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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2504 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

3. By way of comparison, you'll be aware that there is legislation in the ACT (and elsewhere) which routinely requires that there be significant "cooling off" times for purchases of various goods to re-consider their decision. For example, under the Credit Act 1985 (s.37(4)), there is provision for a 10-day credit sale contract to be rescinded. Or under the Conveyancing Act 1919 (s.66S) there is a 5 day "cooling off" period with respect to the sale of residential property. If our legislature provides such safety mechanisms for goods, chattels and land, surely it is quite unreasonable not to keep an even shorter "cooling off period", as per the existing legislation, with respect to the "contract" between the abortion provider and a woman concerning the destruction of the child in utero.

4. In the case of the educative role and effect of law, should the amendments pass the Assembly, the community will be instructed that absolute autonomy is the sole arbiter of all actions and that the termination of nascent human life-at any stage of gestation-may be performed with impunity.

He then goes on to make some other points before stating:

5. You will be aware that the Labor Government of Tasmania, last December, voted not to decriminalise abortion. On the subject of counselling, the Tasmanian Parliament, in both Houses, voted to require that any woman seeking an abortion not only must see a GP and an obstetrician, but significantly, that counselling be provided for a person completely independent of the abortion provider. The amendments before our Assembly would deprive women of this protection so recently enacted by your Labor colleagues in Hobart.

Remember, he is writing to the Chief Minister and sends a copy to everyone. In his final main point he says:

6. As a community, do we not have a right to information, sanctioned by our legislators, from our bureaucracies and others about how taxpayer funds are spent on abortion, how many abortions are performed, who performs them, and other relevant data? Would not demographers, service providers, planning authorities, and many others benefit from having such basic information available to them? If Mr Berry's bills are successful, the public will be denied all of this basic information which is readily available in other jurisdictions. As Chief Minister and Attorney-General, with a significant commitment to public accountability, surely legislation requiring the collection and publication of all relevant data concerning abortion, as currently required by the 1998 legislation, is a reasonable expectation?

Those are six very good points made by Archbishop Francis Carroll.

A letter to me from Kath Woolf of the Right to Life Association dated 28 May this year makes a number of points in relation to the Crimes (Abolition of Offence of Abortion) Bill and the Health Regulation (Maternal Health Information) Repeal Bill. It then discusses the bill presented by Ms Gallagher in the following terms:

The Bill presented by Ms Gallagher is an implicit admission of deficiencies in Mr Berry's proposals. Her Bill purports to offer protection to doctors exercising conscientious objection not to perform, or assist in an abortion procedure. However,

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