Turner Judy: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
Turner Judy: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16663] 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 I specifically want to talk about clause 37 because I did spend an entire day on the Justice and Electoral Committee when this clause was being considered replacing my colleague Murray Smith. I want to talk about the issues that came up at that time. 
The committee seemed to be obsessed with the risks associated with informing parents about their child’s condition. It was very hard to bring to the committee’s attention the thought that there were risks involved in not informing the child’s parents that their child was planning a termination. I am talking here about risks to the child not risks to the parents. Let me tell members about a case that happened in my own town where parents woke up in the middle of the night to discover that their teenage girl was haemorrhaging in her bed. They got her to hospital in time for a lifesaving blood transfusion but in the process discovered that she had had a termination of which they had been unaware. They are just grateful they did not wake up in the morning to a dead child. When we talk about a surgical procedure we are talking about risks. When we exclude from knowledge of those risks the very people who are in the house that night and may have to deal with them we create a whole set of risks. 
Everybody on either side of the argument agrees with one thing: we all agree that we must see best practice for the sake of the child. We all agree that best practice includes that the parents should know. So why then are we legislating against best practice? Because that is what we are doing. We are legislating for the lowest common denominator because there are one or two parents in the mix who will mishandle the information. None of us who is opposed to this clause is opposed to the idea of an exemption clause that would allow responsible adults to make an informed decision if there really was genuine risk to a young woman who wants a termination and for genuine reasons cannot inform her parents. Nobody is against that but we do not want law that is written for the lowest common denominator and excludes—as my colleague Peter Brown said—the vast number of concerned parents. 
I find it very hard as a parent to separate my heart from this issue. I probably have more teenagers through my home on a weekly basis than most members in this Chamber would. I care passionately about young people. Because of the health programmes we have in our schools young people today are a lot more informed and a lot clearer about the issues than I was as a young person. The situation has changed immensely. To me it is safer than it ever was for parents to be notified because of those kinds of programmes and the understanding that young people have. 
One of the other things we have to understand about this issue is that we are talking about children who are developmentally going through a very interesting phase; they are individuating from their parents at that point in time. It is very natural for a young girl who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy to say to the school counsellor or say to the doctor: “My parents are going to kill me.” It is a natural reaction. It does not mean that they will kill her; it is just the reaction that comes out of her mouth. She is a little scared a little anxious. It is no reflection on the home from where she comes; it is a reflection that she is a young person who has got herself in a sticky situation and is a little bit worried about how she will broach the subject with her mum and dad. That we would sanction a wedge between the parents and the child on this vital issue is absolutely criminal and I am very concerned about it. 
We should be talking here about supported notification about people who are in possession of the facts supporting this young person. Let us ask ourselves a question. Let us go past the initial crisis. Let us go past the first week the first month the first year. What is happening now in this young woman’s life? She now has a huge amount of guilt because she has kept a huge issue from her parents. She is now finding it difficult to relate to her parents. I have had mothers and fathers in my home talking about the fact that they do not know what has gone wrong with this kid whom they had a relationship with. They are trying to figure it out. Is the child in the wrong school? Is she being bullied at school? They have been down to the school to try to get information but they cannot work it out. She is failing at school.