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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1591 ..

Ms Dundas and the Minister for Health in his tabling speech. I will not be supporting Ms Tucker’s amendment or Mrs Dunne’s foreshadowed amendments but I will be supporting Ms Dundas’s amendment. For the record, I want to explain why I am supporting the Human Embryo (Research) Bill 2004. I agree with the Leader of the Opposition when he says that life begins at conception. I fully believe that. But I do not think that is the issue here at all. We need to be careful not to confuse this bill, which is all about the giving of life, with the taking of it.

I held the view that embryos should be protected at all costs. I then had discussions with a few people who held views similar to and different from mine. We are talking about the use of embryos—embryos which are going to be destroyed in any event, and there is nothing we can do about that. The use of these embryos could possibly extend a person’s life or increase the quality of their life. I thought about this from a theoretical perspective. I still agonise over this piece of legislation and I am very grateful to my colleagues for making this a conscience vote. What absolutely changed my view on this matter was an encounter with a very good friend of mine who was rendered a quadriplegic by a gunshot wound. His quality of life was pretty ordinary before the shooting; it has now been devastated. If research is able not only to free him from being sentenced to a life in a wheelchair, a life of catheterisation every day, a life of being at the mercy of special taxis and motorised wheelchairs but also to extend his life—it is slowly slipping away—then I think that we have a responsibility to do something like that.

There is no question, in my view, that it is preferable for us to be applying our research to adult stem cells. Pathology would suggest that you are going to get a better product that more closely aligns with the actual age and pathology of the person into whom you are going to introduce this material. Adult stem cell research has not got to the stage where it can be used at the moment; in fact, it is slightly behind embryonic stem cell research. At the moment advancements in science are proceeding at such a pace that there is a possibility that assistance might be given to my friend. It is not like cancer research or other research where you live in hope. You get a horrible disease and you hope like heck that somebody will come up with a cure, but they do not.

What we are talking about here is a very real possibility. I do not think that we should be letting our views—misplaced views in my view—on the preservation of life get in the way. We should understand that these embryos will die in any event. I came to grips with the fact that these cells will be destroyed anyway—it is an ugly thing to have to think about and I have tossed and turned over it—either by leaving them on the shelf or whatever. We do not have the right to deny people a better quality of life or an extension of their life. If we do not do something along these lines, we could be condemning these people to a shortened life. We are talking about the taking of life at either end of the scale, perhaps. For those reasons, I will be supporting the legislation and I congratulate the minister for bringing it forward.

MR CORNWELL (10.01): I welcome Mr Hargreaves’s comments. I thought at one stage that the debate on the government side might have been confined only to the Minister for Health. There has been much informed and erudite comment tonight on this subject. I do not intend to follow that. I am probably following Mr Hargreaves’s point of view in trying to think this one through. I would like to begin by quoting a letter from Adam Johnston Davidson from New South Wales in the Bulletin of 30 April 2002:

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