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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 541 ..

away by the ACT Government. Members of the ACT Legislative Assembly should reject the bill of rights if it does not recognise the right to life of our smaller citizens even up to the point of birth.

The release was issued on 2 March 2004 by Mary Joseph, President of the ACT Right to Life Association. She makes some very valid points, valid allegations that this violates international conventions Australia has signed. Why is this particular subclause here? Would it really take away from the intent of this bill if there was not a subclause (2) and if this clause simply read, “Everyone has the right to life. In particular no one may be arbitrarily deprived of life”? If you are going to have to have a bill of rights, and the right to life is a pretty fundamental right, why not just have that? Why arbitrarily, and it would seem quite incorrectly, stipulate life begins from the time of birth? There is all manner of medical evidence in relation to a nine-month pregnancy. Many babies are born prematurely, and that goes to show that at seven or eight months you have a fully formed human being there.

This is incredibly arbitrary. I think it is very wrong. I’m amazed it has been put in there. Quite clearly it is something that we in the Opposition will be opposing most strenuously. If the Chief Minister wants to make it into a question of a pro or anti abortion, there’s more to it than that. Yes, I’m certainly anti-abortion, but there is a lot more to it than that. I would think many people who are quite pro-abortion, and quite comfortable with laws passed by this little parliament back in 2002, would be appalled at that particular subclause. It is something that this Assembly should reject out of hand by supporting the amendment I have moved.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (8.54): The government won’t be accepting the amendment. My advice from departmental officials is that the claims made in the Right to Life Association press release are simply wrong as a matter of law. There is no internationally recognised right of a child before birth. My advice is that those claims are simply not factual. I think it’s important that I provide you that advice from my officials that the claims in the press release are not correct. They’re not substantiated by any interpretation of the conventions that have been quoted. Anybody who has read around the development of those conventions is aware that issues around the right to life were very much part and parcel of the drafting of this particular provision in the convention. Members know as well as I know, without having to go to any great research on it, that one of the most vexed questions facing even this jurisdiction let alone the national government of Australia and the national governments of every country around the world and, indeed, the United Nations is the issue around commencement of life and the status of a foetus or an unborn child.

Members know as well as I know that the United Nations in drafting those conventions did not come to a conclusion on that issue. They never could and they never will and that’s why the issue was left as it was, to be dealt with by national and local jurisdictions. This jurisdiction dealt with the issue in 2002 in the decision it took to decriminalise abortion. The government, in subsection 9 (2), is essentially recognising a decision taken by this legislature two years ago to decriminalise abortion. Subsection 9 (2) was included in the Human Rights Act to recognise the decision that we had taken to decriminalise abortion.

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