Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill

It is with great pleasure that I speak on Part 1, “Preliminary provisions”, of this Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, which deals particularly with the purposes, the principles, and the areas of procedures or treatments that can be declared to be established procedures.

Undoubtedly, we have seen a revolution of treatment in this reproductive field, particularly since 1978 when the first test-tube baby was born. But what has to be realised is that there is a whole spectrum of treatments available to a modern society, which may go from very simple treatments, such as ovulation induction or sperm production improvement, to the more complex technologies. I think it is important that it is clearly spelt out in the purposes clause that the bill is to secure the benefits of assisted reproductive procedures, and established procedures, for mainstream society.

I have noted from various groups who have opposed this bill, such as some individual Roman Catholics or even some Māori, that they find it difficult to accept some of the modern technologies that are available. But in reality as a former practising clinician in this field, I have found no group who has not wanted for one reason or another to take advantage of those assisted reproductive technologies. Undoubtedly, there is the reality of a need among all groups in society that I know of to take advantage of their benefits.

What clearly is contentious are some of the complex technologies to do with cloning, hybridisation, and further possibilities that might be associated with stem cells. Part 1, through the schedules, makes clear provision to prohibit unacceptable assisted reproductive procedures. Undoubtedly in schedule 1 we have a list of procedures that are unacceptable to mainstream society. That list is likely to grow, and through the provisions of this bill to change from time to time, but it is unlikely to be changed without considerable deliberation and care.

The other aspect of the purposes clause that I think is worth while commenting on is the establishment of a comprehensive information-keeping regime, to ensure that people born from donated embryos or donated cells can find out about their genetic origins. There is no doubt that one of the major thrusts of the submissions we had is that people do, indeed, want to find out about their backgrounds. One of the major philosophies behind this bill is the promotion of the ethos of openness, which I think is absolutely appropriate.

It is also vital that clear records are kept, to ensure that morbidity and mortality are recorded so that successful procedures can be monitored. Again, there is a set of principles spelt out clearly to ensure that the health and well-being of children born as a result should be an important consideration in all decisions about procedures. At one stage of events it was to be a paramount consideration, but undoubtedly the practicality is that all people involved in procedures do have a degree of risk. It is vital that risks to men, women, and children are all taken into account as being seriously important. I do think that the Health Committee, perhaps, has become a little politically correct when it not only pointed out that the needs—

The Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, which was a Government bill introduced in 1998, and the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, which was a member’s bill introduced in 1996 in the name of Dianne Yates, basically became a hybrid with a Supplementary Order Paper, which we have in the Committee tonight. The Health Committee worked very comprehensively on this bill. It is highly technical, and I think we have all agreed on the outcomes.

Unless people have actually been through the process of knowing what it is like to not be able to have a child, when a family wants that, and when mum and dad are desperate to have a child, they do not fully understand how emotive these issues can become. To get a bill on human assisted reproductive technology that will meet the requirements of those people who are emotionally involved in the process, plus protect society from those people who would want to experiment at a level that most people would not find acceptable, is what has been the aim of this bill.

The bill itself under the purposes and principles establishes that there will be no cloning, no hybrid embryos, and no commercial surrogacy. Now surrogacy, in a non-commercial sense, is going to be acceptable under this bill, but not in a commercial sense.

Stem cell research, of course, in other countries of the world has been highly contentious. For those members who read the New Zealand Herald this morning, they will have seen that even in the American presidential elections it has become a huge debate where Kerry has actually blasted George Bush over health-care cuts because he wants to stop stem cell research. In this country I think we are lucky to have this bill coming before the House at this time, rather than 5 or 6 years ago, because technology, and our understanding of what can be done and what is acceptable, has moved a great deal as developments have occurred.

When the Health Committee went to Australia 2 years ago one of the main topics being debated at that time was about human assisted reproductive technology and stem cell research. As a doctor and a geriatrician I have to support stem cell research. It can, or may, offer huge advances for the future. It may offer huge advances for patients who may have diseases such as Parkinson’s disease—a disease that affects a very small part of the brain, the substantia nigra, but causes massive problems and disability, and eventually the death of the patient. Anything that for the future could stem the tide, or perhaps turn it round and effect a cure of a disease such as Parkinson’s or motor neurone disease, I think, it is our obligation that we should be able to continue that research here in New Zealand and throughout the world. The purpose of this bill is to give a robust and flexible framework to regulation and guide the performances of future assisted reproductive technology. Things change markedly in this area, sometimes just by accident; someone finds a better way, or observes a better way, to actually have a positive outcome.

