Tuesday, 17 March 2020

Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Mr FOLEY:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (14:56): There is a level of discomfort that I have in speaking on this bill, the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. That is because so many friends who I know have tried so hard to have a child, have been through the experience of assisted reproductive treatment, have spent an enormous matter of money and still at the end of it have been unable to have a viable pregnancy. For those reading Hansard in the future, I am standing here with a great big belly and a little baby in there at 30 weeks. I know for some people who might be watching the footage today, given there is no-one in the gallery, there may be a level of envy and discomfort that they would love this to be them one day. I also realise that there are many people out there who will be watching this who have participated successfully in assisted reproductive treatment, and for those women I share your joy in looking forward to what life will be like with a little one in your arms. I do wish everyone who is on the journey of going through IVF or who is trying to have a baby in their own right every single success. It is one of the great blessings that you have in your life to have a little one kicking away in your stomach and be thinking about what might be next for you and your family. But, as I said, I do acknowledge that it is not an easy journey for some. For women in particular, I think it is a big struggle for us in terms of how we measure our own success. Most of what we are taught when we are growing up—and it starts from sex education in school—is that you need to be careful that you do not get pregnant, and so much of our discussions focus on basically—

A member interjected.

Ms KEALY: Yes, that you do not get pregnant. It is basically that you sneeze and you can all of a sudden have this baby in your life. That simply is not the case for so many women, and it puts pressure on us as individuals. It puts pressure on you when you make that decision that you want to have a child. You might take yourself off contraception and then you are not pregnant one month in, and it might be then six months down the track that you are not pregnant. It might be then a year or five years, and then you start to ask the question, ‘Well, I’ve been told my whole life that it’s so easy, but why can’t I do it?’. That is where it is very, very difficult for women from a psychological perspective to get their head around what it is like not being able to have a child. Through that questioning and through that growth there is no doubt there is an enormous amount of mental pressure on individuals, on women. There is also a lot of pressure on men if they, I guess, have a low sperm count or if their swimmers do not swim in the right direction, as I would say in my previous life in pathology. I have certainly been involved in a lot of semen counts in my time, and it is sometimes a difficult process for the men to go through as well—to think that they are not as manly because they cannot contribute to a viable foetus.

So this is a very, very important bill because it goes much beyond just having a baby. It goes towards really the psychological pressures and cultural pressures that we put on ourselves to be successful parents, to be successful in just our gender stereotypes of being a mother or a father but also obviously in terms of what our roles might be in the future and whether we can reproduce or not—which is crazy, and it is not right for everybody; I absolutely accept that. I know that many women and men make the choice not to have children. I respect their right to do so and I congratulate them. But for those that want to have children, it can be hard. The Minister for Women, who is in the chamber—I do want to acknowledge her because she has been enormously courageous in sharing her story, and it is so important that we do have role models like the member for Dandenong stand up and share their story so that other women who go through a similar journey know that they are not alone. I wish her every success in the future if she continues down that pathway.

In relation to this bill, the focus of this bill is really on something that seems probably quite a small amendment in the scheme of things, but again it goes to the psychological pressures that are put upon individuals who already are feeling that they lack a level of success because they cannot fall pregnant naturally and that they have to go through an artificial process—through IVF or other alternative interventions. Then they are confronted with the fact that they need to provide a criminal history and have a police check done, which is some sort of a test over their worthiness to be a parent. There is far more to having a child and your eligibility to have a child than having a clean police check. It is not a standard that we apply in everyday life, and I cannot understand why it is a standard that we would apply for any level of pregnancy, however that is developed, and of parenthood as well. There are already existing guidelines to protect children. In many ways we cannot predict what will happen in the future, but we can put good parameters around that. The requirement to have a police check for women and their partners, if they had one when they were accessing IVF treatment, was an enormous barrier for so many people involved in the IVF process.

It provided not just that psychological barrier but in some instances it was a barrier that could not be overcome for reasons out of their own control. I have been speaking to a former Shadow Minister for Health, David Davis, who shared an experience that he dealt with in the time that he was Shadow Minister for Health. A couple were trying to access IVF here in Australia, but they had lived in Spain, I believe it was, for over 10 years. Because they had had that long period of time overseas and because at that stage the Spanish police check system was not at the standard that perhaps it is now it made it exceptionally difficult, and in this case impossible, to be able to provide a clear police check. That prohibited that couple from being able to access IVF. Removing this requirement through legislation will mean that people like that, who actually have clean criminal histories but are unable to produce evidence of their clean criminal histories, are not precluded from that opportunity of trying IVF.

We also need to take account of the huge amount of money that is involved in this. There are already so many barriers for people who are unable to conceive naturally to go down alternative pathways to be able to conceive and to look at having a baby in their life in the future. To think that one of those, I guess, checkpoints or gates that you have to go through is around a clear police check seems unnecessary and does not add at all to having safe, caring and loving homes for babies into the future so that they can grow into adults and be the future leaders of our country.

I would like to cite Hansard from when this bill was first debated back on 30 October 2008, where the then Shadow Minister for Health, David Davis, opposed the introduction of these checks, and I quote:

I want to put on record in strong terms my concerns about the Attorney-General’s decision to impose a criminal records check or a child protection check on certain procedures. There is a requirement that before I want to put on record in strong terms my concerns about the Attorney-General’s decision to impose those procedures can proceed a records check be carried out. This is an unfortunate decision because it colours the decisions MPs must make about this bill. There are a few good reasons for introducing this concept. I understand that over time one or two cases where a better outcome for children may be provided might be detected. But it would also put a barrier in the way of people accessing assisted reproductive technology and assisted reproductive treatments of various types.

It is concerning to me to see that medical and health procedures have been linked in this way with checks on criminality or on other matters. Medical procedures, as a matter of general principle, should be available to people in the community and should not be subject to checks on a person’s background as such. A very unfortunate principle is being established by the Attorney-General’s inclusion of the criminal records check or child protection check as a procedure limiting access to assisted reproductive treatment. Children are born to parents every day in a range of ways, and it is a strange idea that criminal checks should be required before that can occur. I am not sure why the Attorney-General felt it necessary to include that in this piece of legislation.

Here we are, some 12 years later, in a positive step, finally removing this additional barrier for people to participate in IVF, and I think that is an exceptionally positive move.

We have consulted widely around this bill, and there is enormous support for it. I think particularly so for women and their partners who have entered into the IVF process and who have then been told, ‘Well, you need to provide a police check’. There is a level of feeling that that in some way is questioning their ability to be a parent and the danger that they may put their child in when all they really desperately want is to love and care for a young one in their life. I think it is quite clear that this is an amending bill that should be supported—it should be supported widely in both chambers by all members of Parliament. There is no doubt that it will take an enormous amount of pressure off a lot of women and their partners who are already under an enormous amount of pressure and experiencing varying hormonal levels, which can wreak havoc on your emotional feelings as well. We need to provide more support to women in those environments, not put these additional burdens on them which are completely unrelated to someone’s worthiness of being able to conceive or to bring a child into the world.

When you are pregnant there are many challenges, and there is no doubt that women who have gone through IVF probably feel even more pressure to carry a child to full-term pregnancy. In these uncertain times I have had many people contact me with concerns around coronavirus. We know that there is limited defined information about coronavirus in our community and about what the impacts are for pregnant women and particularly for midwifery services. This is something that is an unknown in terms of us not having enough cases of coronavirus in the worldwide population to understand what the risk is to the foetus and what the risk is to mothers to bring on labour in a preterm period. We have had one instance, recently reported in Italy, where a newborn was diagnosed with COVID-19 and the mother as well. There is still that uncertainty of whether it is something that the mother passed on in utero or it is something that was transmitted when they were just born or in the days following.

As a woman who will be delivering her own child, hopefully with no side effects, in late May, I know that I am going to have a baby during peak coronavirus period. This is very concerning for me. I am otherwise having a very healthy pregnancy, but I can understand for women who conceived through IVF that it would be an even more stressful period of time, particularly with what we hear in the media around the shortage of health staff that we are going to have in our communities and in our hospitals. How can we be assured that there will be midwives available and obstetricians available to us when we are going in to have our babies? Is it a fact that we will have to perhaps have some sort of support over the phone? Maybe we just need to make sure that we have got the phone number of our local friendly ambo, emergency nurse or someone who is a midwife who can come around and help us out at home if we get to that point. It certainly is not clear at the moment how we are going to manage separately some of those ongoing support services for healthy people in the community and significantly unwell people in the community too, so people on chemotherapy. How do we protect our midwives, who are generally female, who are generally younger and are mums themselves? How are we going to make sure we support that workforce to be able to support women through that big, testing time of bringing that unborn foetus into the world safely and make sure they are protected from coronavirus?

It certainly is a challenge, and I know that there is massive work being done within the health services. I have been in touch with all of my hospitals locally. There are so many steps being made towards trying to ensure that those sort of essential health services, whether it is midwifery, whether it is about chemotherapy services, whether it is about dialysis or any sort of regular health treatments, are segregated and isolated in some way or protected in some way to ensure those essential health services can continue. However, we do need some clarity around that. We need to have some guarantees in place and we need to make sure that it is a priority for this government to make sure that we do not have a period where we are so busy, because we know that the health system is going to be overwrought with coronavirus, that everybody is so heavily overburdened with the virus and that as it presents, particularly in our more vulnerable people in our community, we forget about the people who need the everyday treatment.

We also need to make sure there is enough funding around for hospitals, because there will be staff that will be working enormous hours. There are going to be staff that do a huge amount of overtime. It is a problem anyway in our region. Wimmera Health Care Group have spoken out a lot recently around their inability to fund some of those core services, whether it is support services or even that expectation that you can access a midwife 24/7 and that we can cater for the number of births that we do have in the Wimmera region. They need to make sure that they have that core base funding available, not necessarily even the extras to pay for the throughput of the number of women who have a baby there or the number of people who are in hospital.

There is an expectation in our regional hospitals that they do provide a broad minimum base of services, and they may not have the throughput that attracts sufficient funding to make these services viable. Year on year at Wimmera Health Care Group in particular we have seen a letter of support from the government. We might see some money follow through towards the end of the financial year. That is going to be harder to deliver this year. We already know that we have been confronted with bushfires. We are now dealing with coronavirus, and the Treasurer, even before coronavirus, said there would be $4 billion worth of cuts in the budget that will be handed down on the first Tuesday in May. So I do ask the government to make sure that, particularly for midwifery services and in terms of women who have gone through that additional step of accessing IVF, sometimes for extraordinarily long periods of time—10 years or more—these women are supported to safely deliver their newborn into the world, particularly over the peak period that coronavirus will hit.

The other aspects of supporting women and their partners who are accessing IVF is to make sure those services are available in rural and regional Victoria. It is very, very difficult to get the timing right for collection of eggs or semen to make sure that how everything comes together is done in a safe and an efficient way, and there are very short windows of time to be able to achieve that, and when you live a long way from your nearest IVF service this can put an additional burden particularly on women who are working. They often have to step back from their duties for a period of time. It is just another layer of pressure. So if we can look at expanding somehow the access of IVF across the state to make it a bit easier for people who live in the country to be able to successfully access IVF, I think that would be a very positive step forward.

As I said earlier, there really are no areas of concern around this amendment bill. It is something that the Liberal-Nationals flagged back in 2008, and it is very positive to see that this amendment is likely to go through both chambers without too much concern or debate around it. It is a straightforward amendment to the principal act. It will remove an unnecessary barrier for women and their partners when accessing IVF treatment. This bill removes requirements for women undergoing IVF treatment to obtain child protection orders and criminal record checks. However, the guiding principles of the act ensure that IVF treatment providers retain the right to evaluate the wellbeing of a child born of the procedure and can deny treatment if they believe the child may face abuse or harm. This is a sensible amendment, and I trust that this amendment will pass both chambers, but in doing so I hope that it does provide some psychological relief for the many couples and individual women who are accessing IVF at the moment. I do hope that perhaps it is the one change or alleviation of pressure that perhaps will make the difference between a positive phone call from your doctor or one where it has not worked this time around and where you have to try again.

So I do wish all women well who are accessing IVF at the moment—and every success in their near future. I hope that they are able to conceive and to hold a little one in their hands about 40 weeks later. I also would like to wish every woman out there who is currently carrying a child well, whether it was conceived naturally or through IVF—it does not really make any difference. I know that you will give all the love and support that that little one needs throughout your pregnancy, throughout the delivery. Despite the expectations on so many women, on what you have to do in order to be a good mum—and a lot of those expectations are set upon ourselves—we all do it in our own ways. We all do what is right for our own child, and I think we can all pat each other on the back and say, ‘Look, we tried our best’. No matter whether we end up conceiving or not, if we can carry a pregnancy to full term or not, whether we can get through those sleepless few periods, whether it is weeks or months or years, we all do our very, very best—whether we become a mum or a grandmother or whether we just become a supportive friend to the others around us who are trying to bring a little one into the world. I wish this bill a safe passage.

Ms WILLIAMS (Dandenong—Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, Minister for Women, Minister for Youth) (15:17): It is wonderful to follow on from that contribution from the member for Lowan, particularly given she is currently 30 weeks pregnant, and that is such wonderful news and something that we should always celebrate in the lives of others, even if we cannot get there ourselves. That will be largely what my contribution on this bill today is focused on, and I want to recap on a comment that the member for Lowan made around the societal expectations and assumptions that underpin so much of how we carry out our lives and our own personal expectations in our lives. That assumption—a very heteronormative assumption, I should say—that you partner up and then you have a child and then you raise that child and that is a significant part of your life, is certainly the story of my mother, and it has certainly been the story of my three big sisters. But sadly, for too many, including myself, it has not been the case for us.

In my case, I was diagnosed at 19 with polycystic ovarian syndrome, a diagnosis which has itself been questioned from time to time—three diagnoses over about 15 years—and there is still some level of uncertainty around it, but what I do know is that I cannot fall pregnant naturally, for whatever reason. So about three years ago I embarked with my then husband on the assisted reproductive path. It is a trajectory. It often does not start straightaway at IVF. In my case we went from the use of Clomid, a drug; to intrauterine insemination, IUI; and finally to IVF. This is not a journey for the faint hearted, and I do not know that we always adequately acknowledge that. So many women in particular go through this journey silently and with a feeling that it is not something they can share, particularly in workplaces. So I do count myself as incredibly fortunate that in this workplace I am able to share it, and that, when I have chosen to share it, it has been received with such good grace on all sides of this chamber, and I want to acknowledge that as well.

I say that this is not a journey for the faint hearted, and that is for many reasons. The odds are not great. Two-thirds, we know roughly, of people that go through this will not come out with their desired outcome, that being a child. The cost is enormous. For many people they have to save and save and save and budget, and when that money runs out, that is it, that is their shot. The rollercoaster of hope and despair—there is nothing that can quite explain that. I do not think I have ever experienced in my life anything quite like that. I will talk to that shortly. The loss and the grief—that is a story of so many women who go through this, myself included. And the stress—it is so stressful. The physical reality of it, the injections—they are stressful. The impact of them on your body and on your psyche is stressful. And the strain on relationships, if you happen to be in one when you are undergoing this, is stressful for both parties. Grief plays a significant role in that.

But the stress and the trauma starts before the clinical processes even begin. It starts when you have to apply and you have to fill out this form that requires you to apply for a police check. From the outset your fitness to be a parent is questioned purely by virtue of your own infertility. Your friends, when they are having children, and your siblings, they do not have to have their history examined to determine whether they would make fitting parents. They do not have to go through any of that, but you do, through no fault of your own. There is a cruelty in that, and I am so pleased that we are recognising that cruelty and that we are changing it.

