Page 3465 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 11 October 1994
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Madam Speaker, I have been provided with the amendments that Mrs Carnell will move. I must say that I think that they, in turn, will improve the nature of the Bill and will ensure that, where such arrangements do go on other than on a commercial basis, they will be able to continue without embarrassment or illegality. I think that that is going to be in the best interests of the child, because those sorts of arrangements will continue, and to try to make them illegal is pointless. That is a very different situation from putting a commercial aspect on them. Madam Speaker, I believe that this is an appropriate piece of legislation. I think it is appropriate to congratulate the Government not only on the method that it went through to get to this stage but also on the legislation itself.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (10.28), in reply: I thank members for their generally supportive comments. Mr Humphries wondered why, in the last six months of the Assembly, we were dealing with a whole range of these matters. Actually, this matter goes back a long time. I first publicly floated the need for action on surrogacy laws in the ACT well over 18 months ago. Then, some considerable time after that, we produced a major discussion paper, which was circulated about a year ago and which contained an exposure draft of the current Bill. The current Bill, as a result of feedback from that round of negotiations and consultations, was brought into the Assembly in May of this year. It has been a very long process; it is not saving up the controversial stuff until the last few months.
It is pleasing that there seems to be unanimity in the Assembly that commercial surrogacy should be made unlawful. That is pleasing because there was not always a unanimous public position outside. I am not saying this of Assembly members; but there were some fairly strong lobby groups saying that, because this is technically feasible and it will meet the need of a couple who want a child, it is something the state or the government should allow. I am pleased that there is a view against that.
This goes back to a ministerial council meeting in about 1991 and 1992 where, around Australia, governments agreed that commercial surrogacy agreements should be outlawed; they should be clearly discouraged and made criminal. We see reports from the United States where sharp doctors and sharp lawyers seem to get together and often prey on very vulnerable women with what appears to be a very attractive contract for a quite large sum of money to go through a pregnancy and pass a child over to usually a more affluent couple. This has caused a lot of distress and a lot of trauma to a lot of innocent people in the United States. That, clearly, was something we did not want to see happen in Australia. It is clear that medical technology in Australia is at a point where it could well happen. It is a matter of public record, I think, that an ad was placed in the Canberra Times in the ACT about 18 months ago seeking somebody who, for a fee, would bear another's child. So, there have been moves in Australia to go into this field of commercial surrogacy.
The discussion paper and the Government's Bill acknowledge that you can never really make illegal the non-commercial surrogacy. You can seek to actively discourage it - Mr Humphries acknowledges the need for that - but outlawing it and making it criminal is probably not viable. The aid and abet style of provision in this Bill did go a little further.
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