The other principal concern within this bill is that of the donor children—those children who are actually created as a result of a donated egg or sperm. These children do need to have access to their genetic information, and I certainly support Dr Paul Hutchison’s Supplementary Order Paper, which would mean that a register of donors is kept so that children can have access.

We had a lot of debate about the age at which a child should be able to get access to the actual name of the donor, and that will remain at 18 but the genetic information will be available before that time.

Also of concern for the purposes and principles of this bill was how we allow additions, perhaps, to the list of prohibited actions that is contained in schedule 1. What would be prohibited and what would be considered to be acceptable progression for reproductive purposes? How do we add something to the list and how do we take it off?

I congratulate Dianne Yates on having the gumption to bring this bill to the House and on working with the Health Committee to make sure she got a bill that, I believe, the vast majority of parliamentarians here will support.

The fact is that regulations of this particular nature are not going to please everybody, but at the moment the area is vastly under-regulated and there is a need for some regulation. Some parts of this bill are probably too permissive. Some parts are probably too tough. All of those sorts of things probably apply, but it is at least an attempt to do something and put some stakes in the ground as to what is and is not acceptable in the area of human assisted reproductive technology.

I am particularly pleased that we have a Supplementary Order Paper from Paul Hutchison in relation to the voluntary register to be maintained by the Registrar-General about the birth and donor details for children who are born from assisted reproductive technology. One of the reasons is—I have said it once and I will say it again—that all children deserve to know their whakapapa. It does not matter which race they are. They should know their ethnicity and where they come from. I am really pleased that we have an acknowledgment of that.

This register will be voluntary. Many of us would like to see it expanded to become compulsory because of the children’s needs. Having said that, I accept that it would be very difficult to get that to work in an area where there is so little donation available, and it would possibly stop that small amount of donation. So I am happy to support that.

Also, having looked at clause 4, “Principles”, I do have some reservations about the political correctness of the bill. I am very supportive of the provision in paragraph (g), which states: “the different ethical, spiritual, and cultural perspectives in society should be considered and treated with respect.” I think that is a very sensible provision. However, I do not understand why there needs to be a separate provision to say that the needs, values, and beliefs of Māori should be treated with respect. This implies that Māori are in some way not in fact part of society. I think that that provision is unfortunate and that it brings political correctness in the extreme into what is probably going to be, pretty much, a multiparty-supported bill. I find that somewhat silly and I think it could well be deleted.

Having said that, I note that the changes that have been made to the bill—and they are numerous—show the degree of thoroughness that the select committee was able to bring to its consideration of the bill. The bill has been around for a while, so technology has changed in that time. I do query whether we are likely to have to look at this legislation again in the near future because of further changes to technology. Perhaps the permissiveness of the bill will make that unnecessary, but I wonder.

It is certainly funny that we live in a country where we are very, very concerned about human assisted reproductive technology, yet we do not really value children and parenthood as much as we should. In fact, the very first and best thing we can do in society is be good parents. No matter what we do in this Parliament, none of it is of any use at all if nobody is out there being a good parent. None of it is of any use to us past this generation unless we do in fact value children, their parents, and the people who give up so much to become parents, and we very much value what happens to those children after they are born.

I am happy to go along with the purposes of the bill. I am happy to support the bill, and I will be supporting, as well, the amendments put forward by Paul Hutchison.

I have to state upfront that United Future will, from here on, be registering a split vote. As the member for United Future who is on the Health Committee, I have faced some issues and some struggles. There are some conscience issues that crop up in this bill that I have a personal problem with. But I have tried to separate those issues from the need to look at the regulatory framework that is being proposed here to see, regardless of whether I like which category everything has been placed in, whether the system for regulating this technology is appropriate. But at that level I again have had some problems.

I take some time now to thank Dianne Yates. I think there is probably no one else in this House who has shown such a commitment to getting a system to regulate this technology. The work she has done, the trips she has taken, and the research she has done have been quite phenomenal. If this bill reflected her original bill, then my position at the end of this process would be quite different. None of us wants to see medical science held back from making breakthroughs that alleviate suffering, but my concern is that we are straying into areas where the very nature of what it means to be human is put up for grabs, and we need to be very careful in the way we allow this to advance.