In doing it I hope we are also apologising for it. I understand that there were reasons and there was a thinking that underpinned this, but the reality for so many women, myself included, that have to fill out those forms is it is so utterly traumatic and it is humiliating. These are the words that so many of us in this place would have heard from our constituents. In that sense this bill will have an incredible impact on the estimated 25 000 women, and their partners if they have them, who access assisted reproductive treatment in Victoria each year. That is not a small number of people who are impacted by something that seems like such a small change, but it is such a significant change.

I also wanted to talk about and acknowledge the fact, as the member for Lowan did, that for many this process involves such difficult details and minutiae of the process that can be incredibly hard to talk about, and we do not often get the opportunity to do that. For me, when I think about that process I think about home pregnancy tests. Even though they tell you you should not do those, everybody does. They are almost impossible to resist. With the home pregnancy test if you get a positive, there is excitement—such excitement. You know that you should not get too excited too early. You know that, but you do.

And then there was in my case in one particular round the excitement that came with a positive test result and then positive test results over many days, with going in for the blood tests and then waiting for the call and knowing what the answer was going to be because your tests over days have told you and that line has got a bit stronger on the tests. And then answering the phone, which you know to be your IVF nurse, and answering it only to hear a sombre voice on the other end and to be told that, ‘Yep, you are pregnant, but the levels aren’t right’. And they want you to come in again for another test in a couple of days to see if those levels are growing at the rate that they are meant to. So you do that. And you might have to do that two or three more times, every few days, and every one is a disappointment. Every one is, ‘No, it is not quite right. There is something not quite right’. And then eventually it is, ‘This is unsustainable. You can’t sustain this pregnancy. You are going to lose it’. And then naively asking what they can do about that, is there anything that they can do? Does that mean a termination? What does that mean? Is it a curette? And just being told, ‘No, you just have to wait for it to die itself’. And you ask how long that will take and they say it could be a week, it could be eight weeks. They do not really know. You just have to wait. And then going home and not quite knowing what to do. Do you pour yourself a glass of wine? Maybe you should not do that. And then there is the uncertainty of that and the grief that you experience and then feeling awful that you cannot celebrate this life that is currently inside you but is unsustainable.

That was my story on one occasion. Sadly, it was followed by another two, where in the lead-up to that blood test the pregnancy tests over days faded. So you had excitement followed by almost manic testing—sometimes multiple times a day—and then watching that line fade and clinging to it, almost imagining it to be darker on some days than it actually was. That is the experience for so many women—a large portion of the 25 000 women who do this each and every year—and that is the part of it that no-one tends to talk about. It can be incredibly soul-destroying at times, particularly when we all put our faces on and then go to work and we smile and we pretend that everything is fine, and so many people might not even know that you are living this because so many women do not even talk about the fact that they are there because society tells us that we are just supposed to have children. So some people do not want to admit that that is not the pathway for them, that they need to go the extra step in order to make it happen. There is a quiet grief in that. There is a quiet grief in the experience itself even for those who eventually do have success with it.

For my part I have decided to continue with the process and to continue with it alone, which presents a whole other raft of challenges, so I do want to acknowledge the many other women that make this decision, that decide that ultimately having a child should not be strapped to a particular relationship or the success of a relationship. That is what I have decided to do. I will not say I feel terribly brave in doing that, although others keep telling me it is a brave thing to do. I think it feels terrifying, quite frankly, but I am committed to it. I know I have had discussions with other women—women who have come up to me in the street post a newspaper article that appeared on my story a few weeks ago—who have told me that they are doing the same thing, old schoolfriends that have reached out and said, ‘I’m doing this too’. And that is so heartening. It is so good to know that so many others share in this journey and in this story.

For me, in closing, the change that has been put forward in this legislation will serve all of those women and so many others for so long to come, and for that reason I commend the bill to the house.

Mr WAKELING (Ferntree Gully) (15:27): Can I just start by congratulating the minister for her contribution. It was the best of the Parliament—what we just saw. Here is not just the minister, not just a member of this house, but a woman who shared her story and really explained why we are seeing this amendment before the house. It is about ensuring that we have the best legislation in this state so that women or couples who seek to go through this process are provided with the best system available to assist them in their journey, and to hopefully see the birth of a child. It was a very difficult story to listen to because it was a woman baring her soul—a woman sharing her story publicly, explaining the harrowing nature of her loss.

I have friends who have been through IVF. Some were successful, some were not. I do not presume to understand their pain, their anguish or their hurt because I have never been in that situation. But the minister, with her contribution, has really articulated her story—of what it means for so many thousands of other women who are in this very difficult situation. My mother did not have the opportunity to go through IVF, but she suffered many miscarriages. I am told that through a lot of effort on her part, with supportive doctors, I was brought into this world. I just wanted to place on record my thanks for the minister’s contribution, because I think it articulated why we are here today.

Governments of all political persuasions will introduce legislation with the best of intentions. Clearly the provisions that were put in place back in 2008, whilst they were well intentioned, did not meet the needs of the Victorian community. I think it is heartening to see this legislation before the house, which is going to remove the criminal record check provision. As the minister just explained, for her to not only have to go through this emotional roller-coaster of undertaking IVF but to be required to actually undertake a police check as part of that process really does not have any sense of fairness or sense of reasonableness in this circumstance.

I think all of us can say safely that this is a good change. This is an important change. I think we all agree that whilst this provision in the scheme of things probably never should have been introduced, we understand that it was for reasons that seemed legitimate at the time, and here we are 12 years later with the opportunity to remove the provision off the statute book.

I just wanted to say that assisted reproductive treatment has provided so many Victorians, Australians, with the opportunity of a life. There are literally thousands of people that are alive today because of ART. I know of friends whose children were conceived through this process, and I know the joy that it has brought them. But I also have spoken to women who have been through the process where it has been unsuccessful, and they feel guilt. They feel guilt because they gave up. They feel guilt that they may have in fact done something that caused the loss. We all know that they did not, but I understand that there is a loss there. If we as a Parliament do what we can to make this system fairer and easier, then I think that behoves us all.

I know of the joys of children. I have three children myself and will be tonight celebrating the birthday of my daughter. I know the joy that children bring. But also, hearing that story, I understand the anguish that women like the minister face. And I only hope, for your own journey, that you are successful. I genuinely say that on behalf of everyone.

It is an important piece of legislation. Minor as it is, it is important that we fix legislation on such an important issue to ensure that it makes the opportunities for women to access IVF services easier. With that, I commend the bill to the house.

Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (15:33): I rise to speak on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. Like the member for Dandenong, this is a topic that is very close to my heart. I have been very open in this place about my experiences with IVF, and anyone who has had this experience understands the emotional and physical toll that it takes not only on yourself but also on your partner. It is not something you easily forget, nor is it an experience that you quite get over having to do.

None of us ever grew up thinking we would have to be injecting ourselves with needles and would need a roomful of scientists and fertility specialists to get us pregnant. And I have to say I was particularly moved listening to the member for Dandenong’s story about her own experiences with IVF treatment. It is something that certainly resonates with me and reminds me of just how important our stories and our experiences are when it comes to making positive change.

At its core this bill is making positive change by making it easier and more equitable for women and couples wanting to start a family. It is about removing the invasive requirement to undergo police background and child protection checks, making the process just that little bit easier and less stressful for people wanting to become parents. It is about removing a process that would unfairly discriminate between people who can conceive naturally and those—and there are a lot of us—that need to access IVF. This is the right thing to do. It is the fair thing to do.

IVF has become a vital service for so many women and their partners wishing to start a family. Over 25 000 women a year—and I find that number staggering—in Victoria undergo IVF treatment to help them conceive. In 2018 our government initiated a 12-month independent review of the Victorian assisted reproductive treatment framework, and it became very clear through this review that background check requirements, behind the cost of the treatment itself, was the most raised concern during consultation sessions with women and their partners.

Now, when I look back at my own experiences with IVF, it makes me realise that as a society we still do not talk enough about infertility and how it affects women in our community. In a society that can be extremely sexist and places value on childbirth for women, infertility is seen as such a source of shame and disgrace. Most certainly when I first started undergoing IVF treatment over 10 years ago now no-one ever talked about infertility. No-one certainly ever admitted to going through IVF. There were so many myths and misconceptions and stigmas associated with it. I remember the only support I had, or support I felt like I had at the time, was an online group of women going through the same thing, and back then, over 10 years ago, chat rooms were actually not the norm. We were people that felt very isolated, very afraid, but we were very, very desperate to get pregnant. We had to hide all of this, and we had to just go about our daily life within the community as though nothing was wrong and the world around us was not falling apart.

I underwent IVF treatment in Queensland all those years ago and I certainly do not remember there being a police check. There were of course a lot of other invasive procedures that were quite horrifying to me as a young 27-year-old newlywed, but most certainly not a police check. After coming to Victoria I remember having a conversation with my husband about whether we wanted to try to have another child, and what that meant for us was that we would have to open a Pandora’s box and do IVF again. I remember being astounded that I would have to undergo a police check. I mean, I had had three full IVF cycles, numerous transfers, three children. I had spent tens of thousands of dollars in the process. It had caused strain on my marriage, and now, having crossed the border where procedures were no different because the science remained the same, I suddenly had to have a police check.

That seemed wrong, like I was being discriminated against for something that was not my fault. It is not like I woke up at 27 and thought IVF seemed like a fun way in which to have my children. God knows, like so many women, I cried my heart out. I screamed in anger and frustration at the unfairness of the situation, because when you are told that you will never be able to conceive a child naturally, the world around you is suddenly filled with babies and couples that fall pregnant at the drop of a hat. ‘The smell of an oily rag’ is the term I guess I hate most after spending years and years listening to women tell me that is how quickly they got pregnant. To this day I am not even sure what that term or that saying actually means or where it came from. But my point is this: being told that you are not part of the herd, that you will need IVF to get pregnant, well, that feels enormously unfair. Then being told that you will have to undergo a police check to prove you are a decent person, well, that is just entirely unfair. It is no secret in our society that parents who did not go through IVF are not all decent human beings or great parents. What I have learned over the past 11 years since starting IVF is that life is not necessarily fair and does not work out the way you would want it to.

But I am standing here in this place today happy to contribute to this bill debate because what it shows is that despite life not being fair and working out the way you want it to, policy and legislation like this bill can be. This is something we have the power over, in which we can make positive change because, have no doubt, women across this state will be grateful that they do not have to suffer the humiliation of having to fill out the paperwork for a police check. You can never actually underestimate how significant that is and what this change will bring in. In some ways times have changed with the feelings and the emotional roller-coaster for couples, but, as we have just heard in the contribution of the member for Dandenong, with the feelings you go through with IVF when you are told you will need to go and do such treatment to conceive a baby, I do not think much has changed at all. Those feelings, that roller-coaster, remains the same.

The bias against infertile women was certainly on display at the end of last year when the Queensland opposition leader decided to shame Premier Palaszczuk for not having children, as if it was some indicator that she was actually unfit to be Premier. Now, Premier Palaszczuk has opened up about her diagnosis of endometriosis and her struggles with infertility. Even before this we saw the same toxic nonsense levelled against our first female Prime Minister for the same reasons, with right-wing pollies and shock jocks calling her ‘deliberately barren’. It is very unfortunate that these attacks on female politicians are nothing new, and it is even more disappointing when it is women bringing each other down. Knowing that and still making those types of comments is absolutely appalling and incredibly offensive to the thousands of women in this country who struggle with infertility or simply do not wish to have children.

I had a phone call recently to my office from a wonderful young woman called Tegan. Tegan lives in Tarneit and she heard that our government was seeking to remove these barriers with the police checks. She was very excited. She called my office immediately to share her own experience and express her joy that we are doing this. Tegan, when she was five, was diagnosed with a very rare blood disorder, similar to cancer, and underwent extensive chemo treatment, which left her medically infertile. Tegan was lucky that when she decided to access IVF treatment to have a baby she had already been through police and child protection checks due to the nature of her employment. But even then she felt that having to go through another round of them, on top of all of the other tests which she has already had to do—the cost and the emotional journey that the process creates—was extremely unfair and unnecessarily upsetting to her. Tegan hopes to start IVF in May, and her younger sister—bless her—has offered to be an egg donor. She asked me to share her story with you because she believes that by being open and talking about her experience she will not only cut through the stigma that still exists around IVF but most importantly it will help her family and her friends to offer her the support that she and her partner need to get pregnant on this journey that they are about to undertake. So to Tegan, thank you for sharing your story with us, and we wish you the best of luck on your journey to parenthood that is ahead of you.

To the many couples out there undergoing IVF and the many more that will need it, I say to you that there are many, many women here in this chamber, and, I dare say, men, who understand your struggles. We have walked in your shoes. Keep your chin up, keep going and never, ever forget that we have got your back, because this is just the beginning. It is for these reasons that I commend this bill to the house.

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (15:43): I rise to speak on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. The bill aims to amend the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act that was enacted in 2008 to remove the requirement for criminal record checks and child protection order checks to be carried out on women before they undergo the IVF treatment procedures. Now, there has been no-one, and rightfully so, that would argue that this is not something that we should have done a long time ago. We have heard some pretty moving stories in this chamber already. For women who are challenged with the inability to have children and need some assistance, to have to go through something as demeaning as a check to see if they have got any criminal records and somehow that deems them to be fit or not as a parent is quite abhorrent. When this bill was introduced I was pleased to see my colleague, who was the Shadow Minister for Health at the time, put on the record that this was not an appropriate part of the bill and should not have been put in place. But here we are today, 12 years later, undoing that, and with great support. It is terrific to see all the women in the chamber today actually supporting this bill.

For me, 33 years ago, nothing was more important than having children—nothing. I can clearly remember thinking, ‘That is the only thing that I want to ensure I can do’. That was my highest priority in life. I was very fortunate to have four children. As a nurse I spent a lot of time around people who were challenged by health. Seeing some women going through the challenges that they went through I just used to think and reflect quite often on how fortunate I was and how that was one thing that I really could not probably have coped with. I am really pleased that over the last 30 years we have seen enormous improvements in the treatments and the service that we now offer families. One of our very good specialists who delivered one of my children actually—Dr Ian Pettigrew—went on to move to another area so he could partake in the research and development of the processes that have changed and grown and improved over the last 30 years that I have been involved in the health sector. So I would like to thank those specialists who have devoted their life—the obstetricians, the gynaecologists, the scientists—to help people overcome infertility and make breakthroughs in conditions like endometriosis that so often result in adhesions and blockages to the reproductive tract, resulting in the inability to get pregnant, among many other reasons, but that is just one.

Our health professionals have done a great job, and so we do not need legislation like this insulting families and women. As a team of parliamentarians I am sure we are all pleased to be here today to support this action of getting rid of this quite derogatory policy that was imposed on women as they go through very invasive procedures to actually have to get pregnant in these circumstances, let alone something as invasive as being questioned about one’s suitability based on any past criminal actions.

Thirty-three years on I have had, as I said in the chamber just two weeks ago, the birth of my granddaughter Fleur, and Fleur was brought into the world through this technique. Whilst I myself did not have the challenge, I could not be more pleased that what we have got today is so advanced and doing so well that we have got my beautiful young Fleur, who is a feisty little thing, I might add. She is not the most placid baby I have ever encountered, but no doubt she will have quite a lot of go in her. I have no idea where she gets that from!

I put this on the record to say thank you for all the work that has been done. It has been quite moving to listen to the stories of the member for Tarneit, the Minister for Women and my colleague the member for Lowan, who is very pregnant herself. It has been really lovely to see the women talking about the importance of this. We all wish the Minister for Women the very, very best. We will all be making sure that we are all giving her as much encouragement as we can. When she said earlier that it is a brave thing to go it alone, yes, it absolutely is, but let us all remember that it takes a village to raise a child. That is what we must remember to do. Extended families are not around like they were once, but mums are not alone. There are plenty of people around willing to help. We do put a lot of expectation on ourselves to actually raise our children on our own. I said this to my daughter-in-law the other day when I said, ‘You go and do whatever and I’ll have Fleur’, and she said, ‘No, I should be doing this on my own’. I said, ‘Never, ever should a woman be doing this on her own’. It is about making sure we get around our young mums—not that Hayley is a young, young mum. What are they? I think my eldest children are 32—actually 31 turning 32. It all goes into a bliss after so many years. That is one of my highest priorities, obviously. As a politician it is very, very hard to balance family and the responsibilities of a parliamentarian, but for my grandchildren and doing what I can do for my son and his wife and being there as the grandmother is something I prioritise quite highly. As my next son has just announced his engagement, hopefully those duties will extend further.

