Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a very interesting report. It is likely to become very much a matter of public interest in the future as we continue to discuss stem cell research. Senators would be aware from reports in the general media that cabinet has made some sort of a decision on the Lockhart report and that the Prime Minister has indicated that the coalition party room will be given the opportunity of discussing the Lockhart report in detail in the future. I appreciate that it is a very complex debate. It is an issue that deserves more than the 30-second passing reference that I am going to give it.

During the break, a lot of the disabled people and people with illnesses whom I met with in my electorate of the state of Queensland mentioned to me that they could not quite understand why the government would not be accepting the recommendations made by the late Mr Justice Lockhart in his report to the government. Without having formed any conclusions on the issues or without even being aware of what the actual question might be, it seems to me that if there are opportunities in medical research that can help those with debilitating disabilities then we should take them. We as a nation owe it those disabled now and in the future to do everything possible to try and address their difficulties. If research into stem cells will help those with disabilities, then I for one think that—in the broad and without going into it in detail, and confessing that I have not greatly studied it—as a general proposition it is something that the Australian nation should embrace.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the report on the review of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, and to follow on from Senator Ian Macdonald’s comments—ones I broadly agree with. I do think that, rather than this issue being a debate just for the coalition party room, it should also be a debate for the parliament. The legislation governing this area was passed by the parliament in one of those, in my view, unfortunately too rare occasions when there is more opportunity for parliamentarians to say what they really think and to vote according to their genuinely held and well-researched beliefs.

Of course, we have to take more personal accountability for our votes when we have these so-called conscience votes. It does come down to an individual decision, and you have to be able to justify that decision. That is something the parliament has already done in this area, and I for one cannot see why we cannot do the same again, particularly when we have the opportunity to be guided by such an excellent report as this one—normally known as the Lockhart review. It is a very worthwhile document, and I would recommend anybody interested in the area to read it. In fact, I suggest that anybody interested in the area should read it before they engage in public debate, so that they are more informed in doing so.

I would also like to emphasise that the review makes it quite clear that there should remain a complete prohibition on cloning, or, as most people understand it, reproductive cloning—cloning of people to create doppelgangers, and all those sorts of notions of what cloning means. The report is quite clear on maintaining a prohibition on that. There is confusion because of the terminology ‘therapeutic cloning’, which is something quite different. It is not reproductive. I think the term ‘cloning’ is quite misleading with regard to that. It deals with another way of producing stem cells, which does not involve using so-called surplus embryos—something I would have thought people might see as a desirable thing to explore.

Like Senator Ian Macdonald, I will not try to compress this debate into a few minutes—beyond saying that I think it is something I believe we should be able to debate and examine more fully as a parliament. We have shown before that we are capable of doing that, and I would like to do it again. I would also note the statements by the government of my state of Queensland and, I think, the Victorian government, which indicated some preparedness to go it alone with regard to expanding stem cell research if there is not action taken to address this review and the recommendations within it. That is certainly a less than desirable approach. I think it is much better to have a consistent national framework governing research in this area.

It would be very unfortunate if the states went it alone, but I also believe that, if there is going to be deliberate stonewalling at the federal level, it leaves the states in a position where they may have no alternative—if the stonewalling at the federal level is based on political considerations rather than a well-founded view. In that sense, I do encourage the government of my state of Queensland to continue to apply pressure in that respect. I do not think it is desirable to go it alone, but it is even less desirable to not go it at all. In that respect, I think the best approach is to enable a parliamentary debate on the issue. I do hope that, when the coalition have a chance to debate it in their party room, they give the rest of us a go by throwing it open to the whole parliament.

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

I too rise to make some brief comments on this report on the review of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, and I thank Senator Ian Macdonald for the opportunity to do so. As surprising as it may seem in this place, I must say that I agree with Senator Macdonald’s approach to this. Whilst I hear the message loud and clear from Senator Bartlett, as someone who is also a member of a major party I believe decisions to bring a piece of legislation or a reform agenda to this place always need discussion in a party room first, because there are some threshold issues. Our leader, the Labor leader, Kim Beazley, has already foreshadowed what he thinks should be the approach to this issue, which is that—like we have always been able to do when these sorts of issues come before the parliament—we should all be able to exercise our individual consciences and bring our individual moral code and threshold beliefs when considering this issue.

The Lockhart review is to be commended for its thoroughness in tackling what is a very sensitive issue. In these days of improved living standards, improved life expectancy and improved access to science and knowledge, the quest to find cures for what were otherwise, for want of a better term, death sentences, is well beyond my comprehension. Therefore, I believe it is right that we as legislators have a discussion about the framework in which that quest should be undertaken—a framework that looks at those threshold issues of safety, ethics and, as I say, our own moral code. It is only by having that discussion, both within our parties to begin with and then within the parliament, with significant technical advice, that we can advance this issue.