What I am saying is that the means by which we achieve good outcomes in health are as important ethically as the outcomes themselves. I have some real concerns. There was a joke in the House earlier about the fact we should not worry, because the market will determine the outcomes, and that is my very real fear.

💬 Simon Power: That wasn’t a joke. I was serious.

Was it not? I thank Mr Power. I want to cite a story that I have read about and told members before. In the United States a drug, a growth hormone, was developed by drug companies to treat dwarfism. It was given orphan drug status by the American Government because the expected uptake of the drug was quite small. What actually happened was that the uptake was phenomenal. It was way outside expectations. It had never been expected that lots of mums and dads would rush out and procure it for their short children, to see whether they could up the ante and improve their height. In Western society where we are very consumer driven, we have to understand that technologies like the ones we are regulating here will have a demand on them that is beyond just the demand that people with critical health problems or fertility problems will require—hence my feeling that the real need here is for caution.

I proposed a couple of amendments in Part 1; one is to the definition of an embryo. The current definition in the bill talks about an embryo, then excludes from the definition embryonic stem cells. I feel that in a warped sort of way this definition says that one is an embryo unless it does not suit our purposes, and then one is not an embryo. I believe that the reason for this wording is that we want to keep the door wide open for future stem cell legislation.

I also want to make it clear that I am not against the use of stem cells or stem cell research. I do have some ethical problems with where we get stem cells from. Certainly, I have real reservations about embryonic stem cells being used, particularly when we have seen some fabulous advances and medical breakthroughs as we find the very good use we can make of adult stem cells, and that would certainly be my preference.

As we go through the bill, and in particular in Part 2, there are some areas that I have a huge concern about, and I want to leave some of my comments until then.

Tēnā koe e te Heamana. Ā, tēnā rā tātou e noho tahi ana i roto i te Whare i te rā nei. E tū ake ana tēnei ki te tautoko i ngā whakaaro o taku hoa o mātou i roto o Aotearoa Tuatahi, a Barbara Stewart.

I stand in support of the contribution that my colleague Barbara Stewart has committed to this bill. I tender her apologies. To assure members that I did have some participation in this process, I tell them that this matter came before the Health Committee during my membership of it.

New Zealand First supports this bill and, in particular, the amendment proposed by Dr Hutchison. This is an emotive issue, and within Part 1 the purposes and principles of this bill are very clearly defined and specified. They advise on the procedures and treatments that may be declared to be established procedures. We believe that the bill adopts a cautious but balanced approach to this area of human-assisted reproductive technology. Very clearly, the bill states that one of its purposes is to prohibit unacceptable assisted reproductive procedures. It is thanks to the responsible attitudes of fertility clinics and fertility service providers to date that nothing untoward has happened in this area.

I should say that we totally support the paragraph of the purposes clause that clarifies that the bill is intended to protect the “safety, dignity, and rights of all individuals, but particularly those of women and children, in the use of these procedures and research:”. This is a very personal issue. The health risks of children born as a result of these procedures are generally higher than those of children associated with natural conception. I think it is timely that we have a bill that will bring some regulation to this whole area of reproduction. We must be very aware that all decisions made about the use of this technology, however, must reflect that children born through its use become adults, and decisions made today will impact on those children throughout their life.

In talking in that regard, as a Māori I am very conscious of the importance of whakapapa in terms of children born under this process. That is one of the reasons why we give strong support to the Supplementary Order Paper promoted by Dr Hutchison. It will give some clarity to one’s understanding of whom one is descended from. If that register is not available to offspring of this technology, then the question of whakapapa becomes diminished in terms of Māori.

While I am talking about Māori, I mention that my colleague Judith Collins made reference in particular to clause 4(f), which states that “the needs, values, and beliefs of Māori should be considered and treated with respect:”. That was not the original wording promoted by the bill. I am glad that that particular paragraph is there instead of the original wording, which referred to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. But if I do have any criticism, it is that I think that clause 4(g)—which states that “the different ethical, spiritual, and cultural perspectives in society should be considered and treated with respect.”—could apply to everybody in New Zealand, not only non-Māori. There is an implication that it does not refer to Māori, and that Māori concerns are addressed in clause 4(f).