Back to the bill, which is really why we are here. It is to support this process and get rid of this onerous policy that no-one is denying is quite wrong so that we can show and demonstrate—I think this also demonstrates—that we care about families, because the children are our future. We are entering a really challenging time at the moment with the coronavirus pandemic. We do not know what that is going to shape up like in the next sort of six weeks to six months; we actually do not know the time frame. But we do know we need our health services in good shape. We do know we need to offer what support we can to the staff. As the member for Lowan said, she will be delivering her baby in May, which could well be at the peak of the pandemic. We need to make sure our midwives, our hospitals and our staff have everything they need. As politicians I am sure we will be working all together to make sure that everything can be done to support the health system, because that is going to be our greatest challenge over the next several months—that and the economic impact on small businesses. The impact is going to be massive, and we are all acutely aware of that today and are here to make sure we can do whatever we can to lessen that impact, particularly on the health service.

I would like to probably finish by saying that we all acknowledge the hormonal rollercoaster that this journey puts these women on. I would like to acknowledge the good work that all mums do. I wish again the Minister for Women the best of luck on her journey. I wish the member for Lowan the best with her journey and look forward to seeing her with a new infant daughter in her arms. I wish her all the best and remind her and the other women in the chamber that we are all here to assist in any way we possibly can. On that note, I commend the bill to the house.

Ms HORNE (Williamstown—Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Public Transport) (15:52): I am really pleased to make a contribution on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. I congratulate the Minister for Health in the other place on proposing these amendments to the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 that will remove the requirement for a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement to undergo a police and child protection order check before accessing assisted reproductive treatment; remove the discrimination between people who conceive naturally and those accessing assisted reproductive treatment; and reduce the costs of and delays to the treatment.

We have heard some really moving stories. Without a doubt, becoming a mum is the most amazing thing that can happen in your life, and it is a fantastic experience to be able to join with all sides of the house to be able to both congratulate people on their journey and also support this bill, because this bill will remove a process that people have found to be unfair, humiliating and distressing at a time when women receiving treatment, and their partners, are already so very anxious.

Like many of us, I am well aware of the pain that many women who come to receive assisted reproductive treatment have already undergone. I am really well aware of the heartache that has brought them to seek treatment and the heartache and devastation that often continues throughout the treatment. I remember being in this place in my first few months as a new member listening to my female colleagues bravely share their pain and heartache while debating the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment (Consent) Bill 2019, and with its successful passage we abolished an out-of-date rule that effectively allowed men to control the reproductive rights of women. I want to thank them for sharing their personal journeys of treatment, which were often described as gruelling, frequently disappointing and taking an enormous toll on them physically, mentally and financially. That is why this government is continuing to make important changes to make it easier and less stressful for Victorians to receive assisted reproductive treatment.

We know that when it comes to fertility, timing matters. We know that a few weeks can make all the difference to women waiting to undergo treatment, and this can impact on their chances of success. The removal of the requirement to conduct police checks and child protection order checks will reduce the delays to and the costs of treatment. The amendments in this bill will mean that women and their partners can access treatment earlier without unnecessary delays. I am really proud to be a member of a government that continues to lead work that will have an impact on thousands of women into the future and that will change the lives of so many couples.

This bill forms part of the Andrews Labor government’s continued commitment to review and strengthen Victoria’s assisted reproductive treatment laws. It addresses significant concern raised by community members during the independent review of assisted reproductive treatment commissioned by the Victorian government in May 2018 and undertaken by Michael Gorton. In this landmark review it was noted that the requirement for people seeking assisted reproductive treatment to obtain police and child protection checks received more comment during the public consultations and survey conducted than almost any other issue besides cost. The review heard many reports of cost, burden, delay and distress caused by this requirement but did not receive feedback from stakeholders in support of the current screening requirements for police and child protection checks. The issue continued to be raised later in consultations with stakeholders, including clinics, patients and service users, who overwhelmingly supported removing the requirement for these checks.

We are a government that is committed to promoting equality and removing discrimination in all its forms. That is what this bill does; it removes that unacceptable discrimination between people who conceive naturally and those who access assisted reproductive treatment. Currently the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 requires a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement to undergo a police and child protection order check prior to accessing assisted reproductive treatment. Section 14 of the act creates a presumption against providing treatment to a woman if the woman or her partner has returned a criminal record check that shows charges have been proven for a sexual offence of a specified kind or a conviction for a violent offence of a specified kind or where a child protection order check specifies that a child protection order has been made removing a child from the custody or guardianship of the woman or her partner.

Where a presumption against a treatment applies, a person may apply to the Patient Review Panel for a review of that presumption. The panel is an independent statutory tribunal established to consider a number of matters, including whether treatment can occur if there is a presumption against treatment. The panel must, after considering the application and having regard to certain matters, decide whether or not a barrier to treatment applies. Figures from the Patient Review Panel since 2012 have shown that of the 180 cases of presumptions against treatment that it heard, the overwhelming majority of cases were approved and only 12 instances were upheld. Following commencement of the proposed legislation, any existing presumptions against treatment based on a police or child protection order check will no longer apply.

A number of important safeguards will remain in place in deciding whether to treat any person, including a person that had a presumption against treatment prior to the commencement of the legislation or had a barrier to treatment. An assisted reproductive treatment provider will still consider the guiding principles, which include the welfare and interests of persons born or to be born as a result of the treatment procedures, and this is paramount. An assisted reproductive treatment provider will continue to be able to refuse treatment if the provider or doctor reasonably believes that a child that may be born as a result of the procedure would be at risk of abuse or neglect. The Patient Review Panel will still be able to review any decision by a provider to refuse treatment on this basis.

In the last 10 years since the checks were introduced, the regulatory landscape for child safeguarding in Victoria has changed significantly. It includes the introduction of the reportable conduct scheme, child safe standards, child information and family violence information-sharing schemes, the expansion of mandatory reporting of child abuse, the working with children check scheme and significant government investment in initiatives addressing family violence.

This is a bill about fairness. It is about removing a discriminatory requirement that those Victorians hoping to grow their family with assisted reproductive treatment must first undergo, which can cause those long delays and add to an already costly process. In the words of one recipient of treatment who provided a submission to the Gorton review:

The requirement to conduct a police check before being able to undertake IVF in Victoria is an humiliating experience. It is as if our right to parent is being judged on the result of this check. What a joke. No other individuals or coupled are required to submit themselves to this prior to conceiving a child.

And from the Fertility Society of Australia’s submission:

It is a requirement that discriminates; fertile members of the public against whom similar convictions are recorded are not required to have these checks before starting a family. … Safeguards exist to protect children at risk whether they are born following a natural conception or an ART conception.

These amendments are another step towards ensuring Victoria’s assisted reproductive treatment laws are fair, without discrimination, up to date and continue to deliver our commitment to deliver greater choice and control to women. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr CARBINES (Ivanhoe) (16:01): I am pleased to make a contribution on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. Of course the bill will remove the requirement for a woman, her partner if she has one and parties to a surrogacy arrangement to undergo police and child protection order checks before accessing assisted reproductive treatment. In particular, quoting from the second-reading speech from the minister:

It will remove a process that people have found to be unfair, humiliating and distressing at a time when women receiving treatment and their partners are already feeling anxious about their fertility. It will also reduce costs and delays to treatment.

I also want to acknowledge previous members who have spoken in this place and shared their personal experiences with regard to these matters. It is much appreciated in the conduct and discussion about the bill and the recommendations here.

During those consultations undertaken by the Department of Health and Human Services in August last year stakeholders overwhelmingly supported removing the requirement for these checks. Can I say also that it was pointed out that the assisted reproductive treatment provider must still consider the guiding principles in section 5 of the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, including the welfare and interests of persons born or to be born as a result of treatment procedures. Lastly, I think the Patient Review Panel in particular still has the ability to review decisions by a provider to refuse treatment on that basis.

It is important to note that over the past decade, as the minister said, the regulatory landscape for child safeguarding in Victoria has changed significantly. The reportable conduct scheme, child safe standards, child information and family violence information-sharing schemes, the expansion of mandatory reporting of child abuse, working with children check schemes and significant government investment in initiatives addressing family violence all underpin the nub of the legislation and what we are seeking to do here.

It comes about too, can I say, as affirmed at the recent election a year ago, as part of our commitment to ensure more Victorians can start families and discover the joys of parenthood through IVF and other assisted reproductive treatments. In the past year alone some 13 000 women accessed assisted reproductive treatment services here in Victoria. That is a lot of women, a lot of families, a lot of people in our community who are working their way through clinical trials and seeking assisted reproductive treatment work to have a family. A lot of people in our community have a stake in legislation in this space and the work of our clinicians. That $32 million commitment to public IVF services for low-income Victorians at the election is a significant commitment from our government to expand the opportunities for more Victorians to have families. That also includes partnerships with regional and rural health services, and there was money allocated in last year’s budget to begin that work and that process.

How did we get here? In April 2018 the previous Minister for Health commissioned Michael Gorton, AM, to report on a 12-month review of the ART framework, and on 3 July last year the Minister for Health published the final report of the independent review of assisted reproductive treatment conducted of course by Michael Gorton.

Where I want to go next in relation to those matters, in full support of course of the aspects that we have pulled out in relation to this legislation, is to take people back to March 2012 and the Law Reform Committee, of which I was a member, in the 57th Parliament. That Victorian Law Reform Committee tabled its final report on the inquiry into access by donor-conceived people to information about donors. The media release from the chair, the former member for Prahran Clem Newton-Brown, reads:

The Committee’s key recommendation is that the Victorian Government introduce legislation to allow all donor-conceived people to obtain identifying information about their donors.

…

… the Committee considers that donor-conceived people have a right to know the identity of the person who contributed half of their biological makeup …

The committee chair said:

The Committee is convinced that this right must be given precedence, even over the wishes of those donors who would like to remain anonymous.

Since that time there has been a government interim response under the previous government on 11 October 2012, a government response on 20 August 2013 and also a private members bill that I worked on with the former member for Brunswick, now a member for Eastern Victoria in the other place, with of course the strong leadership of the shadow cabinet and the now Leader of the Government in the other place. Their advocacy of that work I think helped to promote and prompt the then government, the Liberal government, to action recommendations of that committee work.

What we then saw of course was that that legislation did not go far enough. There was still a requirement for donors at that time to give permission for information to be provided to donor-conceived people. So of course Labor, in opposition, leading up to the 2014 election, both through our election policies and the platform, took the commitment to the people that if we were elected, we would provide new laws to give all donor-conceived Victorians the right to know their heritage. On 23 February 2016 that legislation was able to pass the Parliament. The amendments meant that from March 2017 people born before 1998 were able to access the same identifying information without the need for the donor’s consent. Knowledge about one’s heritage can contribute to a person’s sense of identity and is critical for medical treatments and family planning, as pointed out by the then Minister for Health, now the Attorney-General. We believe all donor-conceived people should have the right to know about their genetic heritage no matter when their donors donated.

There has been excellent work by our Parliament over a long period of time, and here we are nearly 10 years on continuing to act in the best interests of those who are not only donor conceived but also those who seek to access assisted reproductive treatment.

At the heart of these matters as well are not just those who seek assisted reproductive treatment under the act. What is also at the heart of legislation in this particular area are donor-conceived people, and that takes us back to the work of Michael Gorton, AM, in the review work that he has done and his report. I want to take the opportunity to quickly flag some of the concerns of donor-conceived people about further legislative change that will come before this Parliament in relation to Michael Gorton’s report, which has been accepted by our government and is also part of the election commitments that our government has made.

In relation to recommendation 56, some of the concerns of donor-conceived people need to be put on the record at this time; firstly, that removing the current application process would increase the imports of overseas donations, including from countries where there are weak institutions around donation practices. Among other things this may present challenges for donor-conceived people who wish to identify and connect with biological relatives overseas. If the authority is not able to manage limits on the number of imported eggs and sperm through oversight of the application process, there will be an increased risk that donor-conceived people will be genetically related to many other donor-conceived people overseas, of inadvertently partnering with a sibling, and of donors and siblings not wanting to connect with their relatives. Further, the existing application process provides other safeguards. These include reducing the risk of commercial trading in donor gametes, and ensuring that donors receive counselling from a counsellor in Victoria and provide informed consent. The latter is important to support the government’s right-to-know laws, which enabled donor-conceived people to learn about their identity and heritage and better connect with their donors.

Can I say to donor-conceived people who are listening today or who will later read our debates and discussions in relation to this that I know they fully support the recommendations that are in the bill before the house today. But given that those recommendations have all come out of the Michael Gorton report and that other recommendations will see further legislation come before this house, either throughout this year or into next year, it is important to note that, as I understand it as the Parliamentary Secretary for Health and as the member for Ivanhoe who has worked closely with members of this place but also in past parliaments in the Law Reform Committee, we will see greater justice, openness, equality and accountability in this sector and opportunities for donor-conceived people to have the same human rights as any other human being. Our government is considering the feedback of all those stakeholders in relation to the priority recommendations, including recommendation 56. That includes a range of feedback from assisted reproductive treatment clinics, the regulator—the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority—and some donor-conceived people, their parents and donors.

There is a lot of great work that our Parliament has done over nearly the past decade in relation to the advocacy and advancement of the rights of donor-conceived people but also all of those connected in that process. What is important too in the heart and the nub of the legislation today and in the reforms and changes that we are making is recognising the journey and the respect for those who seek assisted reproductive treatment to have a family. That is so significant and important. What is also at the core of all the work that we do and the legislative changes we make in this place is we refer back to Michael Gorton’s work that our government asked to be done. That is the work that is informing our legislative changes and advances into the future. At the heart of all of the changes that we look to make, as we implement other recommendations that he has put forward together with our election commitments to provide more opportunities for people to access assisted reproductive treatment, are the rights and obligations and equality for donor-conceived people.

Ms THOMAS (Macedon) (16:11): I am very pleased to be able to speak on this bill and to join the debate today. As other speakers have indicated, the bill is in response to a finding in the Gorton review of the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008. I too was very pleased, as the member for Ivanhoe has already indicated, when the former Minister for Health announced that this review would be undertaken back in April 2018 because it had been quite a considerable time since this act had been reviewed. What we know is that many things have changed. In fact I think it has been a few years since the act has been reviewed and many things have changed in that time, not only technology but community attitudes and so on, so it was a very timely announcement.

What that review found amongst many other things—and I was surprised when I heard this—was that the requirement to undergo police and child protection order checks was the number one concern raised, second only to the cost of treatment. I was surprised because I was not aware myself of that requirement and I was aghast that it was a requirement. I understand full well the type of humiliation that women and their partners who are required to undergo police checks would feel as a consequence of that. The bill does away with this requirement, ending discrimination against would-be parents who happen to require fertility assistance while speeding up the process and reducing costs.

In the course of the department seeking feedback on this change, stakeholders commented that that requirement was offensive, unfair and humiliating; was unnecessary, particularly as some clinics noted that in their experience the majority of presumptions against treatment are not upheld by the Patient Review Panel; caused women and their partners distress and anger in addition to the burden of infertility; was not based on sound evidence; was discriminatory, as it does not apply to other fertility procedures nor to the general population who conceived naturally; and represented the most common complaint by clinics and patients since the act began in 2010. As one submitter said:

The requirement to conduct a police check before being able to undertake IVF in Victoria is an humiliating experience. It is as if our right to parent is being judged on the result of this check. What a joke. No other individuals or couples are required to submit themselves to this prior to conceiving a child.

