone be kept outside the body of a woman for ART or research purposes beyond 14 days. The period of 14 days is counted from the first mitotic division but does not include any time that the embryo’s development is suspended while frozen in storage. This has compromise written all over it. Why stop at 14 days? Why have any stopping point at all? The only reason there can be for a stopping point is that the proposers know that there is something unsatisfactory about the process. What other reason can there be? If there is nothing wrong with it, why stop at 14 days and why does it matter whether the embryo is frozen at the time or not?

I have been around for some time. I remember the IVF debate. The advocates at the time said, ‘IVF, yes; cloning, no.’ I accepted that argument. I also remember the embryo stem cell research debate four years ago. The advocates of embryo stem cell research said at that time, ‘Excess embryos, yes; cloning, no.’ I also accepted this argument. Now they show up saying: ‘We’ve changed our mind about cloning. We want to finesse that ban we put in place to allay your concerns before. We don’t want a ban any more.’ From my point of view, I am not convinced. The protections which were put in place against abuse before were very important and very basic protections. It may be that the time will come when they should be removed, but, in my view, we are not there yet.

There is something known as the precautionary principle which operates in science. It is my view that we are crossing a line here. It is a very big call to make and I personally am not prepared to make it. No-one knows whether adult stem cell research or embryo stem cell research will ultimately prove effective or which will work better. The member for Calare suggested that hopes of cures have been deliberately talked up. I also noted the comments of the member for Prospect that four years is a very short time for us to propose such a dramatic change. This is an on-balance judgement about an extraordinarily complex issue, but it seems clear enough to me that some violence is being done to some entity here. The sponsors of the bill effectively concede as much. Why else would we have the 14-day rule?

They might respond that the violence is justified in the name of research and the search for cures, and so we have the talk of therapeutic cloning as opposed to cloning for reproduction, but is the violence justified in the name of seeking a cure? The evidence is far from clear that it does work or that adult stem cell research does not work. We live in a fast-moving research world and therefore I think the precautionary principle is appropriate here. I did not oppose IVF. I did not oppose the embryo stem cell research on spare or excess embryos. I recall that the Prime Minister said in that debate:

... I could not find a sufficiently compelling moral difference between allowing a surplus embryo to succumb by exposure to room temperature, on the one hand, and the use of those embryos for potentially therapeutic research, on the other.

That is the view which I adopted at that time. I do not say that there are no circumstances in which I would support embryo stem cell research, but I will not support this bill at this time.

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