I thank those members who have already spoken on this bill, and thank them for their kind comments about it.

I want to talk about the importance of the principles clause, because, as Judy Turner has already mentioned, this bill to a large extent is about what it means to be human. Whatever we do in life, we are interfering with life and we are progressing life. We are now talking about technologies that are not available in nature—whatever we call nature—so we do have a responsibility to ensure that, whatever we do with this technology, we are responsible for it.

In relation to the principle of ensuring the health and well-being of children born from these technologies, I point out that we are particularly concerned about the safety and dignity of the present and future generations. I disagree with the Supplementary Order Paper from Paul Hutchison, who wants to do away with the stress on women in terms of these procedures, because many people are afraid of a “rent-a-womb” situation developing, and of commercialisation. That is not in this bill, but they are afraid that it may occur in some future time, and Judy Turner has pointed that out. I remind people that a survey in Australia pointed out that the gestational parent was very much of concern, because although we are talking about test-tube babies or in vitro babies whose conception occurs in a glass dish, there is still that wonderful thing called a mother, which in technology is now called—

💬 Dr Lynda Scott: What about a father?

I am just pointing that out. The gestational parent spends 9 months bringing a child into the world, and I am concerned that the research in Australia showed that there was greater emphasis on the gestational parent, as well as the father who had contributed to the genetic make-up of the child. That is why the Health Committee discussed for a very long time the inclusion of the word “women” in this clause, and that is why I am not very keen on Dr Hutchison’s Supplementary Order Paper on this issue.

It is a very, very important principle that we have informed consent throughout reproductive processes, and also that, as has been pointed out by the New Zealand First speaker, children are aware of their genetic origins. I point out that the register is part of the bill. Dr Hutchison’s amendment is talking about those who have donated gametes in the past. I can assure New Zealand First that the register of donors is in the substantive bill, and the member’s Supplementary Order Paper refers to those who have donated in the past who may wish to volunteer information about themselves for the records.

Anther point that Dr Hutchison has put forward is to omit the reference to the beliefs of Māori. That issue, too, was discussed in great length by the select committee. The committee decided to leave it in, as well as the reference to different ethical, spiritual, and cultural perspectives. I stress to the Committee that the principles in the bill were discussed at great length by the select committee, and I think the member’s Supplementary Order Paper is not really acceptable in this regard.

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.

I was slightly reassured by the previous speaker, Sue Kedgley for the Greens, on this Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill by something that I am sure she did not intend, when she described the officials as having been hell-bent against regulation. That is not what I have discerned from reading the bill. I speak for myself and for a number of my colleagues. I cannot say that I speak for the ACT party, because we are divided on this bill. When I look at the bill, I see that it is a sickening exhibit of sentimentality. It is a typical example of the kind of—I know that I am not allowed to use the word “hypocrisy” in relation to members of this House—the hypocrisy that is exhibited by the establishment when it has a dreadful social problem and, instead of addressing it, decides to focus on a trivial and an almost non-existent problem as a smokescreen. What we have here is a whole lot of pious cant about the dignity and rights of individuals, about the protection of health, safety, and welfare, about the importance of knowing one’s genetic origins, about the importance of regulating unacceptable behaviour, about dealing with nasty commerce and donated cells, and about informing people of their genetic origins.

That cant comes from a Parliament that not only tolerates but facilitates thousands of births every year of kids who will never know their fathers—kids who have natural fathers they will never know, because our welfare system is determined to sponsor single-parent families without responsibility. This Parliament is running a welfare system that does not mind that kids are being born every day with foetal alcohol syndrome to entirely unsuitable women—to people who would never have children if, in fact, the normal social sanctions were applied when they were irresponsible. This is a Parliament that has presided over introducing a legal system that means that thousands of babies are born who will never know their father. The normal social sanctions are the sorts of regimes that apply in most societies whereby people do not bear children until they can take care of them and until they know that they are able to give them education, a stable home life, and grandparents—all the things that those of us who have been blessed with that kind of upbringing take for granted, and that we now, in all sincerity, have abandoned for a good chunk of our population. By taking from families that are working, and by structuring a welfare system that gives funding to children to have children, we are providing for all the things in our welfare system that this legislation suddenly states are utterly unacceptable where there is assisted reproduction.