Melbourne IVF reported that:

The criminal check takes approximately 5 weeks to receive Child Protection Order Check (CPOC) takes approximately 2 weeks to receive. Both are a barrier to immediate treatment. Often patients cannot enter into treatment when they desire to do so due to the time taken to receive their criminal check and CPOC by the clinic.

As I said earlier, this is a bill that is about fairness through ending discrimination, and because we know that when it comes to fertility treatment timing matters it is about doing what we can to ensure that there are not unnecessary barriers in the face of women and their partners seeking in-vitro fertilisation. It is important also to note that the Gorton review, which I referred to earlier, received no feedback from stakeholders in support of the current screening requirements.

I do want people to know, however, that there are safeguards in place. Indeed, in deciding whether to treat any person, including a person that had a presumption against treatment prior to commencement of the proposed legislation or had a previous barrier to treatment, an assisted reproductive treatment (ART) provider must still consider the guiding principles in section 5 of the act, including that the welfare and interests of persons born or to be born as a result of treatment procedures are paramount. An assisted reproductive treatment provider will continue to be able to refuse treatment if the provider or doctor reasonably believes that a child that may be born as a result of a procedure would be at risk of abuse or neglect. The Patient Review Panel will still be able to review any decision by a provider to refuse treatment on this basis.

It has been 10 years since the checks were introduced, and the regulatory landscape for child safeguarding in Victoria has changed significantly. Thank goodness for that. The Andrews Labor government is making these important changes to make it easier for Victorians to access IVF treatment. This is a genuine issue that our government has acted on and addressed swiftly. When it comes to fertility treatment, as I said earlier, timing matters. We know that a few weeks can make all the difference to women waiting to undergo ART, and this can impact on their chances of success. The removal of the requirement will reduce the costs of and delays to treatment.

I did want to spend the last few minutes of my contribution just observing and congratulating my colleagues for their contributions today. Indeed, the last time we spoke on an ART bill, again, people shared very deep and personal stories, and I really commend their bravery in doing that. To hear the experiences particularly of the member for Dandenong and the member for Tarneit, it really puts what we do in this place into perspective.

While I do not have a personal story to share, I put my name on the speaking list today on behalf of the hundreds of women in my own electorate who are or have been seeking IVF treatment. We know that whether treatment is successful or not, it can be an isolating, emotional and challenging journey, and an incredibly difficult subject to talk about. So in speaking again today I want to say to women in my community: I hear you, I seek to understand the circumstances that you find yourself in, and as your representative I am proud to speak on bills that address particular needs of women at particular times in their lives; and indeed that seek to expand their sexual and reproductive freedoms. I see this bill as part of a suite of those types of bills that have come before this house, led, I might say, by the Andrews Labor government.

I also like to speak on these bills because I am particularly incensed by those rogue operators—dodgy providers—who are out there. This government has again commissioned a review into those providers, and I note recommendations both of the Gorton review and indeed of the review that the health complaints commissioner is undertaking. Both of these reviews deal with providers who perhaps are not being as transparent as they can be about the real success rates of IVF. Women and their partners deserve to have as much information as possible. That information should be accurate; it should not be misleading. I spoke about this last time I spoke on ART. Four Corners did a very good job exposing how some providers use language in ways that actually disguise the true live birth rates for their clinics. This to me is completely and utterly unacceptable. The thought that people might be in this business to make a dollar out of women and their partners—people who are suffering, people who are doing whatever it takes to bring a child into this world—is to me completely abhorrent. So I look forward to the government’s full response to the Gorton report and indeed to the health complaints commissioner inquiry.

I am very proud of the work that this government does. Of course we went into the 2018 election with a commitment to make sure that IVF is more affordable for all Victorians. It is a very expensive procedure, and we want to ensure that income is not a barrier to accessing this procedure that can bring so much joy to so many couples and families through the birth of a live baby. It is very important bill. I commend it to the house. Thank you.

Mr HALSE (Ringwood) (16:21): Can I just note some fine contributions in this Assembly this afternoon—just then from the member for Macedon and from the member for Tarneit, and from the member for Dandenong earlier. I am privileged to speak on this bill this afternoon.

This government, the Andrews Labor government, has shown that we govern to eliminate discrimination in all its forms. I will start by owning up to having had a real challenge in writing this speech. The challenge was that this seems like such a commonsense amendment to make, because here is a bill that simply removes another layer of discrimination—discrimination against families who seek fertility treatment. What currently faces families—and it could be a woman and her partner, if she has one, or the parties to a surrogacy arrangement—who make the already difficult decision to seek assisted reproductive treatment is an often drawn-out and humiliating criminal check process. A police and child protection order check conducted at a time when women receiving treatment and their partners are already feeling anxious about their fertility—that increases costs and introduces delays to treatment. The criminal check process was never designed for this purpose. I note that—and a number of colleagues have noted this as well—data from the Patient Review Panel, where appeals against the presumption against alternative reproductive therapy are heard, has since 2012 shown that of the 180 cases referred, the overwhelming majority of cases were approved and only 12 instances were upheld. So I got the calculator out and found that was just 7 per cent, if you round it up. It is another example of some of the people who are the most vulnerable in our community having their motives impugned for wanting to start a family.

We often underestimate the role of families in our societies. It is not just a moral issue; it is an economic issue as well. We know that when people are in family units, when they live together, they live happier and healthier lives. Statistically, they live longer, they support each other and they participate in their communities. This amendment removes a layer of discrimination against particular families and sets us on a path of supporting them just as we would any other family.

Let us also raise another clear moral contradiction in the current law. If any person who commits a crime becomes a parent in the natural way, there is—believe it or not—no criminal check that is required. They are just treated as any other parent would be—and rightly so. Why then should it be the case that someone in a stable enough relationship to go with their partner to seek treatment to conceive a child is subjected to this process? These are not decisions taken lightly. They are not quick, and they involve advice from medical experts. This bill removes that process, but it removes it while still retaining the ethical responsibilities of clinics to consider the welfare of the child. An assisted reproductive treatment provider will continue to be able to refuse treatment if the provider or a doctor reasonably believes that a child that may be born as a result of a procedure would be at risk of abuse or neglect. Also, if treatment is refused, the Patient Review Panel will still be able to review any decision by a provider to refuse treatment on this basis. If the medical professionals involved in the treatment have any reason to believe that the child could be at risk of abuse or neglect, treatment can be denied and that case can be referred to the panel.

I note that this bill has been well received by community stakeholders and was one of the most requested changes by people receiving treatment—with lived experience of what they have been through—and it comes off the back of a thorough 12-month review led by Michael Gorton. This criminal check provision for families seeking alternative reproductive treatment has to go. It is an onerous process based on an unfair presumption that people who want to start a family might have nefarious intentions. It is a particularly troubling position to start from—that people who want to start a family have nefarious intentions. I think it is the responsibility of our government and of this chamber to think much better of Victorians. This bill removes yet another discriminatory barrier to those who seek treatment—the treatment that they need, the treatment that is appropriate—and in that it is a step in the right direction. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms KILKENNY (Carrum) (16:28): I am very pleased to rise and to be able to contribute to the debate on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. I also want to acknowledge some of the incredible contributions from members in this house today who have shared such personal stories with us. It is a privilege to be able to hear those stories in this place.

Victoria’s assisted reproductive treatment industry certainly has much to be proud of. We have seen thousands of women and families supported in their desire to have children and to create families. We have seen clinical improvements to fertility care and world-leading research regarding IVF over the years as well as better health outcomes for patients and for families—and for people who of course are born through ART we have seen a lot change over the decade in terms of social attitudes towards ART and IVF. There has been a greater commitment to patient-focused care and there has been greater transparency around the procedures, the treatment and the information that is available to ensure that people choosing whether to enter the journey of IVF and ART are best able to make informed choices to do so.

We have heard that in the last year alone nearly 13 000 women have actually accessed ART and IVF procedures at our registered assisted reproductive treatment clinics across Victoria. Of course this number has been steadily growing over the past decade, and we want to see that access increase. We want that choice to be available to more women and to more families as well, so that they have that capacity to be able to choose to embark on that journey if they so wish to.

Just a bit of background: back in 2000 our Victorian legislation limited IVF to married women only. Quite happily the High Court ruled that this was discriminatory, and in fact that law was ultimately repealed and replaced by the current 2008 act. That followed quite an intensive three-year review by the then Victorian Law Reform Commission. It was then Attorney-General Rob Hulls who introduced the current act, which then gave single women and same-sex couples legal access to ART in Victoria, and obviously the legacy from these reforms is clear. We have seen it help many thousands of women create a family, and this is tremendous news. In 2018 the Andrews Labor government commissioned a further 12-month independent review of the ART framework. That was led by Michael Gorton, and I want to acknowledge Michael Gorton for his comprehensive review into ART, which came up with I think it was more than 80 recommendations, many of which have already been implemented and some are now under review. This package of reforms and recommendations was led by the community response to ART in Victoria and a number of concerns that were raised. I should note that the industry has responded to those concerns and is engaging with the community to make ART much more patient-focused, transparent and informative for patients who are proceeding on the journey.

The bill before us now addresses another major concern that arose during that Michael Gorton review, and it is something that the clinics have told us and the community has told us. It is probably one of the major concerns facing people who are considering ART, and that is this requirement on clinics and in particular on counsellors to compel patients and clients to undergo criminal record checks or child protection order checks. In fact under the current act an assisted reproductive clinic cannot provide treatment to women unless the woman and her partner, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement, have first undergone a police and child protection order check. I am so pleased that the bill before us today will remove this requirement and in doing so obviously remove the discrimination that currently exists between people who can conceive naturally and those who are electing to go down the ART path.

This is really important, because as we have heard directly from people who have been involved in this process, the requirements to undergo these kinds of criminal checks, these police checks, are demeaning. They are humiliating. They are also unfair, and in fact the question needs to be asked: why is it that people who conceive naturally should not be required to undergo these checks but those who wish to conceive using ART are required to undergo these police checks? The answer is of course: they should not.

I do want to flag that we have a bit of a shameful past here in Victoria around regulating people’s fitness to parent. We have seen Aboriginal children removed from their families. We have seen children removed from parents who might have had an intellectual disability or a physical disability. We have seen forced sterilisation, particularly of women. This is a shameful past, and we still have a long way to go to right those wrongs of the past. Just like those earlier regulations, which were ostensibly put forward as a way of protecting those children, you can see a similar push as a background to the reason why these police checks might be in place for ART, but they should not be there. It is not the place for them.

Obviously the safeguarding of the protection of children is foremost in the way that we operate, in the regulations that we put forward, in all of the amendments that we make, in all of our reforms that we introduce with child protection, with our family violence reforms, with reportable conduct and with child safe standards. We are doing so much work in that area, and that is where quite correctly and rightly that work should be done. But to discriminate against women and their partners who are wishing to access ART and to compel them to undergo police checks and child protection order checks is discriminatory and unfair and, as we have heard, demeaning and humiliating for a whole bunch of women and their partners, particularly in a time that is already distressing, that is already a time that is difficult, that is challenging, that is exhausting emotionally, physically and of course financially.

This bill is a tremendous step in addressing that discrimination. It is about equality, but it is about more than that. It is also about empathy and compassion and showing that Parliament has that capacity to understand that we need to address these issues that pose barriers and challenges for women and their partners, to address something that others in our community do not have to address or do not have as a barrier in their way.

This is not an issue of removing red tape. As I have said, it is so much more than that. It is a message to our communities out there that, as we know as part of the Andrews Labor government, equality is not negotiable, that we need to be reviewing our regulations, our laws, to make sure that everyone has equal access to services. If that means that is access to services to be able to create a family, then that is what we need to provide. That is exactly what we are doing with the introduction of this bill, removing the requirement on ART clinics to compel patients to undergo those police checks, those child protection order checks. It is removing that barrier, removing that discrimination, and again completely consistent and in accordance with the Andrews Labor government’s agenda of equality for everyone in the state of Victoria. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr PEARSON (Essendon) (16:38): I am delighted to join the debate, which has been a very thoughtful and very considered debate to date. I joined the Labor Party and I sought to join the state parliamentary Labor Party because I have been motivated by fairness—what I think is fair and what I think is right—and I have always believed in the power of the state and the power of this great institution to introduce laws that will seek redress and will create a fairer and more decent and more compassionate society.

I have always believed that when you contest political power through the ballot box in order to have a majority on the floor of this place, then that is the best chance you have got to create laws and develop policies and programs that are fair, that are equitable and that are just. So a bill like this comes down to what is fair and what is right and what is just.

For so many members of our community you meet someone, you fall in love, you make the determination at an appropriate time that you want to have a family, and it just happens. For many people it is just like that. It is just a seamless exercise and you have your family, and you decide: will we have two children or will we have three or in some cases more? Then life goes on, and it is not always easy. Indeed all families have their challenges, but on that particular point for many members in our community and our society it is an easy proposition to get your head around, but for so many families that is not the case, for so many couples that is not the case.

I am one of two in my family. I say I am the eldest because I am the eldest surviving sibling, but my parents gave birth to an older brother who was two years older than me who had a serious birth defect and he died a couple of days after he was born. Subsequent to that my mother had a miscarriage, so when I arrived on the scene I was indulged. I was very grateful and I was very fortunate, but I remember at the time growing up just that dark shadow that was cast over my family that had been there before I arrived but never ever really went away. Even to this day my parents will still acknowledge the birthdate of my older brother.

Bear in mind this was 1971. This was a long time ago, a long time before IVF, but I remember the feeling growing up in an environment where childbirth was not an easy thing, that falling pregnant and sustaining a pregnancy to full term was something that did not happen easily, and it was something that was very fraught, and for my parents it was a really, really difficult time in their lives. I raise this point today just to try and provide I guess a sense of, as the member for Carrum my good friend says, empathy for those who have gone through similar challenges now. At one level you would think that the ready provision of IVF would make it easier, and perhaps for many people it does. Perhaps indeed there are many families out there now who have children because they have had the availability to access technology that would otherwise have been denied to them. But for many others in our community that is something that has been denied to them. It is something that they do not have and they have no access to.

Compounding that stress, the trials and the struggle is this onerous, punitive regime that has been put in place. Maybe at the time when the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 was originally devised and developed it was designed because it was trying to mitigate against the off-chance that there might have been an issue, but I think what we have seen with the passage of time is it has been a barrier for many women being able to access IVF. It has made many women go through an unfair, unjust and onerous process for questionable benefit and value, and that is why it is important that the law be changed. Because it is not fair and it is not reasonable for a woman who is going through a very challenging and difficult period in her life to have to then go through a police check.

So a bill like this is right and it is just and it is important. You sometimes envisage, ‘What sort of society do we want to live in? Where do we want to go?’. For me, I want it to be that rich mosaic—the beauty through the diversity. The fact that we have got so many different nationalities in our midst who call this place their home, who call this Parliament their Parliament, the fact that we have got so many people who have got different faiths and different beliefs, the fact we have got so many different people who have diverse sexual identities or diverse family relationships—what is a family?—for me, is something I really yearn for and I wish for, and a bill like this is really important.

The minister at the table, the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, and I are both refugees from Wantirna. I remember growing up in Wantirna in the 1970s and 1980s, and it was a white-bread community. You had to fit in, or you could leave. It was very straight down the line, no mucking around; you know, you liked your footy and you liked the cricket. If you were a leg-spin bowler, there was something quite wrong with you until Warnie came about. In its own way it was home, but it was very suburban and you had to fit in. Goodness me, at the school I went to—if you had come out as gay in the 1980s at my school, God, it was just awful. That was then. That was the time, but we have moved on.

