Barnaby Joyce (New England, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the biggest issues in genetic testing is that, under an insurance process, it allows the insurer to remove any sense of risk. You don't have the risk if you remove all the high-risk components. The whole purpose of insurance is to have a pool of people in which you include low risk and high risk for the general betterment that those of a higher risk have a form of cover. If we allow genetic testing in and to go unchecked, then any person who has latency towards cancer, latency towards respiratory disease or heart attacks will of course be treated just like a person who is a smoker. They'll say, 'I don't really have an interest in insuring you, because I make more money out of this group.'

I want to bring attention to something else that's in regard to genetic testing and the protections in life insurance. I'll talk about genetic testing and protection in life. What we have—and we've seen more of, as I refer to a study by Edith Cowan University—is people, especially with non-invasive prenatal testing, who are testing for the sex of a child below 10 weeks. We've had an unreasonable increase—the general ratio is about 105 boys to 100 girls. That's generally where it is. But what we're seeing in some sections is 134 boys to 100 girls, as people have a preference to move towards the abortion of girls so that—

See this speech in context