Page 1108 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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Madam Speaker, I would urge members to put aside the parts of this debate that are not pertinent to the issue that we are actually debating. It is a very specific issue that we are debating. I will be supporting it wholeheartedly because I think it is only fair. I think Canberra women do deserve the same sorts of rights to adequate health care in their own Territory that other women have. For me that is the overriding issue in this debate, and I commend the Bill to this Assembly.
MR CORNWELL (8.44): Madam Speaker, in 1977 the then advisory Legislative Assembly brought down report No. 26 on pregnancy termination. It followed a major public inquiry, as my colleague, Mr Kaine, will remember all too vividly. The inquiry - - -
Mr Moore: It recommended a safe and successful abortion service and never delivered it.
MR CORNWELL: Madam Speaker, Mr Moore continually interjects. I know that Mr Moore fancies himself as a SNAG, a sensitive new age guy; but I do suggest that he will have his opportunity to talk in due course.
It followed, as I say, a major public inquiry. It involved 119 submissions, over 40 hours of hearings by the Standing Committee on Education and Health, and in fact took some three months, as opposed to seven days which we are looking at now. Of the five members on the committee, I, as chairman, am the only one still in political life. Following a marathon sitting of the Assembly till 3 am, the Assembly agreed to the committee's 47 recommendations.
I must admit that to the disgust of all members of the Assembly - there were, as Mr Kaine indicated, differences of opinion on the report - the Federal Government implemented only the first two of those recommendations. They were, and I quote:
That free-standing abortion clinics, that is outside public hospital grounds, should not be permitted in the ACT; that a permanent Termination of Pregnancy Ordinance be made to ensure that private free-standing abortion clinics do not operate in the ACT.
Those recommendations formed the basis of the legislation that this Labor Government is seeking to repeal this evening. I believe that in so doing the Government has allowed the moral pendulum to swing from the sublime to the ridiculous. If the Federal Government in 1977 cynically closed the doors on freestanding clinics, then this Labor administration in 1992 has just as cynically thrown them open. It is sophistry to suggest otherwise, as Mr Berry tried to claim when he said in the presentation speech:
The effect of repeal of the Termination of Pregnancy Act will not therefore of itself make termination of pregnancy legal.
If repeal of this legislation will not of itself make termination of pregnancy legal, how then will it advantage over 1,100 ACT women who you claim in your presentation speech annually go interstate for termination? Clearly, repeal of the legislation will have a profound effect upon the availability of local pregnancy terminations or abortions. It is deceptive, Mr Berry, to suggest otherwise. Hence my concern, because nowhere do you attempt to qualify, far less control, this termination procedure.
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