Kedgley Sue: Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Kedgley Sue: Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:16360] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 First of all for the benefit of the United Future member and anyone who may have listened to her speech I reiterate that the Green Party has huge concerns with this bill. We are supporting it only because it prohibits the worst excesses of artificial reproduction—namely genetic engineering cloning of human beings and sex selection for social reasons—and because the weak regime it sets in place is better than the totally unregulated free-market approach that we have at present. That is the only reason we are voting in favour of the bill. 
Basically proponents of human assisted reproductive technology such as Dr Paul Hutchinson paint a rosy picture of a future where these technologies can be used to overcome the limitations of the human body and in particular to overcome the limitations of infertility. But the very same technologies that can be used for example to cure a child of cystic fibrosis or to avoid such a child being born can equally be used to threaten human dignity and human rights to eliminate imperfections to create perfect persons and a perfect race—in other words to be used for eugenic purposes. The Green Party believes that we must draw a line to protect future generations from growing up as laboratory experiments. 
There are huge controversial issues in the area of assisted human reproduction such as: where does one draw the line between what is an acceptable and what is an unacceptable use of pre-birth selection; who decides what genetic defects are to be allowed to be eliminated from the human population through embryo selection and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis etc; and where does it stop given the pressures from consumers? How does our society decide what characteristics are permissible in offspring and where does one draw a line for example between cystic fibrosis Down’s syndrome spina bifida and coronary heart disease? 
Regrettably those profound issues will not be decided by Parliament because in this legislation we have delegated all those profound decisions to an unelected and unaccountable committee. It is ironic that in the next bill Parliament will decide on whether we can dock dogs’ tails but in this bill we are abdicating our right to decide on profound issues such as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. 
Instead guidelines were issued a couple of weeks ago on the issues I raised. Basically those guidelines state that it is not the responsibility of Parliament to decide where we draw the line between cystic fibrosis Down’s syndrome coronary heart disease or whatever. No no that is left to the responsibility of the fertility clinics which the member from New Zealand First has so much confidence in. It is left for them to decide whether a disorder is likely to be serious in the offspring of a particular couple and therefore whether pre-implantation genetic diagnosis could be used. The clinics themselves will be making those very profound decisions. So it is quite extraordinary and I do not think people realise it. The population will wake up and realise down the track what we are doing in passing this legislation and delegating those profound decisions to an unelected and unaccountable committee and simply issuing guidelines rather than having any regulations in the whole area. 
People will wake up in the future. There will probably be a couple of scandals in a few years’ time and I can predict that there will be amendments to this legislation to strengthen it and at least embody regulations and to return it to the form that Dianne Yates’ member’s bill began with with strict licensing and regulations. But it has been completely gutted and watered down. Now we have something that I believe we will live to regret and everyone here needs to realise that members in progressing this bill tonight are abdicating their responsibility for those issues.