Mr PYNE (9:10 PM) —During the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the Research Involving Embryos and Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002, Professor John Hearn appeared and gave evidence, on 19 September. He is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and developmental biologist at the ANU and is a member of the Australian Academy of Science. He also gave advice to the Andrews committee on legal and constitutional affairs. He said at the hearing on 19 September:

I agree with Professor Hearn's comment to the Senate committee about the need to create parameters for the use of embryos for the purposes of science. In his statement he set out a number of parameters, and in this amendment we are seeking to maintain faith with those parameters by allowing diagnostic testing—which is obviously a necessary part of the IVF process—but not allowing diagnostic testing that becomes, by any other name, an embryonic stem cell research program without licence. That is all this amendment seeks to do.

Those people who are saying that this amendment is about striking at the heart of the IVF program totally misunderstand—not deliberately, I am sure—the motivations and intentions of people like me and others who support this amendment. I cannot speak for everybody, but I do not want to stop the IVF program. The IVF program is about creating life. It is about giving thousands of couples, who would otherwise not have had the opportunity, the ability to bring new life into the world. I congratulate and welcome the IVF and ART programs. I can even say that the pioneering work of Alan Trounson—let us say one positive thing about him in this debate—in the area of the IVF programs is utterly to be supported and lauded. But that does not mean that we should allow diagnostic testing that becomes an embryonic stem cell research program by another name. Of course, if a woman is told, `We are going to take 20 or 30 eggs and test them, and we will put the two best ones back in for the purpose of creating life,' she is not going to say, `No, no, I do not want you to take 20 or 30; I want you to take six or eight.' Obviously she is going to give herself the best possible chance to have the healthiest and strongest eggs to attach and develop.

The argument put by the member for Perth and the Attorney-General that somehow this is not going to happen because it has not happened in the past—because of the consent required from the couples involved in IVF—totally misunderstands the emotional state of those people using the IVF program. Of course they are going to say, `If you want 20 or 30 eggs, take them. Take as many as you can, because we would like the best implanted for the purposes of birth.' They are not going to say, `No, we only want you to take six or eight; we don't want to have too many eggs left over.' That argument is a total furphy and an embarrassment because it misunderstands what we are talking about. I will speak again when I get the opportunity. (Time expired)