We have moved on because of bills like this, because a bill like this is about justice and fairness. It is about recognising the fact that we are all different, we all have a different lived experience and we are all on a different trajectory. We come here in this place as legislators. We come in here as parliamentarians, and for those of us on this side of the house we come in here because we want to make things just and fair and right, because that is what we believe in. We know that by coming here together, collectively and collaboratively working together on behalf of our great movement and our great party, we can make life easier for so many people in our community who would otherwise not have a voice and who would otherwise have to go through the shame and the indignity of, in this case, having to go through a police check just because they want to be a mum. That is all they want: they just want to be a mum or they want to be a parent, and they have to go through this onerous process.

A bill like this is a straightforward bill. I think, as other people have spoken, you sort of sometimes wonder, ‘Why has it taken so long?’ or, ‘Why are we doing this?’. It just seems to be so self-evident, but when you apply yourself and when you are disciplined, when you try to make sure that you modernise the statute books, you have got to go end to end. It cannot just be the superficial stuff. You have got to go from end to end and make sure that you use the full powers of the state to be able to create the state that you have in mind, the society you want to live in, the community you want to live in, a fair community, a just community, a diverse and rich community and a community which basically recognises the fact that there is just such rich beauty in the diversity. A bill like this is incredibly important, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms HALL (Footscray) (16:48): I am very pleased to contribute to the debate on a reform that is long overdue. As someone—I know there are a number of us in this place—who has felt the sting of discrimination when you go through this process, I feel doubly pleased to be able to support this bill. I will speak a little bit about the terrible day I had to get a police check a little bit later, but I would like to start by acknowledging my friend the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and her contribution and my other friend the member for Tarneit. Thank you both for sharing your stories, because you make it easier for other women who are going through that very difficult process. I know it takes a toll telling your story as well, so thank you. I think there have been some really lovely contributions to this from across the chamber, and it is an acknowledgement that, as the member for Essendon just said, this is in its simplest form just about equality and fairness and the kind of society that we want to live in.

As many people have noted, the Andrews Labor government commissioned an independent review of the Victorian assisted reproductive treatment framework in 2018, and as a newly preselected Labor candidate I was really proud of that announcement. I know that in my electorate of Footscray there are probably hundreds of women right now who are going through IVF or ART, and it is an incredibly difficult period in your life. You know, it felt like a huge honour then, as a candidate, to be so proud of the Labor Party for reviewing this system which, as we know from the Four Corners exposé on this industry, is incredibly flawed. Often people are treated in unscrupulous ways, exploited, and there have certainly been some dodgy operators. So for the government to review this system—and now, as a member of this place, to be able to contribute to removing one of those pieces of discrimination that exists within IVF treatment—I am very proud of that.

The review made 80 wideranging recommendations, and 16 of them are currently being actioned by the government or have been implemented. The final report, released in July last year, found that the requirement to undergo police and child protection order checks was the number one concern raised during consultation. That is pretty shocking, because the IVF process can be terrible from start to finish. And the cost can be absolutely crippling, but so is the day-to-day grief and stress that you go through—that your body goes through physically, but also mentally that you go through—often after years of trying to have a baby naturally. To then be subjected to a process where you feel like you are on a conveyor belt, and the conveyor belt stops every now and then and you hand over your credit card—financially, you know, it can be crippling. So for this to be the number one concern I think says a lot about, you know, the added grief that it adds to an already difficult process.

The review received no feedback from stakeholders in support of the current screening requirements for police and child protection checks. Stakeholders consulted included representatives of the ART clinics, the child advocacy groups, the regulator, administrative bodies and law enforcement agencies, who I think will probably be very pleased to not have their time wasted having to do these checks. The stakeholders overwhelmingly supported the removal of the requirements for these checks. And as I have said, it will remove a process that people have found unfair, onerous and distressing, just to name a few of the emotions that you go through.

Other feedback we have received from stakeholders during the consultation process was that the checks felt humiliating—and certainly I felt humiliated when I went through it—ultimately unnecessary and highly discriminatory. Obviously it does not apply to other forms of fertility treatment, and if a couple falls pregnant naturally, no-one involved has to undergo police or background checks. However, if a couple seeking reproductive technology returns a criminal record check showing charges have been proven, then they may be denied treatment. And in order to get the treatment that they need, they have to appeal the decision to the Patient Review Panel. Since 2012, of the 180 cases of presumptions against treatment that have been heard, only 12 prohibitions have been upheld.

Around 25 000 Victorian women and their partners access ART in Victoria each year and, as I mentioned, in 2015 I was one of those women. The day I had to get the police check completed I remember walking down Queen Street—no, Elizabeth Street—trying to find a pharmacy that would sign my stat decs, and none of the pharmacists would do it. At that stage I was just at the end of my emotional tether in this process. I had the police forms in my hand. I just could not get anyone to sign it. Eventually I found a pharmacist who would sign it if I paid, you know, five dollars—or whatever it was.

I remember getting the forms completed and going out and sitting on a park bench and crying, and just thinking, ‘The years that I have spent trying to have a baby, and now I have to go through this’. I remember thinking very clearly—I will not use the word that I was thinking—it was just so unfair and felt so wrong. And that was not the only time during IVF that I walked out of work and sat on a park bench and cried, but it just added so much grief to the process. I am so proud to be here today, and I will be very proud to vote to get rid of this discrimination.

I am also really pleased that the Andrews Labor government is making IVF more affordable for people. Because, you know, your credit card or your income should not determine whether you can become a parent or access this treatment, and it is very expensive treatment. We also know that fertility is about timing. When a few hours can make a difference in terms of treatment, the five-week delays of these police checks are just excruciating—waiting to get that back and to get approval to commence your treatment.

The Andrews Labor government has taken on an industry that has needed to have a really good look at the way it operates. To anyone struggling through the lengthy and emotionally draining process of ART or IVF, I wish you the happiest news. I hope that you get to see those two pink lines on that test. To the women of Footscray undergoing this treatment, I wish you well as well.

Ms SPENCE (Yuroke) (16:58): I am very pleased to rise in support of the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. I was feeling a lot braver about speaking on this bill until I listened to the contributions of the member for Footscray, the Minister for Women, the member for Tarneit and other contributions. But anyway, here goes. I have spoken in this place before about my experience with assisted reproductive treatment, or ART, with IVF treatment. Whilst I have no regrets about going through that treatment, for me and Kosmos it was not a pleasant experience and it was not a successful venture.

It is worth mentioning that if you have not undergone that treatment or known someone who has undergone that treatment, you may not be too familiar with what is involved. ART can range from pretty unpleasant right through to downright gruelling. It involves a variety of drugs in a variety of forms from nasal sprays to tablets, to injectables, much probing, scanning, surgical egg retrievals, embryo transfers, failures, repeat cycles et cetera. For those that are undergoing ART, of which IVF is only one form, this is a terrible journey. It can be a very long and terrible journey. For those who have success, it is a terrible journey with a wonderful outcome, but for those who do not have success, like us, it is just a terrible journey.

As I have previously mentioned in this place, I do not remember how many IVF cycles we went through, but I do remember the last one because it ended in a later miscarriage than the other failures, after which we were both physically and emotionally beaten. I know that you are not supposed to refer to them as failures. I also know that you are not supposed to buy pregnancy tests and use them every day, but anyone who has been an IVF patient knows that you buy them by the dozen and you use them as often as you are told not to. You check those lines and you check how dark the lines are, and then you deny that you have done it and then you confide in someone that you have. That is just one of the little secrets that you have as an IVF patient. Anyhow, after going through that, at the very least we knew that we had to take a significant break, and that was even if we continued on at all with that treatment. That was in mid-2008.

But something happened later that year that really added insult to the injury of what was our terrible journey of ART. We went back to our specialist around six months later to do the check-in and have a discussion about what we wanted to do next. We were still pretty gutted about what had gone on and we were nowhere near ready to move on, still physically and emotionally beaten and still carrying a fair bit of grief, when we were told that the rules were changing. To continue on this journey, a journey that we had already been on for two years at that point, we now needed to go and have police checks to prove that we were fit to be parents. We needed to prove that we did not have histories of sexual or violent offences or having children removed from our custody, which we did not. Essentially we needed to prove that we were fit to be parents. Still feeling physically beaten, emotionally beaten, grieving a loss that you do not think anyone else possibly could understand, it was honestly just like some cruel joke that someone was playing on us.

If people on this terrible journey of ART that are hopeful for parenthood were not going through enough, couples were now required to get a police background check as a precondition of treatment. It may seem like something small—a police check, a small fee, a delay to treatment—but it is actually so much more than that. At a time for us when we were already physically and emotionally beaten this was so insulting. It was insulting, it was discriminatory, it was hurtful. I know that that was not the intention of the legislation but that in effect was what the legislation was doing.

The absolute kicker for us was that we were already parents. We were required to have a police check that we were fit to be parents when we were already parents to Adam, who at that stage was a teenager. We were so committed to having another child that we had survived parenthood through to having one that was a teenager, at which point most people would go, ‘Hey, we’re now counting down the years until we don’t have to do this anymore’. And we were ready to stump up to do it again just to be told, ‘No, no, no, no. You’ve got to go and prove that you’re fit to do this’. I do not know whether it was crazy or brave, but we were prepared to do it just to be told, ‘No, no, you just might not be fit to do that’. Even though there was nothing in our pasts that a police check would have found that would have prevented us from continuing treatment, what if there was? What would that have meant for Adam? And the answer to that is nothing; it would not have meant anything for Adam. But what this requirement really did was it reinforced that there were two classes of parents. The first class of parents were those that were parents as of right, those who could conceive naturally and without question. Another class had to prove themselves suitable, had to prove themselves fit to be parents.

The Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, in section 14 as it currently stands, creates a presumption against providing treatment to a patient if either applicant returns a police or a child protection order check where there is a history of certain sexual or violent offences or a child has been removed from their custody. If there is an adverse finding, there is that presumption against treatment. But that is not the full story. The presumption is actually created before then. There is an implied presumption for those who seek access to ART that they are not actually fit to be parents unless proven otherwise. They cannot access treatment until they prove they are fit to be parents by not having these offences or child protection issues in their backgrounds.

This second class of parents has a presumption against them from the get-go. There is an implied presumption that they are not fit to be parents, that they need to prove otherwise before treatment can even commence. The presumption can be reinforced by that adverse finding, but its genesis is not in that adverse finding: it is established on day one when you are referred or accepted as an ART patient. I found this outrageous at the time, and I still find it to be outrageous. This is, and it was, insulting. It is discriminatory and it is hurtful. I do not for a minute think that it was the intention of the legislation, but for me that was the effect.

For some people I get that this is not a big deal, and good for them, but for me the timing of the introduction of this requirement was too much because it was just adding insult to the injury of a terrible ART journey. That is my experience; I am sure others have very different ones. Perhaps if it had been part of the process when I was starting from scratch, it may just have been another piece of paperwork, another part of the application process. Listening to the member for Footscray, I do not think so. Also, knowing that this was the one issue that was raised, second to fees, in the Gorton review despite it being excluded from the terms of reference for that review, I do not think so. I think despite what point your treatment started this is a very significant issue to patients who have been seeking ART.

What this bill does is it removes that requirement for women, and their partners if they have them, to have these police and child protection orders, and I am very pleased that it does. I thank the Minister for Health for bringing this bill. I thank the Minister for Equality for his words in regard to the important removal of discrimination that is in the current legislation. To all of those that are currently undertaking ART, I wish you the very best, and my thoughts are with you for a successful outcome. I hope that this hardest of journeys results in the greatest of joys. My thoughts are especially with those who do not get this outcome. It is a grief that very few will understand. For me, I look on the bright side. I hope that Adam and his fiancée one day are prepared to share their toys with some other little people—not right now; they are not prepared to share their toys yet. In the meantime I take delight in the wonderful children of my good friends like the member for Sunbury. I am very glad that the local council issues multiple animal permits much easier than you can get pharmacists to sign police check documents. With those few words, I am extremely pleased, and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (17:08): I want to begin by acknowledging the heartfelt, very personal contributions made by the Minister for Women, the member for Yuroke in that address, the member for Tarneit and my great friend of many years standing the member for Footscray. Parliament is at its very best when personal experiences are brought to bear on our decision-making, when we can consider the changes we seek to make in this place by reflecting upon personal experience and bringing that lived experience into the decision-making frame. I thought the contributions of all those fine Labor women were absolutely outstanding. It is no small matter to stand up in this place and speak of personal experience. It is no small matter to speak of something so acutely personal as a journey of trying to procreate and trying to procreate in what have clearly been difficult circumstances for some. I commend them for sharing their experience with us, because I think it makes it just that bit easier for the women to follow who are contemplating ART and seeking to make decisions for themselves and their families that are typically really, really hard decisions. I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020, because it removes those discriminatory checks from the Victorian ART framework and because it is yet another legislative amendment that delivers on this government’s fine record of promoting equality for all Victorians.

For many Victorians natural conception simply is not an option, and starting a family can be a very hard to reach dream. It is a journey, frankly, that is hard enough without intrusive checks that parents who conceive naturally are just not subjected to. I have been very fortunate in my life to have had no such challenges. I have three children and one on the way and have experienced no obstacles to conception other than perhaps my lack of attentiveness to domestic responsibilities and the failure to deliver foot rubs and ice cream in a timely manner. But ART is an important medical advance. It is an important part of medical science that has delivered joy for many families, but it can be a long and expensive journey with many hurdles on the road. It can be isolating, it can be challenging and it is an incredibly difficult subject for individuals and couples who are undergoing treatment or consultation or prospective treatment to talk about. Layering into that an additional conversation with a health practitioner to assess theirs, their partner’s or even their surrogate’s criminal history can pose more logistical and social barriers to accessing this treatment, and these are barriers that simply do not apply to other classes of medical treatment.

The presumption against providing treatment if the hopeful parent returns a criminal record is daunting and presents just another potential hurdle, which is then having to go on to appear before a Patient Review Panel. The data, for those who do seek review by the Patient Review Panel, speaks for itself. A staggeringly small number of those who have been blocked from treatment continue to be blocked after appearing before the Patient Review Panel—just 6.5 per cent in the years from 2012 to 2021. A dozen applicants have had that upheld—a tiny, tiny fraction of the 25 000 Victorians going through the system each year—so small a fraction that of course it does not bear up to any scrutiny. It is not in any way justified to have an entire regime set up around this tiny, tiny portion, particularly given that since this legislation was enacted in law—good Labor legislation—the framework around child protection has changed and changed so much for the better. There have been a number of measures introduced since 2008: the reportable conduct scheme; child safe standards; child information and family violence information-sharing arrangements; the expansion of mandatory reporting requirements of child abuse; the working with children check scheme; and significant government investment, particularly by this government, through the royal commission into and then ultimately the agency set up to address family violence. Given all of that, it is entirely logical, appropriate and proportionate to remove this additional barrier to those seeking to access assisted reproductive treatments.

Quite sensibly a review was conducted into the arrangements, and the evidence was overwhelming. The clinicians, the counsellors and of course the patients accessing assisted reproductive treatments and their partners, where applicable, overwhelmingly felt that being subjected to police and child protection order checks was just an unnecessary step—a step too far. By removing these, we reduce costs and we reduce delay. That might on its own justify this intervention, because the costs of these treatments are significant. The delays incurred by patients are significant, and the delays in this part of the medical world can have a dramatic impact on the eventual result. The delays in this part of the medical world, whilst we would all love to see waiting lists reduced generally, we know that if someone waits an additional two, four, six weeks for ankle surgery, that is not necessarily going to have the sort of impact that missing a fertility window might have when trying so hard to start a family or to have additional children. The repercussions are dramatic.

