Page 2637 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 1993
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Mr Connolly: Yes, your leader argues that case.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed she does, Madam Speaker. (Extension of time granted) Madam Speaker, some members on this side of the chamber do argue that, and I accept that. But let us examine the extent of this need. Madam Speaker, services for abortion are available in Canberra at present. Most abortions will continue to be conducted, even after the establishment of this facility, in public hospitals in the ACT. Many women who live in the Territory and who seek abortions will continue, for reasons of privacy, to want to travel to Sydney. Conceivably only a few hundred women will benefit from this new clinic and their benefit will be a saving of the cost of a trip to Sydney. One can sympathise with the view that this is an inconvenience to those women, but is it really the kind of urgent need which ranks with our other priorities in health which I have already talked about?
There are choices facing Mr Berry. They are not hypothetical choices; they are real choices. It is inconceivable, Madam Speaker, that any reasonable person would see an abortion clinic as being at the top of the health agenda in this Territory, or anywhere near the top of the health agenda. For it to be there it must have been elevated from a third order issue to a first order issue. It must have been elevated through the application of dogma, not commonsense.
Consider, Madam Speaker, the question of the balance of convenience. If you were able to save either a woman seeking an abortion or a woman seeking a heart-lung operation from the inconvenience of travelling to Sydney, which would it be? Admittedly, there are many fewer people in the latter category than the first category; but those in the latter category stay much longer in hospital in Sydney, whereas it is necessary for those in the first category only to have a day procedure in Sydney and then return, even that same day, to Canberra. What compassion do we show those separated from their family and friends for days or weeks of hospitalisation in Sydney when we downgrade their needs in favour of other people whose needs are simply not so great? The extension of abortion facilities could be provided by the private sector in the ACT, but they will not be, and the reason they will not be is that there is not sufficient demand to satisfy a requirement for additional facilities of this kind. If there is not that demand in the private sector, Madam Speaker, I would submit that there is not that need in the public sector either.
Madam Speaker, we have to ask ourselves some questions about this proposal. What are the real costs, the real recurrent costs, of establishing this service? Frankly, we do not know. The Minister has not told us. The Minister who jointly heads up this open government - this supposedly open government - still has not told us what the recurrent cost of operating an abortion service in the City Health Centre will be. When are we going to find out? Madam Speaker, I do not know.
Mr Berry said on radio a few days ago that the question of new abortion facilities was not a priority for the Labor Party at the last election because people did not want it to be a priority. Consider the circularity of that argument. Here is a Minister who says, "We did not make it a priority. We are a political party which sets agendas, which puts things on the table and says, 'We want you to vote for us for this reason'.". They did not put it on the table, because people did not want to see it on the table; but apparently they want to see it here now.
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