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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1595 ..

Nazi doctors who conducted experiments on pregnant Jewish women and other researches on people they considered less than fully human brushed aside the moral arguments that we were getting in the way of science.

I fear that people in Australia and in other countries are brushing aside those arguments in the same way. The main game appears to be the starry-eyed pursuit of science. No consideration is being given to what we are doing in this process. Are we, as a legislature, shoring up corporate Australia and encouraging global corporate trade in embryos? Is it legitimate that we support cosmetic and perfume manufacturers in their use of animals for testing? These are the issues that we must address, which is why all members should support Ms Tucker’s amendment.

Question put:

That Ms Tucker’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

MRS DUNNE (10.21): Mr Speaker, I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 5 at page 1616].

This amendment, which refers to the hard end of embryo research and to the creation of embryos, is probably at a tangent to the thrust of this bill. The amendment will remove clause 10 (3) (a) (v), which states:

(v) allowing the excess ART embryo to succumb;

In everyday parlance it means that we would allow the embryo to die. The embryo would be taken out of its frozen state and allowed to thaw, which is a difficult issue. I have moved this amendment as a sort of die-in-the-ditch stand. I do not expect a vast amount of support for it, but it goes to the heart of what has happened in relation to assisted reproductive technology. Ms Tucker said earlier that we have got better at assisted reproductive technology. We are also clever at super-ovulation and at creating a large number of ova, which then become embryos. A large number of them are left over and there are huge ethical questions about what we should do with them.

This bill will enable those that are deemed to be excess—those for which permission has been given for them to be experimented on—to be allowed to succumb, that is, they will be allowed to thaw out and die. This is a fundamental moral issue about the beginning of

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