It is important to remember in contemplating this bill that is before the house that the welfare and interests of the child to be born as a result of any medical intervention remain paramount. They remain paramount, and so they should. But the protections are in place, and I think they are important.

I just want to return to some of the consultation and the evidence that was received under the Gorton review, and I think it was terrific that this review was as thorough as it was. But the feedback from stakeholders was that the checks were offensive, unfair and humiliating, were unnecessary given that the majority of presumptions against treatment were not upheld by that Patient Review Panel process, and caused women and their partners distress and anger. We heard earlier from the member for Footscray about the extra layer of distress, the extra pressure being felt as a result of having to cart around police checks of all things. They are simply not based on evidence. They are discriminatory in that they do not apply to members of the population who can conceive naturally. Interestingly, they represent the most common complaint by clinics and patients since the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 began operation back in 2010.

These changes are no small matter for the 25 000 Victorian women and partners who are currently required to submit to these checks every year—25 000 of them. That is no small number. The burden not just on the patients and their partners, on the clinicians and the clinics but even frankly on the police and the welfare agencies who run the child protection order checks is a significant imposition and they serve no good public policy purpose. For that reason and all the reasons that I have outlined, I thank again those women who have shared their very challenging stories today and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh) (17:18): It gives me pleasure to speak on this bill, but it gives me enormous pride to follow such extraordinary contributions. In this chamber, when we debate bills or other debates we have in grievances or matters of public importance or other proceedings, you sometimes get some gems in terms of the application of lived experience with policy and the melding of those two and how powerful that combination can be. We have had it here with our colleagues, particularly our female colleagues, and because of our efforts and our focus we have an abundance of female colleagues. We could have more of course—it is never enough. But I have really enjoyed and I have learned a lot from the personal experiences shared by those members, including the Minister for Women. I will get to her contribution in a moment.

I received an email after this bill was first read, and I have changed the name of the resident so it does not breach her confidence: I will call her Mandy. It was Thursday, 20 February, in the morning that she emailed me. It was the first time, to my knowledge, that I had heard from Mandy, and the subject line was ‘Please help—IVF changes’.

Hi Steve

Writing in relation to the announcement of changes to the IVF legislation and the removal of police checks to obtain treatment. I am also part of you electorate living in Carnegie so thought you might be able to help.

My partner (John)—

again, I have changed the name—

and I are trying to access treatment at the moment due to infertility on my part, we have completed the police checks and due to a mistake 13 years ago John made we are being denied treatment. We have been told that we need to go through a review panel to get approval to proceed but this will delay us by 3 months because of wait time for the panel. I have a very low egg count and this delay is not something we can afford, the response I got from the panel when I ran was basically ‘too bad so sad’.

John is a different person now compared to 13 years ago, he has grown, changed and so excited about becoming a dad. I feel due to my fertility issues he is now being discriminated against because of his past something that wouldn’t be happening if I could get pregnant naturally.

I understand a proposed change has been made yesterday to the legislation but would like to understand what timeframes are for the changes to be implemented so we know if we wait for the change or continue down the path of being discriminated against through the panel review process. I appreciate that you might be able to guarantee the timeframes but any guidance would be really helpful to John and I.

These kinds of conversations would have happened with many of us and our residents, but this is the first email I received. My first thought was, ‘Of course this is extraordinarily unfair and discriminatory’, but I thought the fact that Mandy and John have to share that story with anybody else and some of the both explicit and implicit feelings of guilt or inadequacy perhaps that Mandy may feel and then to share that with a stranger, which is me—yes, I am their local MP and everything is confidential, hence I changed the names—it is completely beyond me why they even have to have that conversation, why they have to justify anything to anyone when an entire other cohort of people, those who can conceive ‘naturally’, in quotation marks, do not have to justify anything to a government body, to an MP, to a panel, to anybody. It is just extraordinary.

And I felt angry even just at the fact that Mandy and John were in that position. I rang the Minister for Health and she gave me some indications of the time frame, which is effectively why we take this bill so seriously. It is 28 days after royal assent, which is extraordinarily fast when you look at the other bills we have had in this Parliament. That is a commitment that we have to removing this discriminatory provision asap. So I was really pleased to be able to ring Mandy and give her that reasonably good news without her and John having to go through an entire other bureaucratic process through the panel review and associated time lines because of obviously delays and waiting lists and stuff.

So that was my sort of first exposure, first conversation in the community that I had in relation to this issue. But to be honest, within days the Minister for Women followed with the article in the Age, which I thought was an extraordinarily excellent article by Wendy Tuohy. I want to quote one part, and I want to commend the Minister for Women for her extraordinary contribution on this bill. I watched it from my office, and to have people of that calibre and that empathy and that intellect and that passion—in fact like all our colleagues—in this case was just breathtaking. One of the quotes in the article was:

“I’d never been told I was infertile before, and to have a woman in finance mention it in this passing kind of way [during a discussion of cost structures] … I remember it just took my breath away,” says Victoria’s Minister for Women, Youth and Prevention of Family Violence.

“I kind of just gasped and remember even being conscious that I gasped in shock.”

That is just emblematic for me of how all human beings but in this issue women particularly feel in terms of whether they are considered to be fertile or infertile. It affects your entire humanity, your perception of who you are, and that is outlined in the article. I thought it was extraordinarily brave and bold of her to come out so personally, but it is often only through those personal stories that you actually touch people and you actually convince people that there is a story to be told and there is a change to be made here. That is why I am really proud of our government for making this change, and I am proud of the contributions made by other colleagues, including the member for Yuroke and the member for Footscray—the ones I happened to hear in the last couple of hours—extraordinary, personal but powerful contributions that just, again, talk about why this is such a required change. I think the member for Burwood said there were 20 000, 25 000 applications a year, and those women—and men as well, because they are part of the journey, but women foremost—have not had the platform to stand up here and speak of not just their personal hurt and grief in terms of the process in terms of applying for police checks as if you are immediately under suspicion but also their grief at perhaps often the outcome not being what they obviously want, which is you do not end up with a child at the end of it.

So we are obviously proposing a bill to remove the requirement that these applicants undergo a police and child protection order check before accessing assisted reproductive treatment—provisions that should have never in fact been put in place—to effectively provide the same treatment for those couples who do not require IVF to have a child as those who do. We also have made a pretty bold policy announcement that we will provide more equitable access more broadly to Victorians—not just to those who can afford access to IVF but more broad access in terms of the cost of access to IVF but also access to regional communities, and that is something that I am looking forward to and something that we are working on at the moment.

This is completely consistent. This bill is entirely consistent with who we are as a government and our values, and other speakers have said that. If you look at this bill and you put it in the context of every other initiative—regulatory, statute and investment—we have made in relation to discrimination and equalising the relationship between women and men in society, it is entirely consistent. From the family violence royal commission to 50 per cent of cabinet for the first time in Victoria’s history of government being women and 50 per cent of all boards and committees—the power of leadership of our government from the Premier down in terms of the rights of women and equality—and the first female Governor ever to be appointed, all were done by this government. These are things that we not only have a track record on but are genetically almost predisposed to addressing—getting rid of discrimination wherever we see it, whether it be LGBTI community workers, portable long service leave or labour hire matters and a whole range of other things. This is why I am really proud of this bill and I am really proud of the work that both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Women have done in bringing it to the Parliament and all of those other women who contributed to the consultations which led us to seek this change. I commend the work of all those people, and I commend the bill to the house.

Mr TAK (Clarinda) (17:28): I am delighted to join other honourable previous speakers to speak on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. The overall objective of the bill is to remove the requirement for a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement to undergo a police and child protection order check before accessing assisted reproductive treatment. The bill responds to a matter of significant concern which was raised by stakeholders during the independent review of assisted reproductive treatment undertaken by Michael Gorton, AM, and the subsequent consultation with key stakeholders.

I would just like to pause at this moment to congratulate and also commend the effort by the Minister for Women and the other minister in the other place. Also, having listened to and heard her personal experience, it gives me great pleasure to confirm myself that this bill is the one that we need to have and the one that I am very honoured to be part of debating.

The Gorton review found that the requirement for the people seeking assisted reproductive treatment to obtain police and child protection checks received more comment than almost any other issue considered besides cost. Many stakeholders supported the removal of police check requirements, and there were many submissions to the review which reflected upon that. I will read through a few of those later in my contribution.

As it stands, under the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 an assisted reproductive treatment clinic cannot provide treatment to a woman unless the woman and her partner, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement, have first undergone a police and child protection order check and the checks have not identified that the woman and her partner, or parties to that arrangement, have certain proven charges or have been convicted of certain offences or that a relevant child protection order has been made removing a child from the care or guardianship of the woman, her partner or any of the parties to the arrangement.

During the process, identification of any of these matters raises a presumption against treatment and the clinic cannot treat the woman. Therefore if there is a presumption against treatment, the woman or her partner or other parties may make an application to the Patient Review Panel to review the presumption against treatment and determine whether there is a barrier to treatment.

The Patient Review Panel will consider, among other things, the guiding principles of the act, including that the welfare and interests of any child who may be born through assisted reproductive treatment are paramount. There are significant concerns with this process, which have been raised consistently by stakeholders. The amendments will address significant concerns raised by the Victorian community and other stakeholders about the requirements for the checks: that they are unfair and humiliating and cause distress at a time when women receiving treatment and their partners are already feeling anxious about their fertility. These concerns came through strongly during the Gorton review. For example, the following is from a recipient of assisted reproductive treatment:

The requirement to conduct a police check before being able to undertake IVF in Victoria is an humiliating experience. It is as if our right to parent is being judged on the result of this check. What a joke. No other individuals or couples are required to submit themselves to this prior to conceiving a child.

Another example, from the Fertility Society of Australia, is and I quote:

It is a requirement that discriminates; fertile members of the public against whom similar convictions are recorded are not required to have these checks before starting a family … Safeguards exist to protect children at risk whether they are born following a natural conception or an ART conception.

A wide range of service users complained of the indignity and inconvenience of submitting a police check while undertaking an emotionally burdensome process such as ART. Legal groups and clinics questioned the effectiveness of this screening device in preventing child abuse. We have heard in this place many of our previous speakers speaking about their lived experience. There is a common theme here. It is unfair, humiliating and causing distress at a time when women receiving treatment and their partners are already feeling anxious about their fertility. We can do better.

I would just like to say that in my electorate I cannot imagine how many similar situations may have occurred, especially those from the ethnic and multicultural community. As we have heard, as the hardworking member for Essendon already said, there is an underlying discrimination among our own community. We heard the honourable member for Dandenong bravely and kindly share her own experience, and the members for Tarneit, Yuroke and Footscray also shared their own experience.

I would just like to also to take a few moments to reflect upon my own family. It took us a good five years for my wife to conceive. I remember vividly that at one point she decided not to go out to join friends celebrating their young children’s birthdays for various reasons. Firstly, it was to not have to answer the question, ‘When are you going to have a baby?’. It is a genuine, caring, concerned question, but when too many times asked it provokes a lot of emotional stress and pressure. I can understand that those in this place and many of the women and their partners and parties who have undergone IVF have experienced this, let alone the discriminatory requirement that they have to go through.

In our case we did not have to go through the IVF treatment process, for which we were really fortunate. But our thoughts go to those who have gone through this process, which is really burdensome, not to speak of the emotions and the pressure from family and peers from the question, ‘Why?. Is it your lifestyle or have you done something to your body so that you cannot conceive naturally?’.

This is the right bill. This is a bill on which I am very honoured to take part in this debate. I would like to take this opportunity once again to commend the bravery, the kindness but most importantly the hard work of those, particularly the Minister for Women and the Minister for Health, that have made this bill possible not only for our generation but for the generation coming after us.

Again, I am happy to make this contribution in support of this bill, a bill that will remove this unfair and humiliating requirement. This requirement has been found to be unnecessary. The checks cause women and their partners distress and anger, in addition to the burden of infertility. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms WARD (Eltham) (17:37): I do want to thank the member for Clarinda for sharing the story of his family in terms of creating their family, their children, as so many here today have done. They have spoken about their own personal journeys, and I want to go back to something that the member for Lowan said when she first started her speech. She was talking about how ‘when we were teenagers’ or ‘when we were young’, we were always told that we could fall pregnant at the drop of a hat and to be so careful. It is almost like, as she said, if you sneezed, you would fall pregnant. Yet to have so many people in this place actually talk about their own personal stories, their own journeys around trying to have a baby, shows you that it is not as easy as you would think.

Going back to what the member for Clarinda was also saying, that there is a threshold at which you cannot be asked anymore, ‘When are you going to have one?’, I think that that is entirely understandable. When I was not yet ready to have children, I was asked that by people. Even if I was holding someone’s baby, people would say, ‘Oh, you’re practising. Getting ready for having your own’, and you would think, ‘Well, no, I’m not’. But what about those who cannot have children? What about those who are struggling—to be continually asked that. As the member for Clarinda said, they are good-natured questions, they are well-meaning questions, but they are questions that can also really hurt. We have amendments to change this, to change any additional hurt that can be given to people—saying, ‘Well, we’re not sure that you’re actually fit to be a parent. We want to know your police check’, is hurtful.

You have got people around you who are well meaning, who are asking about your plans for children—‘Why aren’t you getting on with it?’—despite your own private challenges. But then also when you have gone out to get external help and you are going through reproductive assistance, to then have to go through this process of another hoop jump—of being told that you have actually got to have a police check in order to do this—is just another layer to that hurt that you are already experiencing, and I think it is completely unnecessary. Like the member for Clarinda and so many others in this place, I congratulate the Minister for Health for creating these changes to remove some of that hurt, because there are people who are good parents, who are desperate to be parents, who should not need to have to go through an additional hurdle. I think to have this assumption that ‘Maybe there’s not something quite right with you’, where we need to have a police check, is too much. I understand that it was not necessarily what the legislation was trying to achieve when it came in, but that has been the effect of it, and I am glad that that we are changing it.

I do have to say that it is nice to speak about something that is actually joyful, though—that we are changing something that hurts people and that we are talking about the possibility of new life, about creating new life. I think in the current climate, where there is a bit of anxiety, where people are feeling stressed, to be able to talk about legislation that is actually a good, nice change—that is something positive; that is something, as I said, that gives new life, that has the potential to help create new life—is a good thing.

Acting Speaker Bull, like yourself, I have been quite lucky. I have got two children, obtained relatively easily, if you like. But I did experience a miscarriage; and while I do understand the challenges or the hurt, the sadness, that comes with losing a child, I cannot imagine how difficult it is to not get to that step, to go through that trauma of trying to conceive with assistance—the hormone injections, the constant visits, the invasion to your body. I have to tell you, Acting Speaker—as you are probably aware—giving birth is pretty invasive, and if you have got any pride it goes out the window at that point in time. But to have that absolutely invasive process at the start of that journey in trying to have a baby is incredibly difficult, and I have nothing but admiration for those women who are going through that process and who have gone through that process, who have such a strong desire for a child that they are willing to go through that. Power to them—I salute them. I salute them for their strength, I salute them for their resilience and I salute them for their perseverance, because I could not imagine the difficulty of that journey; I really cannot. I have got friends who have found this journey difficult. A number of members here have spoken about that. My sister-in-law has gone through that process. She was able to conceive a child naturally but was not able to after that—again, similar circumstances to the member for Dandenong. Sometimes it is hard; it really is.

The interesting story that I suppose I have got to contribute in response to these changes is my year 12 experience at my all-girls Catholic secondary school, where we had a priest come in and talk to us about IVF and about how bad and wrong IVF was. Of course it was because of all the reasons why women could not conceive and that you were creating embryos and those embryos would not always necessarily be used, so you were actually destroying life not creating it, and that we all should not do it. I have to say that at my all-girls school in 1986 it really did not go down well. The overwhelming feminists in the room, of which there were many, did not take this advice too well from a visiting priest telling us that we should not do what we wanted to do with our own bodies and with our own fertility. It did not go down well at all.