As a participating member of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, I have been involved in the inquiry being conducted into the treatment in Australia of gynaecological cancers. The evidence that we have received loud and clear from some of the world experts in the Garvan Institute about the quest for a cure for not only gynaecological cancers but also breast cancers goes to that next threshold issue of the use of the human genome as a predictive tool and then perhaps the use of stem cells in the quest to find the ultimate cure for those who already have the disease.

This is a debate that is going on, as has been alluded to by Senator Bartlett, in a number of states and in other nations. In my view, it would be naive in the extreme to think that Australia will not be having this debate. At some point we do need to have this debate. The Lockhart review, and improved knowledge and consideration amongst those of us here of the issues raised in that review, is a very good starting point for that debate. It is a debate that we can delay but we cannot avoid. We need to have openness and to consider the best way forward. I commend not only Senator Ian Macdonald’s remarks but also the report to the chamber.

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

I was not going to participate in this debate on the report on the review of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, but it is appropriate now. I am not going to go into the merits of the issue. I think that is something that needs to be left for another time. I just want to make a few comments of my own. I obviously have a different perspective from a number of people in this place, and there are a number who share my views. I think this is a very emotional issue. It is one that tends to focus people in one camp or the other very quickly without there ever being anyone in between. There is no real in-between status in this debate.

One of the difficulties is that science, scientists and those with very strong interests in this area play a significant role and a significant part in the debate. They are responsible in many instances for informing those who do not necessarily have the expertise and the specialisation of the arguments, of the merits, that prevail in the debate. In that respect, I can understand some of the comments made by you, Senator Ian Macdonald. I think they are valid indeed. My criticism of the debate that took place in the first instance when this was considered by this parliament was that it was a very uninformed debate, a very emotional debate and one that did not necessarily weigh up very closely the scientific facts that were involved. That is not arguing the rights or the wrongs of the decisions that we have taken. I think that, in many ways, the media tend to trivialise the debate rather than understand the difficulties that exist in both the perspectives that one might come from in this debate. As I said, I think there are only two perspectives.

I hope that if this debate is to proceed it will proceed in a way in which there is informed debate. I hope that it does not look superficially at the issues. Whilst one might be attracted necessarily to the emotional aspects of the debate on one side or the other, I hope that they are put to one side. I hope that we can be informed in a very reasonable, understandable way, not using complex scientific language, which can be put before us to bamboozle us from time to time either way in the debate.

I support what my colleague Senator Webber said about the need for people to address their own moral concerns in debates such as this. It really comes down to a values debate. I think that that is terribly important. Also important are the simple things, such as the fact that when people talk about stem cells there are two distinct types of stem cells. One gets caught up in using the generic term ‘stem cells’, whereas there are embryonic stem cells and there are adult stem cells. Of course, they are quite different in the way that they are derived, but potentially they have the same outcome.

I am pleading: if we do have a debate, let us have an informed debate. Let us not have a superficial debate. Let us not have a debate that is simply based on very emotive circumstances that may be put before us as individual members of this parliament or as people participating in the debate within our own political parties. I think that it is an important issue indeed and one that needs grave consideration by every member of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, given our responsibility to address this issue on behalf of the constituents that we represent. It might be easy in some instances to take straw polls as to whether they favour this or do not favour that or favour something else. Whether we will get a true representation of community interests is yet to be seen.

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

Just four years after the Australian parliament passed legislation banning the cloning of human embryos, a new report has called for the cloning of human embryos for research, and that is the Lockhart paper. I find it fairly interesting that all of a sudden there seems to be this move to change a decision that was made only four years ago. The issue here is that nothing has changed since that decision was made four years ago. In fact, all the breakthroughs and successes have come from adult stem cells, not embryos. That is the real issue at hand here. Nor does research even support the idea of human cloning. A Swinburne University study revealed that 63 per cent of the Australian public do not feel comfortable with scientists cloning human embryos for research purposes. Quite clearly, there is not public support for it.

The Lockhart report was produced in the way that was expected. It was a committee set up to satisfy state governments with high hopes of securing millions of dollars of biotechnology research money for their states. All I will say is that nothing has changed. In fact, the breakthroughs have come from adult stem cell research, not from embryonic stem cell research. Family First believes that work should be done to support the use of adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells and certainly not human cloning. This is the slippery slope to human cloning. I strongly urge senators to fully think this through before making a decision, after looking at the Lockhart report.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allowed for consideration of government documents has now expired.