I listened to the members who spoke so piously in favour of this bill talk about the importance of the embryo. They are scared of Frankenstein’s monster. One would think that it is unlikely that any parent involved in an assisted reproduction process will not be very anxious. It is highly unlikely that there will be a single woman or man involved in the process who will not have the utmost anxiety about the best interests of the child that is produced. These will be the most wanted children in New Zealand. These will be children who do not need any official to look after them, these baby children around whom risks are taken. It may be that experimental procedures are invoked, but what is the risk of those kinds of experiments where the medical profession has its hands deep in them, compared with the risk to the number of children who are conceived in a drunken or drug-induced passion? Kids are being born when conception was a complete blur and the entire pregnancy has been chemically affected. What does the Government do about that? It pays for it. It says that there is no consequence as a result of doing that. There is not even a power to intervene. Yet this House, in a great rush of sickly sentiment, is saying we should spend time on supervising these births.

I move, That the question be now put.

There are groups in society who for one reason or another are not able to have children. In clause 3, among the purposes provided, it is explained that the bill is: “(d) to provide a robust and flexible framework for regulating and guiding the performance of assisted reproductive procedures and the conduct of human reproductive research:”. Having said that, I say that technology has moved ahead but it has to be better. It needs to be precise, especially when we are dealing with life. Technology is more stringent than it was before, and research gives an assurance of protection. There is also the direction and guidance in the bill to privacy and areas that are sensitive.

There will be areas of dissatisfaction. To various ethnic groups this technology will be a no-no, because of their beliefs and spiritual backgrounds. As mentioned by previous speakers, genealogy or whakapapa links are important, and will be a concern for Māori and Pacific Island groups. By way of explanation from a Māori perspective, I tell members that historically the perpetuation of the family and blood lines was a very important event. When a child was born the placenta was kept and buried in the area where that child came from. The pito or umbilical cord symbolically tied that child to its tribe, its whānau, its hapū, and the land it inherited. I do not know whether those concerned ever looked at that, for it is where disputes could start because of that spiritual belief—the perpetuation of family and its link, in this case for Māori and I think for most Pacific Island people, to their land. That has always been historically important, and still is today.

My presentation on this bill will be brief but I would like to ensure that those things are taken into consideration, because life to all of us in this House, and to those outside its boundaries, is sacred. It must be treated as such. If not, this technology and all the regulations and laws that go with it can go out the window.

First on the priority list of this House is to consider how people look at this legislation and at the sanctity that is brought into the family. Without that sanctity and respect for life, and the sacredness in which most people hold life, the legislation cannot be considered. However, New Zealand First at this stage supports the bill but the bill has to be stringent. The protection of the child conceived, and of the parents, has to be taken care of. There is no doubt that when the child is born it will be treated as any other ordinary person, and that it will have its parents’ love, kindness, respect, and care. That is paramount, and it must be. If parents are not prepared, as the previous ACT speaker said, to take care of the child, where do we go to from here?

I admire the tenacity with which Dianne Yates has presented the bill, but all these things have to be taken into consideration, as well as the Supplementary Order Paper of Dr Hutchison.

The importance of this bill to the House is perhaps underestimated. I do not share the view of the ACT party that the bill is to do with the welfare system. It is to do with much more complex issues than that, in many ways. The reason why this is important is that under this structure, as set out in Part 1, it is really the only time—and could be the only time for many years, actually—that Parliament has an opportunity to discuss what it regards as the bottom lines that will apply to human-assisted reproductive technology. That is of some concern to me.

Part 1 sets out the objectives of the bill—the robust and flexible framework. One word that does not appear anywhere in there is “accountable”. We have the mechanism of the advisory committees and ethics committees that are advisory to the Minister, but I just want to reflect on a number of years spent in this Parliament trying to get at such committees. In fact, members may be interested to know that it is fairly difficult for the Minister to get at such committees.

When I was Minister of Health there was a committee of some name with a similar function—I cannot recall the name—making decisions that in my view were ground-breaking in the science that was put to them. As the Minister who appointed the advisory committee, I was greatly anxious about what would happen if the committee made decisions that I believed were wrong—were against the public interest and outside the scope of what Parliament would accept. As it turned out in those cases, the advisory committee made decisions that I believed were right. In my view they made the correct call, consistent with the public interest.