I am glad that we are separating that whole idea of what the church believes and what we need to do with our bodies and what we need to do with our fertility, because if we have got the science, I do not think that any of us here or any of us in the community have got the right to judge people on how they should or should not go about creating their own family. If people are approaching this with a good heart and with a pure heart, I do not think we have got the right to tell them that they cannot do it. I have to say this priest did not enjoy his experience at my school, and our nun principal was not too impressed with our questioning and argumentative behaviour to this priest either. I suspect he did not know what he was in for really. But I think it talks to the idea that we need to recognise how challenging this experience is, that we need to be inclusive in this conversation, that we need to not create roadblocks but be open about the challenges that can be there. Have open conversations. Have conversations that are not judgemental, that are not telling you that ‘This way of having a baby is better than that way of having a baby’ or having any kind of input into telling people what they should or should not do with their fertility or with their bodies.

These are very good changes. As the member for Oakleigh was saying before, we have got an inclusive agenda. We have got an agenda that is focused on equality, and this is just yet another step in the process of change that we are about, which creates a more inclusive, more equal society but also a more forgiving society—a society that recognises that we do not all have the same opportunities, we do not all have the same advantages, we do not all start from the same starting point and that at various times in our lives government needs to intervene, government needs to help us out. I have to say that this is another one of those times where we do need government to come in and to help us, whether it is changing this act or whether it is with the coronavirus that is currently starting to seep into our community. The idea that we need small government, not big government, is wrong. We do need government to come in, we do need government to support us, we do need government to assist us. Whether it is a framework around when we have got challenges to conceive, whether it is a framework around our broader health care, whether it is a framework around our social security net, whether it is a framework around accessing hospitals, whether it is a framework around assistance, we do need government to be there and we do need government to support us. Echoing the lines of the member for Oakleigh, it also helps when you have got a government that has got a lot of women in it.

You do create a broader spectrum of policy and you do have a broader spectrum of response. In the five years that I have been in this place a number of the legislative changes and bills that we have introduced to this place would not have happened without the number of women that we have in our caucus and on our front bench. It is great to see a female minister right here in front of me who is doing terrific work. Without the women in this place we would not be the progressive, inclusive and great government that we are. I stand with them all, and I thank the minister for this legislation.

Ms SETTLE (Buninyong) (17:47): I too rise to speak in support of the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. I am a very proud member of this government, and part of that pride comes from this government’s absolute commitment to ending discrimination. This bill removes an unacceptable discrimination between people who conceive naturally and those who access assisted reproductive treatment, or ART.

Currently the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 requires a woman and her partner to undergo police and child protection order checks prior to accessing ART. This bill will ensure that people are not discriminated against on the basis of needing to access ART to create their families. In the past year alone more than 13 000 women have accessed ART services in Victoria, and in my home town of Ballarat, in 2017–18, 326 women were treated with ART. I think about those women in my community who have gone through what the member for Yuroke described as a ‘terrible journey’.

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of the Minister for Women, the member for Yuroke and the member for Footscray for telling their stories. Telling their stories will give comfort and understanding to many women in my community. I was particularly heartbroken to hear the member for Footscray describe the day that she sought to get her police check—the stat dec—signed. The thought that there would be any woman sitting crying on a park bench from the sheer humiliation that this process had put her through just fills me with absolute horror.

I am the mother of two wonderful young men. I conceived my children at age 37 and 39. I was delighted to find out at the time that they were considered geriatric pregnancies, which is the clinical term—you may laugh. But of course we all know that after 35 years of age fertility decreases very dramatically. I was very, very aware of how lucky I was to be able to conceive.

More than that I remember very well my own mother and my wonderful stepfather going through ART in the 1980s. I was only a young girl, but the pain of that difficult journey that they went through is still burnt into my mind. Although I did not know it at the time, I absolutely shudder at the thought that they too must have been asked to provide a police check, and I feel genuinely angry at the humiliation that they must have felt going through that process. Like the member for Yuroke, that journey did not end in joy, and to this day my parents feel the loss of their child.

Many, many years later, I remember when my then partner and I first discussed having children. There were equal parts fear and excitement. Would we know what to do? Could we provide all that our children would need? I imagine that those fears and anxieties are common to many prospective parents, so I can only imagine what that added layer of anxiety would be when facing the cost and the physical challenges of ART.

I have had several girlfriends who have gone through ART, and I know that for them it was a very hard decision to make to pursue. I know that it was a very hard process to go through, and I just cannot imagine how hard it must have been to be then asked to provide a police check. No-one asked me to provide a police check when I decided to have children.

The Andrews Labor government is committed to promoting equality and removing discrimination in all its forms. This bill does exactly that and removes unacceptable discrimination between people who conceive naturally and those who access ART. In doing so it will ensure that people are not discriminated against on the basis of needing to access ART to create their own families.

We all know that when it comes to fertility treatment timing matters. We know that a few weeks can make all the difference to women wanting to undergo ART and the impact that that can have on their chances of success. The removal of the requirement to conduct police checks and child protection order checks will reduce costs and delays to treatment. This means that women and their partners can access treatment earlier without unnecessary delay. It will remove a process that people have found to be unfair, humiliating and distressing at a time when women receiving treatment and their partners are already feeling anxious about their fertility. It will also reduce costs and delays to treatment.

In April 2018 the Andrews Labor government commissioned a 12-month independent review of the Victorian assisted reproductive treatment framework led by Michael Gorton, AM. In July 2019 the Minister for Health announced the release of the final report of this review, which found that the requirement to undergo police and child protection order checks was the number one concern raised during consultations, second only to the cost of treatment. The current requirements discriminate between infertile members of the public and women against whom similar convictions are recorded but who are not required to have these checks before starting families.

Safeguards exist to protect children at risk whether they are born following a natural conception or an ART conception. In deciding whether to treat any person an assisted reproductive treatment provider must still consider the guiding principles in section 5 of the act, including that:

the welfare and interests of persons born or to be born as a result of treatment procedures are paramount;

An assisted reproductive treatment provider will continue to be able to refuse treatment if the provider or doctor reasonably believes that a child born as result of a procedure would be at risk of abuse or neglect. The Andrews Labor government is committed to promoting equality and removing discrimination in all its forms. The Andrews Labor government is committed to ensuring that more Victorians can start a family and discover the joys of parenthood through IVF and other assisted reproductive treatments. This government made a $32 million commitment to public IVF services for low-income Victorians. This government commissioned a landmark independent review of assisted reproductive services in Victoria. The review handed down 80 wideranging and comprehensive recommendations, and already a number of those have been implemented.

Last year the Parliament passed legislation to implement two recommendations of the review to remove the requirement for women who are separated but not divorced from their spouse to have to seek their spouse’s consent to access treatment. I was delighted again to speak on that bill with regard to, particularly as a woman, the notion that I would have to seek my ex-husband’s consent were I in a new relationship and wanting to receive ART. So this government is clearly committed to ensuring that more Victorians can start a family and discover the joys of parenthood through IVF and other assisted reproductive treatments.

I think it is an expression that is often used by those on this side of the house that to us equality is not negotiable. It is probably the driving principle for me, the reason that I wanted to be in this place and the reason that I wanted to be part of a Labor government. Equality is paramount and is not negotiable. The current legislation around the requirement to seek a police check can only be described as unfair and unjust in its current form. It creates two classes of parents: those that conceive naturally and those that require ART. As someone who believes in the equality of all of us, I find it an offensive premise to divide prospective parents into these two classes.

As I said earlier, I experienced the journey that my mother went through, and it was very long and it was very difficult. They went through many things together, and sadly, like the member for Yuroke, they got to a point where they really thought they could not go through it anymore and that success was not to be theirs. I was, I think, about 17 at the time and was heartbroken to see the two of them in that state. So this is obviously a process that can be extraordinarily difficult and confronting, and the notion that one has to then stand up and prove through police checks that they are an appropriate parent is really difficult for me to contend with.

So, as I say, this government is committed to the notion that equality is not negotiable. This amendment will mean that ART and naturally conceiving parents are on an equal footing, and for those reasons I commend this bill to the house.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (17:57): What an uplifting debate to join, on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020, which is before the house, and I think especially—to echo what the member for Eltham said—to be able to speak about something so joyous, about the creation of life and improving circumstances for those who are trying to have a baby during such a difficult, difficult time. One of the things that I have loved about this Parliament is the influx of so many new members and so many babies, and I know that you have been a recipient of one of those babies, with the beautiful Cleo, Acting Speaker Bull.

I think back to when I was elected in 2002 to some of the old-timers who were here then, some of the longstanding journalists and indeed some of the attendants—some of whom are still here and some who have gone—and the things that they said when there was that Brackslide of women in 2002, and I think you have really seen it with the influx of young members this time and babies everywhere. I remember these old-timers saying how the winds of change blew through this place when you saw babies and children around all the time, and I really want to commend the Presiding Officers for the fantastic welcoming environment that is in this place now—that has not always been so—with parenting rooms, whether it is for the little babies or older children, with games and things like that.

We do make some big decisions that really affect Victorians. Sometimes the legislation we bring in does not affect many people or not a lot of people are that interested in it, but I think this is something that really has captured people’s imaginations. I have not been in the chamber for the whole of the debate but I have watched most of it from my office, and no-one could but be moved by the contribution by the Minister for Women telling her own personal story of reproductive treatment and her really honest story of going on that journey alone now. Given sometimes we have got our weapons out and are having a crack at each other in this place, it really gave me a warm feeling, despite the grief of hearing the Minister for Women’s story, to see her supported at the table by the Minister for Public Transport—another woman, sitting next to her—and then an opposition member, in the member for Lowan, coming over and bringing the box of tissues. The fact that she was able to express her emotions in this place, in a safe place, and tell her story really makes real why we are making this change and indeed why we take steps to change things for the better for the community.

The member for Footscray also made me cry. I have known the member for Footscray since she was a teenager. My heart was breaking when I heard her say she was walking along Elizabeth Street trying to find someone, anyone, to sign her police check. To think someone I have known so long, who radiates goodness and is a fantastic mum of two and a fantastic member of Parliament—I just wish I had known—it says so much that often these journeys are not shared and are kept in the private domain, and they can be even more painful. I think it can add to the shame, a shame that should not be felt, if there is a need for supported assisted reproductive technology, in my view. To consider having to get over that hurdle of proving whether you are a criminal or not is just so humiliating and debasing, so thank you to the member for Footscray for sharing that.

The member for Tarneit has shared beautiful stories in this place before about her two gorgeous kids and the one that is always in her heart but did not live. I had not realised that her journey has been through assisted reproductive technology as well.

The member for Clarinda talked about a five-year journey until his wife was able to conceive. I have known the member for Yuroke and the member for Eltham for a long time, but I had not known about the member for Yuroke’s unsuccessful reproductive technology journey. I also had not known about the member for Eltham’s miscarriage, but I must say I am not at all surprised at the story she told about the Catholic Ladies College really giving it to the priest who was brave enough to go in and give his views and then be a bit shocked by the views he got back. I am not surprised, having gone to a Catholic girls school myself, how strident the views of the Catholic Ladies College were.

All of them told their deeply personal stories, and it reminded me of when we actually passed the act back in 2008 when I was in my second term in the Parliament. I was someone that was deeply aggrieved about this part of the act. Others have told of their reproductive journey, and I have sometimes mentioned mine. Mine was never a difficult one. I got pregnant on the pill twice, and I have two fabulous sons to show for it. So it was kind of not a difficult one for me. It was more of a difficult one explaining to my father, especially the first one, given that I was 19 years and three months. That was the difficult part of my journey.

There is the unfairness. I have got a number of friends who have been down this path and who have shared their journeys with me, and some of them have been unsuccessful. Whenever there is a terrible story of child abuse or children not being cared for, it has been like a knife through the heart for those couples and those women who have not been able to become mothers—the idea that there are other mothers and fathers who have not cared for their children and that those parents have not had to go through a police check before they bred; they just did it.

I found it really moving in the last few weeks hearing a lot of commentary on the radio, and I think this is something that is overwhelmingly supported by the community—that we are getting rid of these humiliating police checks. We are at least getting rid of one hurdle there. I really support the election commitment that we went to the last election with, saying that we would introduce and support publicly funded IVF because it is a huge and costly exercise. Many women do not meet ‘the one’ until later in life. Or it might have been for economic reasons that it has taken them a little longer.

I bought my first house when interest rates were at 16 or 17 per cent, and there was a lot of unemployment around in that period. It has been a different situation recently in that people just have to work so jolly hard to get a career underway and get their first home, and then sometimes they are just finding the clock has been ticking longer than they expected. We need to get rid of these barriers, and I am proud to be part of a government that is so supportive of this and has so many members that have been so generous during this debate in telling their story.

I do want to wish the member for Lowan all the very best. In her contribution as the lead speaker for the opposition she did express her fears—and it must be the same for many pregnant women at the moment—about what it might mean giving birth during this pandemic. It just adds another layer when you think about this. At no other time in my history in this Parliament have we been so close to dealing with matters of life and of death, and it is just an amazing thing to be putting forward a bill of such joy during such a difficult period. I hope that those who are going through a difficult reproductive journey at the moment will feel more supported and more loved through this difficult time and understand that this piece of legislation just takes one of those barriers away. Thank you so much for the solid, amazing hard work of the Minister for Health and her staff and the Minister for Women. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (18:08): What a privilege to rise and be given the opportunity to speak on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020 and to follow some remarkable community leaders—leaders of this Parliament from across the Parliament. Some of the contributions that have been made today give you goosebumps. We have heard about the journey that people have taken to this point in time and some of the heartache and the turmoil that they have gone through in their reproductive journey. What a time, where we get to have such an impact on so many lives and make it easier for people to experience the joy of parenthood and also to remove significant discrimination and barriers to access. That is what this bill is all about.

Can I give a big shout-out to the contribution of the member for Tarneit, an incredible person who in her first speech shared her journey. She is an incredible leader for the west in her community. For her to open up about her experience was amazing. The member for Footscray gave an amazing contribution as well. To hear that while I was sitting just in front of her here was amazing. The member for Yuroke talked really passionately about how brutal the process was and the emotion in her speech and her language was so compelling and so raw. It left a real mark on me.

I feel a little bit out of place speaking on this bill because I have had the opportunity to go through and experience the overwhelming joy of becoming a dad. As a member of Parliament it gives you so much purpose and so much hope, and it really grounds you in the work that you do. I find that in my experience with Paisley. How raw it is for people who miss out on that opportunity through no fault of their own when they have compassion and love and joy and aspirations. If you listened to the member for Dandenong and Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, what a speech of the 59th Parliament, what an incredible leader in Victoria and what a person—what a human being. She is an extraordinary person, and that contribution while in a Parliament that is in lockdown at the moment will send ripples and reverberations throughout communities because it will be a speech that people refer to for hope. When you are down on your luck and you are still trying to get through and get by and you are facing those challenges and the severity of not being able to conceive yet, that is a speech filled with purpose and hope.

That is the anchor in the work that we are doing as a government across different areas and across different communities to end discrimination, to make it so much easier for people to go about their lives and to support them in their lives and their aspirations across a range of different areas. That is just another example of our inclusive and progressive agenda in this state making lives fairer for people.

My understanding of this area came about through the prism of being a member of Parliament and hearing people talking about barriers to IVF and multiple attempts at trying to have a bubby. They were some of the most confronting meetings I have been in, seeing some of the rawest emotions of people with every hope and aspiration and joy and love, who were wanting so desperately to do what so many do naturally—within a blink of an eye they are able to conceive—and how pressurised that is. I saw how much pressure that puts on relationships, on families, on mental health and wellbeing, on work, on mortgages and on family outcomes. To see that as a member of Parliament, in the main prism of meetings about costs and the barriers to accessing IVF and then the trauma of multiple attempts and not getting through and having a successful result, is harrowing stuff. I think it is quite confronting as members of Parliament when you experience those kinds of meetings. There is the notion that as elected representatives we have the opportunity to change lives and change outcomes through the stroke of a pen and legislation that we bring before this place and the notion that we will be removing barriers in the future.

