Hague Kevin: Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (Storage) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hague Kevin: Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (Storage) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I will begin by heaping some praise on the officials who worked with the Health Committee on the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (Storage) Amendment Bill both those officials who helped us out with the technical aspects of what is in fact quite a technical bill and those who worked on the extensive task of drafting the amendments to the bill and assisting us with that aspect of our work. 
Previous speakers have referred to the submissions we received and I greatly appreciated those submissions. They were not great in number but they were high in quality. All of them made I thought useful and thoughtful contributions to the debate around the issue so I pass my thanks to the submitters. As the chair of the select committee has indicated there was a high degree of agreement from submitters on the central points of the bill and where there was difference between submitters it tended to be on issues that were not included in the bill. 
The third point I would like to make is to say that it was a pleasure to participate in a discussion at the select committee that was non-partisan in nature where all members of the committee were looking for the best outcome and worked very well together as I think the chair has indicated—a pleasure that is all too rare I have to say. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Not that rare. 
KEVIN HAGUE 
: Well it is all too rare in the House as opposed to our fantastic select committee. Members will have noted from the revision-tracked version of the bill that it differs very substantially from the bill that was initially introduced to the House. A simple bill was introduced and the bill that has emerged from the select committee process is much longer and more complicated. That reflects an interesting thing—and others have alluded to this fact—which is that this area of law is one that touches on deep and complex ethical and emotional issues. It is a fast-developing area of science and things get very complicated very quickly in that field. 
The next point about that is that as others again have alluded to this is an area of science that has only recently been addressed by law but in my view and in the Green Party’s view is not yet well addressed by law. It is interesting that in the first reading debate a number of speakers referred to their belief that the Act had contained a provision requiring a review after a certain amount of time. Given that perception it was very interesting when we went back and looked at the Act in detail to find that it did not include such a review provision. I take the alternative view to that expressed by Paul Hutchison; I think that as Steve Chadwick has said because of the complexity of the area of science it touches on this is exactly the kind of situation where a review ought to be automatically built into law. Certainly in the select committee’s report I am one of the “some of us” who believe that the Minister ought to conduct such a review. 
I am interested not only in the extent to which this Act has addressed the particular issues it is intended to address but also in the scope of the Act compared with the scope of the area of human-assisted reproductive technology. That is now of very much larger scope than the Act covers. Those areas outside the scope of the Act are now not addressed by law and it seems to me that they ought to be. I will return to that theme in my third reading speech on this bill. 
In relation to the detail of the bill fundamentally as others have said the bill sets out to clarify something that was unintentionally not clear in the original Act. The Green Party absolutely supports that principle. We also believe that if possible legislation ought not to be retrospective and there are ways that the existing law could be perceived as being retrospective so that was certainly an important issue to address. 
I also take up the submission by Di Yates because it was the one submission that raised a concern about an aspect of the bill—a substantive concern—in her reference as Paul Hutchison noted to the select committee’s original consideration of the bill that became the Act. At that time the evidence that was before the select committee suggested that the science was uncertain as to the length of time that gametes and embryos could be safely stored. The committee has satisfied itself on the point that the science is no longer uncertain. 
The other significant thing that the bill provides for is to clarify the relationship between the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology and the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology. The Green Party also continues to support that change although as I raised in my first reading speech we continue to have a concern about the more fundamental issue which is effectively a constitutional issue and that is whether issues such as these ought to be addressed by guidelines rather than by regulations. We believe that that is a really important issue and we believe that the Act has it wrong. We favour a regulations approach because we believe that makes the law more certain and that has to be a good thing. We greatly preferred Di Yates’ original formulation of the bill that became the Act and it is appropriate in this debate that members recognise the great contribution that Di Yates made to this area of law. It would have been a greater contribution still had her original bill been taken up by the House. That said though the Green Party continues to support this bill and will vote in favour of it with pleasure.