STATUTES AMENDMENT (PROHIBITION OF HUMAN CLONING FOR REPRODUCTION AND REGULATION OF RESEARCH INVOLVING HUMAN EMBRYOS) BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 3 February 2009. Page 1144.)

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:24): This is a bill about which I have great concern, and I want to put that on the public record in the introduction of my second reading speech. On the straightforward question of the moral situation with respect to this bill, I will demonstrate through my remarks the reasons why I believe that this bill should be opposed on straight-out moral grounds.

In the animal kingdom and in agriculture I support genetic improvements and sciences, and we are seeing the acceleration of opportunities to increase production through the breeding of animals. That is one thing; that is about food production. However, when one starts getting into the moral issues around allowing scientists and researchers to use human embryos, and so on, and to effectively become involved in human cloning, I think we are on incredibly dangerous ground. History has shown us the problems that can occur in society when we make bad legislation and, to my way of thinking, this piece of legislation would have enormous negative ramifications. It would, I am sure, be the worst legislation that I have spoken about, with potential negative ramifications to the community and to society in the future.

Also, I cannot really understand why the government has brought this bill before the parliament when science has gone past this bill. The scientific issues around this bill are now historical, and I will demonstrate to my colleagues why we have moved on and, therefore, the need to oppose and not support this bill.

However, this is a great moment in this parliament, because it is a triumph for parliamentary democracy. Where on party lines we might often differ, in this debate we will vote side by side with those who agree in conscience on a very important issue. If members vote on this bill in the way that I hope they will, it will be an even greater achievement for parliamentary democracy, because we will have rejected what I see as an undemocratic and, sadly, prevailing mentality at state and federal levels, where governments can decide on legislation and then force it down the throat of parliaments across the nation. Western Australia had the intestinal fortitude to reject this legislation, and so can we in the Legislative Council.

My legal adviser has said that the argument on this bill can be summarised by a phrase that might appeal to the Hon. Robert Lawson MLC QC, and that is the Latin phrase novus actus interveniens. That phrase, in legal terms, is most often used in the law of contract, and it translates literally to a situation where a new act has intervened; a new fact has arisen that has made the previous compact or agreement untenable. That is precisely what we have in this debate.

The advent of induced pluripotent stem cell research (or iPS for short) is a breakthrough that evaporates the previous merits of the clumsy, unethical and unproductive theory of science that has been therapeutic cloning. My colleague the Hon. Dennis Hood MLC did a fantastic job for honourable members wrestling with this issue and their conscience in summarising the debate on this issue.

I do not propose to traverse all the science of the honourable member's great contribution—a contribution that I am sure would have brought a tear to the eye of the Hon. Andrew Evans. Speaking of the Hon. Andrew Evans (to which I will return, and which I will retrace in a little more detail, as it is highly relevant to this debate), I want to repeat something he said in the debate of 26 May 2003 in concluding his contribution on the predecessor to this bill.

I am very pleased that he made this statement, because it not only agrees with what I have complained about with respect to the River Murray handover package late last year but also the trend that we are increasingly seeing—and this was the Hon. Andrew Evans speaking as an MLC more than five years ago. In concluding his contribution on cloning, he said:

Another concern I have is the nature of the process of agreement via the Council of Australian Governments [COAG], followed by federal legislation and then state legislation presented to us almost by way of a fait accompli. COAG does not have any constitutional status and is not directly empowered by the Australian people or our state parliament to make decisions of this kind. I do not agree with a process that fails to take into account the wishes of the South Australian parliament. I trust this does not become a more regular occurrence.

I say, 'Hear, hear!' This is not a parliament for rubber-stamping. This is a parliament for the people of South Australia, particularly our chamber, the Legislative Council. It is a house of review, it is a watchdog area of the democratic system and it is there to stop big brother—that is, COAG—making decisions in an isolated situation for our community and then expecting us to follow those decisions here in this parliament. I will continually refuse to do that. It is not good policy practice, it is not good parliamentary practice but an undemocratic practice, and it is not what the South Australian people want.

Whilst from time to time they may complain about having three tiers of government, I am sure that the South Australian community want debate unfettered from ministerial council meetings. They want debate that will be in the best interests of the economy and the social fabric and wellbeing of our community now and into the future, and this bill certainly is not in the best interests of the social fabric now or into the future for South Australians. A former member, the Hon. Nick Xenophon (now senator Xenophon), said in concluding his contribution on 5 June 2003:

It is important that, on an issue such as this, state parliament ought not to be rubber-stamping what COAG wants.

Sadly, the Hon. Andrew Evans' trust has not been respected, Senator Xenophon's wish has not come true and we are seeing more legislation forced down our throat out of COAG and down through this parliament. It is an affront to parliamentary democracy, and it has happened from both sides of federal politics in recent governments. Yet this state government wants to abolish the Legislative Council. It is quite unbelievable; it is something that those of us who are listening to our communities must fight against at all costs, because the last thing we need is a total dictatorship. We got rid of that in the Second World War and we do not want it returned in this millennium.