But there is no guarantee of that, and this is the only chance that I, as a member of Parliament, will have to set the bottom lines that those committees have to act within—which puts an unfortunate burden on the list of banned procedures. Quite frankly, I would like the list to be an awful lot longer than it is. Unless that is the case, I will not get the chance to come back.

I know that the members of an advisory committee will not have to face the same scrutiny as a ministry. I know that any ministerial interference with that process will be regarded as a breach of good faith, because that is what was threatened when I sought advice about what role I might take as Minister of Health in those decisions.

So that is where I believe there is something missing from Part 1—the clarity of the accountability mechanism. The purposes and the principles in the bill are sufficiently general that committees could be able—I am not saying they will be able—to make decisions that from a public policy point of view a future Parliament would like to challenge. There is no direct or effective way of doing that. It may require Parliament to bring in legislation at some urgency.

Again, the bill forces that process. It forces a confrontational process with Parliament, because Parliament is not able to exercise the kind of ongoing accountability and public policy guidance that those committees might need. So I think that that is a concern.

I have also been concerned, on looking through the principles, about the way the Health Committee has downgraded the paramountcy principle in respect of the welfare of children. This bill is not about children only. I have almost more concern now about the alleged therapeutic benefits of a lot of this research.

I have to say that I agree with every utterance of the previous speaker, Bill English, and I wish that he had been sitting on the Health Committee. Regrettably, it was his colleagues sitting on our committee, along with others, who were so implacably opposed to any mechanism being introduced to make that unelected and unaccountable advisory committee have some accountability to Parliament. I would like to assure the Hon Bill English that the Green Party did try very hard to introduce some mechanism that would enable Parliament to have some scrutiny over the decisions—the so-called guidelines but in fact the policy decisions—of the advisory committee. We failed because of the opposition of his party and others, but we will be bringing these amendments here, and he will have an opportunity to vote for them.

We will be putting up two amendments. The first amendment gives the guidelines the force of regulation, so that at least they will be regulations and will have to go to the Regulations Review Committee, whereas at the moment they are just “wiffly waffly” guidelines. I do not know where guidelines go—perhaps to the Minister? They certainly do not have parliamentary scrutiny. Secondly, we have an amendment that would propose our doing what the Canadian system does, which is to state that the guidelines—or the regulations as we hope they will become—will have the mechanism to be able to go before Parliament, and to be debated and sent to the Health Committee. If the Minister chooses to ignore the recommendations of that committee, the Minister would have to give very good reason for that.

So I think that Mr English has made some extremely good points, because the fact is that Parliament basically has no role in this extraordinarily important and controversial area, once we have set up this bill. All this bill does is set up a very broad umbrella. It sets up some very fine purposes and principles, but then does not even give them the force of regulation. It then essentially hands the entire thing, lock, stock, and barrel, to this unelected and unaccountable committee. It does not provide for any mechanism for Parliament to debate those bottom lines, as Mr English put it, and to look at those, or to have scrutiny over some of the ground-breaking decisions that advisory committees will no doubt be making. As Mr English has pointed out, it is extremely worrying that those committees are effectively a law unto themselves. So what we are doing in this bill is giving the ability to decide on the future of the human race, with respect to New Zealand, to that unelected, unaccountable committee that will essentially be a law unto itself.

The member from ACT was scornful about why we should be interfering in these things. Frankly, most of society agrees that in this bill we are debating a very profound aspect of what it is to be human. I presume the member from ACT would be happy to have cloning, and happy to have genetic engineering of humans, which is what he seemed to be implying. Well, I can assure the Committee—

💬 Stephen Franks: Absolutely!

The trouble is, as the member from ACT may be aware, there has been a tremendous failure in efforts to clone and genetically engineer animals. There have been hundreds and hundreds of attempts, and hundreds of animals are born with severe abnormalities before scientists clone successfully. Is that the sort of thing he would advocate? I think that maybe he needs to do a bit more reading about genetic engineering and cloning in order to understand the huge risks there are in this area.

I want to point out to Mr English and others, who fortunately share my concerns about the total lack of accountability in this bill, that there are some amendments on the Table they can support. Hopefully, Mr English might be able to persuade his colleague Dr Hutchinson and others that in fact the incredibly lax system that we have introduced does, as Simon Power said, leave it up to the market—the market will decide. That is basically what this bill is doing, and I hope that that member, over the dinner break, might prevail upon some of his colleagues to support the proposal by the Green Party to introduce accountability and regulations into the bill.

