English Bill: Appointments — Abortion Supervisory Committee 
English Bill: Appointments — Abortion Supervisory Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9912] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I rise to ask the House to support the nomination of Dr Ate Moala. She is an outstanding medical professional and has the kind of public health background and expertise that would be well suited to activity on the Abortion Supervisory Committee. 
 I have spoken in the House in the past about the operation of this law because I believe that it was a law framed by Parliament with the intention of protecting the unborn. However it is a law that has been observed as much in the breach and today I want to raise a number of issues to do with the current status of the Abortion Supervisory Committee that I think are a disgrace to this Parliament and to the Ministries of Health and Justice that interact with the Abortion Supervisory Committee. I say to the civil service organisations interacting with that committee that they are obliged to know the law and ensure it is acted upon in the same way as they ensure every other kind of law is acted upon. But the attitudes among some of the bureaucracy have to be questioned. 
I can recall that as Minister of Health I authorised an information booklet to be available in general practitioner surgeries around the country because I believed women needed information in order to be able to give informed consent. It was a long battle with the Ministry of Health which claimed in the late 1990s that there were no suitable pictures of a foetus that could be published—as if it were some kind of pornography. In the end I went to the library and found a picture myself. The ministry made sure that in the publication it was as small as possible. When I stopped being Minister of Health the ministry stopped printing what was a very popular booklet and trashed the remaining copies and the booklet has never seen the light of day again. Women even now can go into a general practitioner’s surgery to make a decision that is potentially lifesaving—and that should not be made casually even if it is not—yet they cannot get simple information about what is happening to the development of the foetus and about the legal process that this Parliament obliges them to go through. And that is a disgrace. I would hope that our community attitudes—or our bureaucratic attitudes—on this have developed sufficiently that the picture of a developing foetus which is now available in beautiful representations is no longer regarded as civil service pornography. 
I now want to turn to the activities of the Crown and the Abortion Supervisory Committee themselves. The committee is involved in a legal process that I think demonstrates ill-intent towards the legislation as passed by this Parliament. A group of people are taking legal proceedings to initiate a judicial review of whether the committee has performed its statutory duties. That is not unusual; there is often legal action with the Crown. There are often Officers of Parliament and others who investigate public bodies to find out whether they have performed their statutory duties—the Ombudsman’s inquiry into the Department of Corrections is a current investigation just this week. The Crown and the committee have thrown all the resources they can at stopping a judicial review of the committee’s activities and I believe that that is unwise. 
Parliament set up an Abortion Supervisory Committee with the full intention that its activities could be reviewed in exactly the same way as those of any other public body. Are there legitimate questions about whether the Abortion Supervisory Committee has carried out its statutory duties? Absolutely yes! In fact it has made a point in its annual reports of virtually saying that it does not really care whether it carries them out because that is too complicated. However Parliament did give the committee statutory duties. Any group of citizens have a right to see that those duties are examined and the Crown in my view should not stand in the way. But point by point it has tried to get evidence thrown out has tried to get the actions struck out and is probably going to have another crack at preventing evidence that has come out of longitudinal studies in Christchurch from being presented to the court as well. 
My advice to the Crown today is to pull back. This Parliament does not want the executive using taxpayers’ resources or the power of the Crown to prevent the examination of a public body. It is not an unfair approach it is not vexatious and it will be the first time in 25 years—the first time since the committee was set up actually—that there has been any detailed review of whether the committee is carrying out its obligations. 
Some of those failures are absolutely obvious. It is quite clear from the psychiatric literature and from the public health literature that if women have mental health problems which is the main ground for abortion then the right treatment for that is medication and counselling. Even in the pre-abortion stage the legislation obliges the committee to ensure that counselling is available—but it does not do that. It is well-known that the counselling is either biased last minute or far too directive. We are one of the few countries in the world that do not have some kind of independent counselling available to women who are making a choice about abortion. We should have that and the committee should be subject to review over whether it has carried out its duties. 
So that is one set of legal issues—the committee and the Crown are fighting judicial review and they should not do that. Parliament wants to know whether this body is carrying out the tasks that Parliament has given it. If we are not serious about that then we should change the law. If we are serious then we should make sure that this body is subject to review in exactly the same way as every other single public body is by exactly the same procedure. It should not be exempt from it. 
The second set of legal issues is to do with the current legality of what is going on in the abortion industry. There is no Abortion Supervisory Committee. The appointments have all expired. As at 28 May according to my information 28 of the abortion consultants have had their appointments expire. And if their appointments have expired then all activities they are carrying out in approving or carrying out abortions are unlawful because the consultants are not legally constituted as abortion consultants. Well that is a disgrace. It will be a very serious issue if Parliament—if the Minister of Justice—has allowed the legal framework protecting our unborn children to lapse because of laziness and contempt for the law but I cannot presume anything else. 
 I want the Minister to stand up in this House and tell us why he has allowed this potentially unlawful situation to arise. The committee appointments have expired; they had a fixed date. Some of the consultants gave 3 months’ notice—and the Government took no notice. If the committee’s appointments have expired then the certification of people certified by them—who are called certified consultants—has expired and if their certification has expired then the actions they are carrying out are unlawful. Does the Minister want to be party to the unlawful abortion of unborn children? He needs to answer the questions firstly as to why it has happened but more important whether it is the case that today unlawful abortions are occurring. He must answer that question. I believe that he should answer it here but he must also answer it to the public. 
There are also issues raised about licensed facilities because their licences have expired as well. Apparently the Ministry of Justice can point to a section in the Act that states that those facilities can continue carrying out abortions even if their licences have expired. That may a legal answer but I would have to say that it is another sign of the laxity of the Minister and of this Parliament in allowing the potentially unlawful process of abortion to go on. The fact that that provision is there to protect clinics highlights the fact that there is no such provision to protect certified consultants. It reinforces in my mind that as of now there may well be several dozen certifying consultants out there who are acting unlawfully. Whether it is illegal I guess is another matter but certainly they are acting unlawfully. 
The Crown and this Parliament have not taken the role of the Abortion Supervisory Committee seriously. The committee was set up by the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act as a serious attempt to protect the unborn child. We have fallen short in our duty to enforce the statutes of this House but much more important we have fallen short in our duty to protect the unborn child. The Minister and the Government must get on and reinstate that protection and stop fighting the people who are trying to review the law to ensure that it is enforced.