I look forward to the fight to ensure that we protect democracy in South Australia. On 5 June 2003 in this place, the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill was read a second time and taken through its remaining stages. There was no division, so we know that, by a majority, this parliament had no objection to prohibiting human cloning—none whatsoever. Just under 5½ years ago everyone had an ethical problem with cloning—not long ago at all. Indeed, the same was the case in the federal parliament in late 2002. In fact, in federal parliament on 12 November 2002, Senator Abetz summarised the absolutely unanimous rejection of human cloning when he said:

I think that all senators in this chamber are united in their opposition to human cloning. I understand that the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 went through the other place without dissent and on the basis that the practice of human cloning is unacceptable.

There were no interjections and no heckles when he said that. Hence, the Hon. Dennis Hood MLC makes a very good point upon which I encourage members to meditate. He asked:

What has been the amazing new discovery, the great prospect, that has given good cause to overturn this parliament's previously stated position on banning all forms of human cloning?

There are none. No compelling reason is presented, and I believe that we would be making a most serious mistake if we were to support this bill. I will start to talk about the science. In this and previous debates on an earlier version of this bill we have heard of one professor, Shinya Yamanaka. We tried to get in contact with him but he is a busy man. However, a presentation he made in January 2008 was available online to observe. Not only was that instructive for us but I believe it would be of great benefit to members. I will refer to that later in my speech. I want to dwell for a moment on the significance of the induced pluripotent stem cell discovery of Professor Yamanaka and his independent research colleague Professor James Thomson.

The changing of the guard in stem cell research occurred in November 2007, when independent research team studies were released concurrently: one in Science magazine by James Thomson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the other research in Cell magazine by Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan.

Here are some pertinent facts about this discovery, focusing first on Yamanaka. In November 2007, the internationally respected New York Times reported on Yamanaka's individual discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells. On 11 December 2007, Professor Yamanaka was profiled at length in the New York Times, and I will retrace just the first paragraphs of that profile, as it runs for some length. It says:

Inspiration can appear in unexpected places. Dr Shinya Yamanaka found it while looking through a microscope at a friend's fertility clinic. Dr Yamanaka was an assistant professor of pharmacology doing research involving embryonic stem cells when he made the social call to the clinic about eight years ago. At the friend's invitation, he looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career.

'When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realised there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,' said Dr Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. 'I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.'

Yamanaka and US Professor James Thomson, with their separate research on either side of the Pacific, but both demonstrating the viability of iPS cells, were together in the 2008 Time magazine list of 100 most influential people in leadership, heroics, pioneering, science, the arts, and business. Yamanaka, Thomson and fellow Professor Yu were jointly nominated for the 2007 Time magazine Person of the Year, with the following statement:

A fierce moral debate—whether the therapeutic potential of stem cells could justify destroying embryos to get them—appeared to vanish when scientists in Wisconsin and Japan announced that they had figured out how to convert adult skin cells into near-perfect copies of the wonder cells. More research remains to be done, but this might be the most delightful discovery since common bread mould birthed the age of antibiotics.

The February 2008 edition of Science magazine, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an association that claims to service 10 million scientists, said of Yamanaka, 'Few researchers have rocketed from relative obscurity to superstar status as quickly as Shinya Yamanaka.'

Yamanaka, and other researchers who have woken up to the revolution of iPS, keeps going from strength to strength at a pace that saw Professor Ian Wilmut jump ship, real quick, early in the piece. Testimony to the rapid pace of developments and honing of the technique are demonstrated in the following Washing Reuters article of Sunday 12 October 2008, as follows:

Researchers trying to find ways to transform ordinary skin cells into powerful stem cells said on Sunday they found a shortcut by 'sprinkling' a chemical onto the cells. Adding the chemical allowed the team at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Massachusetts to use just two genes to transform ordinary human skin cells into more powerful induced pluripotent stems cells, or iPS cells.

'This study demonstrates there's a possibility that, instead of using genes and viruses to reprogram cells, one can use chemicals', said Dr Doug Melton, who directed the study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. Melton said Danwei Huangfu, a postdoctoral researcher, in his lab developed the new method. Melton, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, said in a statement:

The exciting thing about Danwei's work is you can see for the first time that you could sprinkle chemicals on cells and make stem cells…Stem cells are the body's master cells, giving rise to all the tissues, organs and blood. Embryonic stem cells are considered the most powerful kinds of stem cells as they have the potential to give rise to any type of tissue. Doctors hope to some day use them to transform medicine.

Melton, for instance, wants to find a way to regenerate the pancreatic cells destroyed in type 1 diabetes and perhaps cure that disease. I seek leave to conclude my remark later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.