I want to take a brief call on Part 1 to explain my other amendment to clause 6. But in starting, I want to disagree with my colleague Sue Kedgley on one matter. I did not find the officials a brick wall. I think that any brick wall they had to stand behind was one created by Cabinet. I actually found the officials to be extremely helpful. At times I felt like a bit of a fly in the ointment to the process, but I always found them very gracious and I thank them for the way they worked with us.

I would also like to commend the Hon Bill English for his contribution. I think he absolutely hit the nail on the head regarding my position, in that this is the one and only chance that will be offered to us as elected representatives to have a say in the way the direction of this technology will go. I find that scary, and the fact that the word accountability, or the fact that the understanding of what it means to be accountable to this House, is lost in this process worries me a huge amount.

That is why I proposed an amendment to clause 6, so that treatments that were to be declared established procedures had final scrutiny by Parliament. Of course, once something is considered an established procedure, as long as the practitioners administering the procedure are qualified, they no longer require any further ethics committee approval because the procedure is set in place. But before we allow a procedure to hit that final category, I think it would be hugely important for this House to be re-engaged with the final recommendation. I understand that the best way for that to happen is for the Regulations Review Committee to look at what is being proposed, and so that is what my amendment seeks to do.

The huge difference between guidelines and regulations, I guess, is the area that worries me the most. When we read the Canadian legislation, which is strongly regulatory, we see that what is allowed and what will happen is extremely clear, clause-by-clause. There are no grey areas: one is very clear, as one reads it, what is to be expected. That is the power of regulation. I understand that regulation in some areas of life can be onerous, can shut down a positive move forward in some directions, and can slow processes down unnecessarily. But in this particular situation, regulations would give effective clarification and, certainly, the work of the Regulations Review Committee to check what is being proposed is an extremely fortuitous function of Parliament.

My amendment, then, to clause 6 would require a check to be made by the Regulations Review Committee before Orders in Council were made on established procedures. The select committee would then report on how it found the guidelines and procedures that were being touted as established procedures, and would give us a sense of what was going on. That is the proposal I have for clause 6. I will leave it at that, but I really encourage members to consider supporting that check.

I appreciate the opportunity to further address Part 1 of the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill. As I indicated, the ACT party will split its vote on this. We have two members who believe that the bill is defective but still worth supporting, and we have six members who believe that it is a classic example of the errors of legislating when no mischief has been identified. Usually we pass law when we find that something wrong is being done or threatened. People cannot even identify what it is they are scared of in this case. The mischief may be bad outcomes, but if people wanted to look at bad outcomes and were really worried about kids being born with genetic disadvantages, why are they not worried about kids who are born to smoking mothers? Why are they not doing something about kids born with lifelong disabilities as a result of alcohol consumption during the critical period after conception?

I have just heard arguments that this is the one and only chance for Parliament to look at the issue. Parliament will look at this every year—because it is sexy, because it gets headlines, and because politicians looking anxious and concerned can intervene in this area with no practical consequences. What we have here is an idea that Parliament’s wisdom will exceed that of the anxious, would-be parents, the concerned doctors, and the professionals who would like to deal with disease.

A very good example of how pitiful a parliamentary attempt to deal with this issue is, is my layman’s look at the definitions in Part 1. As I read them, they do not do anything about genetic engineering, even though half the speeches have been about that. It is not prohibited by this bill. The bill states that it deals with embryos and gametes at the cellular level, and with fusing cells. It does not even deal with introducing specific genes or modifying specific genes, as long as a hybrid is not created. Am I right? I would be very interested to know whether the member in the chair, Dianne Yates, can advise on this matter. I have looked at the schedules, and I think this is a classic example of a pathetic group of politicians deciding to intervene in a very big public splash and not realising that the legislation does not even address the issues they are making most of their slogans about.

It does not deal with modified embryos. It does not deal with genetic experimentation. It does not deal—nor should it—with an attempt, for example, to introduce extra genes into the reproductive mechanism to cope with some desperate inherited disease. I just hope that by raising the pathetic inadequacy of this bill I do not find a member suddenly rushing through an amendment to try to block even that area.

