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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2782 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It is not about whether someone goes and has sex somewhere and has a child. This is about creating a law. If we were being asked to create a law about who could have sex with whom, there would be other huge ethical issues.

This is about members of this parliament trying to respond to this issue, which has resulted from new technology, by creating a law. Mrs Carnell also seems to be quite comfortable with technological determinism being let flow. In other words-she did say this; I wrote it down-"it makes everything better".

There are a lot of people in the community who do not know that technology should determine the direction in which humankind goes. There are a lot of people in the community who want to be able to ask the questions. That is certainly becoming more apparent with the recent introduction of the therapeutic cloning versus the reproductive cloning. Obviously, that is another whole debate that communities around Australia and around the world will have to engage in.

The reason I am concerned about having sunset clauses is that it is basically allowing the government, again, to sort of do it when it feels it can. I want to see the government do it as soon as possible, with proper resourcing-quickly. If we do not put this sunset clause on, the pressure will be there. We will not be asked, as a parliament, to further legitimise this legislation which is sitting without a proper regulatory framework for us to look at.

The inference is that we are going to be happy with what the government comes up with when it creates a regulatory regime, as if there were no more questions to be asked. I do not have such confidence. I believe that, to be responsible, I have to look at what this government produces in terms of a legislative response. I want to see how this government responds to this reference to the Law Reform Commission. I want to see what it is actually going to do. We are hearing that it will do it-and I am glad; it should have done it already. But we do not know what it will do. We know there is a reference to the Law Reform Commission-that is all we know.

I believe that I am not being a responsible member of this parliament if I take the government on good faith and say, "I trust that you will come up with a regulatory regime which I am comfortable with." Why would I think that? I am so often not comfortable, and it needs to be debated and amended, and further discussion needs to occur.

For that reason, I do not want to say at this point in time that I will support further legitimisation of this particular piece of law which is not the result of good processes up to this date.

There are so many what-ifs. I think I need to go over a couple of them. I am concerned that we, as a parliament, have now made a decision on behalf of future families who engage and work with this technology. Despite the fact that we have at the front of this bill-I imagine it will stay there; I think Mr Rugendyke is trying to emphasise it even more-that the welfare of the child will be what is looked at, this parliament has just decided that the welfare of the child, if the child is one of a multiple birth, will definitely always be served by those children being held together.

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