Page 1127 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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At the moment, some 1,500 ACT women - four ACT women a day - leave the ACT to have an abortion. If we all just get up here tonight, if we all just rise, those 1,500 abortions will still take place. If we stay and change the law, in all likelihood those 1,500 abortions will also still take place. The question for the Assembly is simply whether the ACT, as a community, is going to accept its burden of responsibility. We have an obligation to ensure that morality does have an opportunity to prevail, that choice is available, that a moral position is able to be determined; but by not repealing the Termination of Pregnancy Act we succeed only in continuing the moral vacuum of the present law.
This issue raises strong emotion in me, and so it should when I hear some of the arguments that have been put forward here this evening, which I had believed that in this country we left behind four and five decades ago. Nevertheless, it is not an issue I propose running away from because others have an opposing view to mine. I will most certainly, and with much pride, support the repeal of this Act.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (10.05), in reply: I rise in this debate to make it clear that it is the Government's view - a government that has a basis in social justice - that this legislation has to go. I was interested in some of the earlier debate. I was, I guess, bemused by what Mr Kaine said, because it did not seem to make a lot of sense in the context of some of his male Liberal colleagues; but I was disgusted by the tactics of Mr De Domenico, who chose the tactics of the extremists to put an argument in this place - the sorts of extremists that drive to shame women who have sought a termination of pregnancy in the past. I must say that I too felt some shame that a member of this Assembly would resort to those tactics.
In the case of Mr Humphries, I was angered at the odour of hypocrisy which again permeated the atmosphere. I had to look only to the legislation which covered the health services in the ACT to see how clear that hypocrisy had become. Section 6 of the Health Services Act states:
The Board has the following functions:
(a) to provide health services for the residents of the Territory and, as appropriate, for the residents of the surrounding region;
... ... ...
Among other things, it goes on to say in section 7:
The Board shall exercise its powers in accordance with any directions given by the Minister.
This is the legislation that was introduced by Mr Humphries, and he was able at any time to direct the board to carry out services in a way that he determined they ought to. Mr Humphries now seizes upon this political issue, ignoring the realities of the past. The hypocrisy here is shameful. I should also refer to something that I found rather curious. Mr Stevenson, whilst he indicated in an earlier debate this day an interest in this matter, has chosen not to speak this evening. I am curious about that. I suspect that the Dennis poll supports those who want to remove this law.
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