Kedgley Sue: Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I start by paying a tribute to the last speaker Dianne Yates for introducing this bill. I am sure that without Dianne Yates’ bill we would still not be in a position to put in place legislation around this incredibly important and highly contentious area. 
It is very sad that Dianne Yates’ original bill has been gutted to the extent that it has. I am quite sure that Dianne Yates herself feels very sad about the extent to which the bill has been gutted. If anyone wonders about the extent to which it has been gutted he or she need only look at the pages of the original bill; it would have set up an institution to oversee the whole area and it would have had licences and very clear conditions. It was very very explicit. Unfortunately all of those very excellent provisions that were in Dianne Yates’ original bill have as I said been gutted. 
Tragically we are left with a bill that has very very excellent intentions that we strongly support but regrettably sets up one of the weakest most permissive regulatory regimes for assisted human reproductive technology in the Western World. Indeed I would argue that we could question whether the purpose of the legislation is being adhered to in the remainder of the bill. The purpose provision states that the purpose of the legislation is to regulate the use of human embryos by artificial means and so on and so forth but in truth there is no regulation—astonishingly—proposed in the bill. Instead the whole bill relies on guidelines which do not have the legal force of law and which can be so vaguely worded that are very very difficult to enforce. The guidelines will be drawn up by an unelected and unaccountable ministerial advisory committee which will have the task of approving controversial technologies without any parliamentary scrutiny. That is extraordinary. Fortunately there will be some consultation but ultimately we are giving an unelected and unaccountable advisory committee unprecedented and virtually unlimited powers to determine policies about reproductive technologies in New Zealand. 
In so doing this bill is breaching the well-established parliamentary principle that matters of policy and substance should be dealt with by Parliament. It is a well-established convention that policy should not be delegated beyond Parliament to technical committees but here we are giving an unelected and unaccountable advisory committee the ability to set guidelines that in effect set policy in this most highly contentious highly controversial area. If Parliament does not have some greater say in this sort of area one wonders what its purpose is. As one submitter said Dr Frankenstein would have found that the regulatory regime proposed in this bill—or rather the lack of it—gave him ample opportunity to argue for the creation of his monster. A submitter made that observation. 
It is tragic that we have ended up with a bill without any regulation. The Greens will be putting up an amendment to give the guidelines the force of regulation. It is a mystery to me why the Government is so implacably opposed to having regulation of this important and highly contentious area. Canada has just passed some legislation that has regulations and a mechanism to enable new regulations to go through Parliament to be debated in Parliament and to be sent to its equivalent of our Health Committee. England has a licensing regime and so on and so forth. It is a mystery to me why our Government and the officials are absolutely hell-bent on having no regulation whatsoever. I have never understood what the reason for that is. A previous speaker said we might have to revisit this bill. I believe that she is correct. I believe that we will revisit it because of the lack of regulation.