This bill scratches a political itch—a desire to be seen to be publicly upholding someone’s cultural values. In clause 4, “Principles”, paragraph (f) directs that “the needs, values, and beliefs of Māori should be considered and treated with respect:”. Of course—but what does that mean? This is slogan law. How much respect? Does it override the rights of everyone else, even if some Māori decide they do not like any kind of interference with the course of nature, however red in tooth and claw nature may be?

Then I see that someone decided that that provision looked a little bit racist, so the next provision was stuck in: “the different ethical, spiritual, and cultural perspectives in society should be considered and treated with respect.” How respectfully, at the moment, are we treating the 30-odd percent of New Zealanders who are Catholic, when we openly have the Abortion Supervisory Committee admitting that we have abortion on demand? Catholics think that that is murder. I do not, but they think it is murder. The law treats abortion on demand as highly illegal, yet the House connives, year after year, at 18,000 or 20,000 embryos being destroyed, a great affront to those Catholics and in breach of the law, and we do nothing. Instead we pass drivel law like this.

It does seem odd that Mr Franks might agree with the regulation of lawyers but not with the regulation of the production of humans, because that is what the bill is about. If anything, Parliament’s interest in the issue is to do with the fact that a growing proportion of human assisted reproductive technology is publicly funded, and Parliament should always be interested in the ethical use of public funds.

I signal some concern about the way Part 1 is structured. It does not really cover research, which will be important in our consideration of Part 2. A fair bit of the focus of the principles and purposes of the bill is to do with the benefits of assisted reproductive procedures. There is a strong focus on reproductive procedures—in particular, on those of women and children—and the use of those procedures in research. Of course, a growing proportion of the activity is in research for its own sake. It is for the production of human tissue for the purposes of research, not for the purposes of reproduction. Substantial numbers of embryos can be created without any intent to use them in reproduction. According to the rules here, scientists can do whatever they want to with the human tissue created in the first 10 days, fully intending to destroy or not progress the tissue beyond that 10 days.

I am concerned that the principles in clause 4 are laid out as if it is all about offspring and babies being born. I would be interested if the member could tell me a bit more about that, because the more I have thought about it the more I think Parliament’s concern should focus on the scope and direction of research. A lot of the issues around reproduction are not new. Mr Franks might think Parliament deals with this issue regularly because it is sexy, but it has actually taken years to get to this stage. Having some legislation is certainly better than having none, but in that time, committees have dealt with a lot of the issues to do with reproduction. In my view, what lies ahead of us are much greater challenges to do with the issue of the research carried out on embryos, however one wants to define their existence.

Part 1 seems, to me, to be sadly lacking in that respect. It provides a useful framework for coming to decisions about established procedures—that is, the things that have been going on—and it is quite a useful device, but it is not a very useful framework for dealing with what might happen next. While some feel very confident that scientific research will follow paths that most people are happy with, others of us do not share that confidence. There is no reason to believe that that will automatically be the case. In my view, the purpose and principles are weak in that respect.

I particularly want to look at how the select committee dealt with the paramount issue, the welfare of the child. There is, I suppose, a sensible scientific view about risk. Those procedures are risky. In fact, from a natural point of view, they are hugely inefficient and wasteful procedures. An enormous amount of production goes on, and a very small number of offspring come out the other end. I know those efficiency rates are increasing somewhat. We know very little about why so many in vitro fertilisations fail. I suspect that it is because the process is much more open to genetic mistakes, and that is one reason why a lot of the gametes produced do not survive.

So it is a hugely risky process. But I do not like that sense of risk about the scientific procedure being seen as some kind of qualification on how we should see the risk to the offspring. While we know the procedures themselves are risky, I am disappointed to see that the committee came to the conclusion that the health and well-being of the children born should not be paramount, but should only be an important consideration.

There are a number of clauses to vote on in Part 1—

💬 Simon Power: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Just as a point of clarification, I have checked this with the Deputy Leader of the House, but I want to make sure that from where you are sitting, the leave sought to allow votes to be split is confirmed from the second reading through to the Committee stage.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the honourable member for that, and I do have it in front of me. Leave was given, and it was agreed that, notwithstanding Standing Order 144(1)(b), the party votes cast by a party on the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill include numbers cast for the Ayes and the Noes, and recorded abstentions.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dr Paul Hutchison to clause 3 be agreed to:

to delete from paragraph (a), after the word “individual”, the words “but particularly those of women and children”, and substitute the words “women, men, and children”.