MATTERS OF INTEREST

FAMILY PLANNING GUIDELINES

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:26): Today, I wish to speak about some changes I think the Australian government needs to make urgently in regard to our international aid efforts. I submit respectfully that the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Hon. Stephen Smith) needs to look at AusAID as a matter of importance. AusAID is an important arm of the Australian government, distributing more than $2.7 billion in official development assistance in 2007-08. AusAID is focused on the Asia Pacific, and some selective projects also run in Africa and the Middle East.

The stated objectives of the program are to reduce poverty in developing countries and to assist countries in achieving sustainable development. Whilst I am very proud that we live in a nation that is so outward looking that it is taken as a given that we help our global neighbours in need of support, there is one aspect of AusAID that needs serious and immediate overhaul.

AusAID's family planning guidelines need to be abolished if our development assistance is to be truly effective and if we are to support the millennium development goals—particularly goal 4 to reduce child mortality and goal 5 to improve maternal health—with any credibility and effect. AusAID's family planning guidelines have provided the framework for the distribution of support to family planning organisations since they were negotiated back in 1996 by the then Howard Liberal government. And negotiated they were, with Senator Brian Harradine, an ultraconservative Tasmanian who was willing to trade his support for various pieces of legislation for the inclusion of clauses that rendered the family planning guidelines perversely ineffective and which have seen families in the developing world denied access to safe family planning.

Under the AusAID guidelines, no information on abortion can be provided to women in any circumstance, even when their life is in danger. A higher level of scrutiny is required through the reporting guideline on this area of AusAID's work, which means that aid workers are overly cautious in this regard, often denying services that fit within the current guidelines for fear that they will somehow unwittingly step outside of what is permissible.

Women in developing countries are denied full access and full education about family planning by the Australian government: a completely different approach to that which the government takes at home. Indeed, that is, at its very essence, an equity issue. Australian women are able to access contraceptives. Australian women can seek a safe medical abortion. Australian women can take their own decisions about their family planning. Most women in most developed countries can, but most women in developing countries that we are supposed to be helping cannot.

If they wish to control their family planning, under our current guidelines, they must abstain. That is fine in theory but absolutely impractical in reality, particularly in misogynistic cultures where a woman's right to say no to her husband does not exist, where she is subjected to unwanted pregnancies and children, where she has to rely on unpredictable contraceptive methods or try her luck with an abortion that may kill or disable her for life. It is not choice as we know it or expect it.

In our society, it is unacceptable, and it should be unacceptable as Australia's foreign policy, too. Ninety-nine per cent of maternal deaths occur in the developing world. It is not good enough that we can help some of these women through providing better access to family planning support but, for fear of offending a vocal minority who are opposed to contraceptives and abortion, we do not. And make no mistake: it is a minority. Marie Stopes International reports that 85 per cent of Australians support a woman's right to choose in family planning matters.

The Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, which is an all-party group of which I am proudly a member, works towards raising awareness amongst Australian parliamentarians about international population and development issues. The group has called for the removal of the guidelines on the basis that we could be helping families and we could be saving lives. No matter what your personal view of birth control may be, the reality is that there are currently more than 300 million couples worldwide who would like to access contraception but cannot.

The lack of provision for safe abortion does not stop women from seeking abortions—it just means that they are more likely to die in the process. Tragically, one woman dies from an unsafe abortion somewhere in the world every eight minutes, according to Médicins Sans Frontières, and one woman dies every minute in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications. Another 5 million are diseased or permanently disabled after seeking an unsafe abortion. In Asia alone, it is estimated that 10 million unsafe abortions are performed every year.

The Parliamentary Group on Population and Development estimates that worldwide access to abortion and contraception would reduce maternal deaths by 35 per cent. We like to think that things are getting better as we become more aware of the needs of our global neighbours, but, in 2006, less than 10 per cent of the global funding needs for family planning were met, as compared to nearly 60 per cent just over a decade ago. The Australian government needs to urgently revise Australia's policy in respect of AusAID and family planning guidelines.