Page 3629 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 8 December 1992
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It is part of banning it. I am not saying that, but there still has been no debate on this issue. There is a huge difference between adoption and surrogacy in that in adoption a family seeks a child in need of a family and with surrogacy one creates a child for adult needs.
It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that if we are going to address surrogacy we should do it properly. This is the point that I am really getting to. If we are going to address surrogacy we should ensure that any contract that is drawn up with relation to surrogacy - this is what is missing now, Minister, and this is what I am getting to - should be considered invalid. That should be part of the law. So, if we are going to deal with it, and the Bill does deal with it, let us deal with it fully and properly.
It is appropriate, Madam Speaker, that we give credit where it is due. What we have now is a vastly improved Bill over what had been presented to us as a draft. The process that Mr Connolly has been through has been an excellent process. It has come up with a very good result so far. Mr Connolly saw another process like this. When we dealt with the Prostitution Bill it happened in reverse. There was an inquiry by this parliament that went through a tremendous amount of public consultation and brought down a whole series of issues. Then Mr Connolly decided that it was appropriate for him to get a government response. The overall full job embraced a parliamentary inquiry, a parliamentary response, a government look and a government response.
What is so different in our saying, "You have had a government look and a government response; now we want a parliamentary look and a parliamentary response"? Keep in mind that, in Mr Connolly's case, once the initial investigation had been carried out the Government response was very brief and relied heavily on the work done by that committee. In this case, if the Bill is to go to the standing committee all it should deal with is the issues that have been raised this evening. It is not necessary to redo the Bill. It is not necessary to open up, for example, the information veto question. That is the first thing.
Madam Speaker, I know that in some ways and for some reason the Minister seems to feel jilted on this issue because he expected it to go through this year.
Mr Connolly: No, the community feels jilted.
MR MOORE: The Minister interjects, "The community feels jilted". The only reason the community could possibly feel jilted is that the Minister has given them some indication of a promise that he would deliver by the end of this year, which he said he did, and he is not in a position to deliver like that unless he gets the numbers first. It is not up to him to deliver; it is up to this parliament to deliver. That is the difference. We would like to be able to do it, but we prefer to do it properly. What we are going to see, no doubt, is the Minister standing up here and doing what he does best in full debate. There is no question that we will see Terry Connolly flying on, debating beautifully, and there is no question that he does it extremely well.
When we look coldly and seriously at what we have in front of us, we have a Bill that has a series of questions hanging over it, and we as members have a responsibility to ensure that we have those questions resolved before we deal with the Bill in the detail stage. There is no question that the Bill in general, with the exception of those few areas that I mentioned - there is only a handful
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