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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1568 ..

government, along with all states and territories, was involved in the extensive consultation process undertaken in the development of the Commonwealth legislation.

The Commonwealth legislation has limited coverage, due to constitutional issues. Commonwealth acts do not cover state agencies, individuals or universities. The nationally consistent scheme will address these gaps, provide uniform regulation and avoid uncertainty about the application of the regulatory scheme. The Victorian, Queensland, South Australian, New South Wales and Tasmanian parliaments have passed nationally consistent legislation. Relevant legislation has been introduced into the Western Australian parliament and is expected to be introduced into the Northern Territory parliament shortly. There is widespread international agreement on the prohibition of cloning human beings. The international position expressed in Article 11 of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, 1997 states:

Practices which are contrary to human dignity, such as reproductive cloning of human beings, shall not be permitted.

The Human Cloning (Prohibition) Bill 2004 bans human cloning. The bill makes it an offence, with a maximum prison term of 15 years, for a person to create a human embryo clone. It also prohibits a range of other unacceptable practices, including the development of an embryo outside the body for more than 14 days and the mixing of human and animal gametes to produce hybrid embryos. Developing embryos for purposes other than for their use in an assisted reproductive technology treatment program and commercial trading in human reproductive material is also considered to be both unsafe and unethical.

I think this Assembly, along with the vast majority of the Australian community, is opposed to human cloning. For this reason the Human Cloning (Prohibition) Bill 2004, in conjunction with the Commonwealth acts, meets the objective of providing a nationally consistent approach to prohibiting human cloning and other unacceptable practices. Mr Smyth and Mr Stefaniak, in their contribution to the debate, have raised some concern about the operation of clause 24 of the act which deals with review of the operation of the act. I advise members and seek to reassure them that the purpose of this clause is to allow review on the scope of the act, taking into account developments in technology.

Fundamentally that is what that clause is about. It recognises that technology is evolving rapidly in this area and that, whilst the fundamental premise that underlies this act is unlikely to change, it may be the case that the act will need to be updated to take account of the developments in the technology in relation to artificial reproductive technology, developments in medical and scientific research and the potential application of that research, community standards, obviously, and also the notion of the acceptability of establishing a national stem cell bank, which is also under debate in Australia at the moment. It is certainly not a clause designed to allow for reversal of the fundamental position that human cloning is somehow to become acceptable into the future. The clause is simply a mechanism to recognise that the bill may need to be reviewed to take account of changes in technological and scientific practice. I thank members for their support. I thank them for their recognition of the importance of passing this legislation to give effect to a nationally consistent scheme and I commend the bill to the Assembly.

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