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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 2888 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

And then we come to the information provisions. Again, there are detailed provisions in relation to the risks involved. Mr Smyth and I have already indicated some of the problems we see with the amount of information and the type of information currently available. This Bill seeks to rectify what is very much an imbalance there.

Clause 9 provides that abortion must not be performed without consent. What on earth is wrong with that? That, I would think, would be something that is absolutely basic. Then we come to the delay required before an abortion is performed, the cooling-off period. I have heard that some members who are pro-choice have a problem with that. For this fundamental decision which a woman would have to make, a decision - - -

Mr Corbell: That is patronising.

MR STEFANIAK: I am not being patronising, Mr Corbell. For this life-and-death decision, this decision that obviously causes, naturally, so much concern and angst, what is wrong with having a cooling-off period? We have cooling-off periods for much more trivial matters than this one. We have cooling-off periods for purchasing goods from a door-to-door trader. In fact, that is 10 days, I understand, under the Door-to-Door Trading Act. There is a cooling-off period of three business days for buying a car under the Sale of Motor Vehicles Act 1977. There are cooling-off periods in New South Wales for buying a house. A conveyance has a cooling-off period, I understand, of about five days. I understand also that there is a cooling-off period under our gun legislation of some 28 days before certain things can occur. Surely those are much more trivial than what we are discussing here.

The rest of the Bill deals with reports on medical emergencies and the suspension of registration of a medical practitioner who breaches the legislation. There is no obligation on any person to act in relation to an abortion if that is their conscience. Then there is the privacy provision. Surely the privacy provision would be something that anyone who is pro-choice or pro-life would want to see. Then, of course, there are provisions in relation to the information pamphlets.

Another provision which I think is terribly important and on which a number of members have spoken on both sides of this debate is the one about the provision of statistics. It seems to me that we have very few statistics publicly available on abortions that are carried out in the ACT. How are we to have informed public debate or informed public opinion on this issue without collecting and publishing some basic information on what is happening in this Territory? Without this information, how are we to formulate policy which will address the social pressures that some women feel to have an abortion because - I have heard this line before and I think it is a good one - abortion is a medical solution to a social problem?

Some veiled references were made to abortion in the recent paper published by the ACT Department of Health and Community Care entitled "Maternal and Perinatal Status ACT 1994-96", but very little other statistical information, I understand, is available on the abortion situation in the ACT, except for the statistics provided by the

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