The member for Footscray summed up perfectly the frustration, the pain and the anguish of the requirement for a police check and the substandard two-speed and two-tiered system, effectively, of those that can naturally conceive and those that are put through significant pressure, and it adds to that trauma and that heartache and that anguish on their journey as well. So removing that discrimination just seems such common sense; supporting people in that journey rather than adding more layers of challenges and pressure. Of course this is underpinned in the work that was done by the Gorton review, which resulted in some of the recommendations that we are dealing with today in this legislation. There were 80 wideranging recommendations, and already a number of these are starting to be implemented.

Amazingly as well, as these notes say, in the past year alone more than 13 000 women accessed assisted reproductive services here in Victoria. Each one of them has a story, a tale to tell. Each one of them has been frustrated by a bureaucratic system that punishes them through no fault of their own and creates a two-tiered system through that identification. Anecdotally we hear that two-thirds of women who undergo IVF treatment are unsuccessful, and that just shows the journey that they have to take and the pressures that are borne upon them, their families, their friends and the wider community as well.

So Michael Gorton’s work and the final report of this review found that the requirement to undergo the police and child protection order checks was the number one concern raised during consultations—only second to costs. We have an obligation to listen to communities and do all we can in our system to make it easier for people, to take the feedback of community and try to make it easier. For those 13 000 people across our electorates—and some would call the Mordialloc electorate home as well—the notion that we are on their side with this bill, to make it easier and the outcomes better for them, is really, really important.

The amendments represent the next stage to action the government’s commitment to review and strengthen Victoria’s assisted reproductive treatment laws, and implementing this bill addresses significant concerns in Victoria about those required checks. I think we can all agree that that is going to do a lot to improve those outcomes.

In addition to that work I want to reflect briefly as well on the cost, and this was one of the biggest things that was raised with me by a number of constituents in the lead-up to talking about this bill. But then in the previous Parliament and in constituent meetings there was the notion that we need to do more to support people who are locked out, whether it is low-income families or a range of other areas.

And it was so heartfelt and so inspiring to see that announcement by the Minister for Health back in mid last year agreeing to those recommendations but also talking about making it fairer, more affordable and easier to access IVF and being a part of those generational changes and reforms that will really make a difference to the lives and outcomes of Victorians. So this is all about equality. This is all about supporting people who are wanting to start a family, like so many in this place, in joy. And I will say as a dad of a three-and-a-half-year-old, when Paisley arrived I almost took that for granted. And when you think of the heartache that so many have talked about getting to that point, whether they have been able to have bubbies or they are missing out, it really checks you in your spot in that moment thinking about how much people will go through, and you just reflect on how much of a privilege it is to be a parent and be able to raise a child.

So I think this is wonderful landmark legislation. It is great work by the Minister for Health and the Premier. But again, thank you to the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, the member for Dandenong and the members for Tarneit, Footscray, Yuroke and Lowan for their contributions, because those MPs speaking up will make a massive difference to the outcomes in their communities and also show the leadership and the path walked before, to give others hope—that we are all in this together to support people. Hopefully these reforms will make a massive difference.

Ms SULEYMAN (St Albans) (18:18): I too rise to speak on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. It is always very challenging to speak after such a fine contribution from the member for Mordialloc—and many other contributions today. In particular I want to thank the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and Minister for Women, the member for Dandenong, and also the member for Footscray and the member for Tarneit for sharing their real-life stories with us and their journey, in particular when it comes to I suppose some of the challenges and the sadness that they experienced through their journeys.

There is no doubt, as the member for Mordialloc said in his contribution, that everybody really deserves to have a child, and what better way to fulfil that joy and happiness? I am a proud auntie, and I absolutely love my niece and nephew and I get to live the experiences of a mother through being an aunt. And I share the joy and the challenges of having a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old, experiencing the lives of their parents through my experiences.

We all know that our government is committed to making sure that the assisted reproductive framework is amended as a result, most importantly, of the independent review that was conducted in 2018—I must say, that started the process—led by Michael Gorton, AM. This was an independent review to go through and hear the stories. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for Health for all her work and leadership not only in this area but also in the crisis that we face with the coronavirus—the leadership that the Minister for Health and in particular the Premier have shown.

But going back to this bill, the review found that having to undergo police and child protection order checks was the number one concern. Listening to the member for Footscray back in my office I must admit I really sensed her sadness in reciting the story of her trying to get someone to sign her stat dec and how unfair that process was in the midst of that sadness and frustration. I really sensed that through her story. I am really happy that this amendment takes that section out and makes it not only fair but also takes into consideration those real-life stories.

Of course the second point is in relation to the cost of the treatment. Having children should not be based on the value or the income that you have. I am so glad that we have been able to take that out as well and address that absolute injustice, as I call it.

As we all know, further consultations were conducted. On the requirements for women and their partners prior to accessing assisted reproductive treatment, a number of those elements are removed. So it is fantastic that we have been able to address that.

The Andrews Labor government is committed to promoting equality and removing any form of discrimination, and I am extremely proud of that. Discrimination in every area, whether it is in this area or discrimination based on your race, your colour, your religion, your sex or your gender, should not be tolerated. It is these sorts of protections in our community that set the framework for fairness and justice for our communities. I am really, really proud to be part of that. It is, most importantly, making sure that people are not discriminated against, whether they conceive naturally or have some form of assistance such as reproductive treatment. In doing so this will make sure that no-one is discriminated against on the basis of needing to access assisted reproductive treatment to create their family.

These amendments represent the next step in the action of the government’s commitment to review and strengthen Victoria’s assessment in reproductive treatment laws. I also note that the member for Oakleigh in his contribution talked about a constituent of his who required a speedy process. It is good to hear that with this particular bill it will be very quick and therefore effectively be enforced in the community for those women who are waiting so desperately for these amendments.

Now, implementing this bill addresses significant concerns in Victoria, and, as we have heard, these checks have been raised during the review. The assisted reproductive treatment report commissioned by the Victorian government in May 2018 and undertaken by, as I said, Michael Gorton, AM, really made it very clear that it is time to remove a process that people—and I am quoting from the report:

… have found to be unfair, humiliating and distressing at a time when women receiving treatment and their partners are already feeling anxious about their fertility. It will also reduce costs and delays to treatment.

As we have heard from the real-life stories of my colleagues, I think we have spoken about the fact that we are close to having 50 per cent women on this side of the house. I think that really says a lot about the contribution on these bills, because women can actually be part of the process of creating and actually making legislation based on their journeys. I think that is really important. There is no doubt that since the checks were introduced 10 years ago—and I think the bill was introduced in good faith—with time the regulatory landscape for safeguarding children in Victoria has changed significantly, and we know that. I hope that these sorts of reforms will continue with the adoption laws in Victoria. I think that is another area that needs to be looked at, particularly some of the categories that make it very unfair and challenging for prospective adoptive parents to actually go through the system in Victoria. We all have heard stories. It is very challenging. It is extremely difficult. Some potential parents wait for many, many years, even beyond a decade, until they are successful. These are some of the areas that we can continue to review and make sure that there are appropriate amendments that make them, I suppose, a bit more adaptive to the community and society that we have.

Just to conclude, I would like to thank the Minister for Health. I note that the Minister for Women is in the chamber at the moment, so thank you very much for sharing your story, and I wish you all the very best. As I said, I keep saying this as an auntie: I want to make sure that my niece and every other girl and woman in this state and in this country have a voice and are able to be treated in a fair and appropriate manner without discrimination. On discrimination at any level, we have said very clearly we will call it out. We will make the changes necessary to protect our community and our residents.

On that note I also want to commend the work that has been done in this area, particularly, I suppose, in gender equality—and not only in this bill. There are a number of bills—legislation—that have been introduced since 2014 that really make a difference in our communities and in Victoria. As one speaker said, there are so many bills that we pass in this place. Some do not really make much impact, but this is a bill that will make an impact, will change lives and, as the member for Mordialloc said so eloquently, will bring joy to parents. It is that support that parents and women really need at this point in time. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (18:27): It is a pleasure to rise on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020 this afternoon, and as always it is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Acting Speaker Carbines. Can I start just by acknowledging the former health minister, who I think would have been part of the catalyst for the Gorton review in 2018. Also, I just want to say to the Minister for Women, who is in the chamber at the moment, that that was an amazing contribution to this Parliament. I agree with the member for Mordialloc that it is one that people will look to for hope and inspiration when they are going through some fairly tough times. I do not want to leave out the member for Tarneit, the member for Footscray and the member for Yuroke as well—all incredible contributions to a very important issue that is very close to people’s hearts.

I just want to also talk about leadership for a second. The current Minister for Health is not in the chamber at the moment. I am blown away by the amount of leadership that is required by ministers and the amount of time that is spent ensuring that things are going right and things are going to plan and making sure that they actually have a vision for the future in seeking those goals for the future. Leadership is certainly the ability to adapt to change, whether it be dealing with the current pandemic or whether it be dealing with longer term societal issues or issues that we are talking about today. I am very proud to be part of a government that can do that and working with ministers that are not afraid to make change that our communities want.

Why is this bill necessary? We have heard many stories of traumatic lived experience from people in this house today. We have heard of the patients in the Gorton inquiry talking about the fact that they felt that it was humiliating and unfair to have to go through this process of checks. In fact it was the most common issue raised in the 2019 Gorton inquiry apart from the actual cost of IVF, which is very, very relevant. Indeed Victoria is the only jurisdiction that makes people, whether they are individuals or couples, jump through these hoops. The world has changed quite a bit since this legislation was enacted in 2008. We have more mandatory checks. We have more upgrades to child protection. The community has moved on, this legislation needs to be amended and that is what we are doing today.

The bill does that by amending the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 to remove the requirement that a woman, her partner if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement must undergo police and child protection order checks prior to accessing assisted reproductive treatment. In practice this means that clinics will no longer be required to ask a person seeking treatment or their partner to provide a police check, to arrange a child protection order check to be undertaken on behalf of those seeking treatment or their partners from the Department of Health and Human Services or to assess the checks to determine whether any offences or orders detailed in the checks give rise to a presumption against treatment. This will affect an estimated 25 000 women and partners who access assisted reproductive treatment in Victoria each year, who will no longer be subject to this discriminatory requirement.

It is worth noting that IVF for most people is not simple. It is a stressful time for partners or singles. There are a lot of visits to clinics and a lot of procedures that need to be undertaken. Without a doubt everyone in this house today knows someone—two people, three people—who have been through this within close family or friendship groups as well.

While removing the requirement for the checks means presumption against treatment will no longer apply, clinics will continue to have a statutory obligation to have regard for the principles of the act when making a decision about whether to treat a woman and her partner or parties to a surrogacy arrangement. This includes that the welfare and interests of the child to be born are paramount. Clinics will continue to be able to refuse treatment if they reasonably believe that a child to be born from treatment may be at risk of abuse or neglect.

Now, I cannot put it any better than a woman who has been through this. The story of Katherine Williams, who has a beautiful son called Lincoln, was reported in the Age on 18 February this year. Clinics gave feedback that this was the biggest issue clients were complaining about; it was the most common concern that was raised. She said that:

You’re already feeling quite worthless, or like a failure to society because you can’t do this thing that everyone else has been so easily able to do, and then you have to sit there and prove that you’re good enough.

Now she has got her 14-month-old son, and I am sure it was worth it, but as we heard from the previous speaker, if that is not discrimination, well, I challenge you to tell me what is. She said patients were not given enough information about the type of information that was being collected or what could affect their application, which made the process even more arduous. I think what was going through her mind at the time was that if she had been arrested in her youth for a rally that might have been about the environment or women’s rights, would that affect her chances of being able to pass a police check and access reproductive IVF? Clinics still have the ability to refuse treatment if they reasonably believe a child to be born is at risk of abuse and neglect, but for many, many thousands of women and couples this is a huge step in the right direction.

As I said before, there are many people in our community that undergo IVF successfully. There are many people for whom it takes quite a long time. There are many success stories out there. It is a beautiful thing to bring a child into the world, and it is something that we cannot take for granted. Many people may take it for granted, but of course you hear about these experiences from people who are doing it tough to do something that, in the past especially, our society has pushed on to women. Not to say that you are worthless if you do not have a child, but if you reach 30 and you have not borne a child, people will be looking at you strangely. People might ask questions, people might make assumptions. I think the views of society have got to change as well and our culture has got to change with that. That is part of obviously a government agenda to ensure that people are accepted for who they are.

In a familiar case to me, my sister went through IVF and was unfortunately unsuccessful. But I saw the pressure that mounted on her through whether it was walking through Coles and seeing on the news rack people on the front of Woman’s Day magazines with babies, or, as the member for Tarneit said, every time she looked around it seemed like there was a new baby popping up because someone had kissed someone almost; it just seemed so easy for people. That was a huge burden on her, and sometimes I think it still is. She I think still gets the questions from people about why they have not had children yet—those uncomfortable pauses. And that really affects people. It really does affect people, because as well as making treatment to have a child much easier for people, I think we have got a bit of an issue in our community where we are still holding on to these old cultural expectations. There are many professional women who I have worked with who do not comply with them, and neither should they. They decided to ensure that they would have children when they wanted to, not when society said they could. They are better for it, and more power to them.

I would not want to miss out on a chance to say that I am absolutely inspired to work amongst a group of very, very strong and powerful women in the Labor caucus, people who do not step backwards in going forwards and people who actually say what they mean, people who got into this job, who were elected, and want to make huge benefits for their community. They do not just want to sit there and do nothing.

For a debate that is as important as this I am looking across the chamber and I am seeing more Hansard reporters than people in the opposition. I know that some people might be in their offices listening, but it really would be great to have some more contributions from people who care so much about this issue. There is no doubt in my mind—and we have heard many cases of it—that people are coming to electoral offices all over the state with this issue. They are talking about this issue. They want action taken, and they want their members of Parliament to actually represent them in the Parliament, not in their office. They want them to be here and actually talking for them. I think that is why it is so important to have this conversation today, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms Staley: Acting Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

Quorum formed.

Ms HENNESSY (Altona—Attorney-General, Minister for Workplace Safety) (18:39): Acting Speaker Carbines, if I could perhaps help reset the tone in our chamber by acknowledging the green in your tie and wishing you a very happy St Patrick’s Day.

I am very, very delighted to get up and make a contribution on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. It is incredibly important reform. I have heard only some of the contributions over the course of the day, but what has been, I think, universal in the contributions has been incredibly heartfelt stories. Some of those have been personal stories people have shared, some of those have been representative stories, but the unifying theme I think has been one of great compassion and one that has reflected on one of the most extraordinary urges that individuals can have, and that is to start a family and to have a baby. We have also heard lots of stories about why people make different choices as well, and I think that that has been a fair reflection upon the various views that people hold in the community.

We have such fantastic technology and medical research capacity and capability in our country, and in particular in the state of Victoria, and of course the science and the technology behind in-vitro fertilisation. We have great lions of clinicians, medical researchers, policymakers and those that were prepared to take a punt on some of these forms of research decades ago in terms of the technology that assists people to have children. I think that we should be extremely proud of the history of organisations such as Monash University and Monash IVF that were some of the pioneers. Dr Gab Kovacs, who is a renowned clinician and medical researcher internationally, has made such an extraordinary contribution to this field. But internationally the desire to be able to assist people that have fertility issues, I think, is a universally held one. What we have seen over the last decades, and what really sits in the architecture of assisted reproductive regulation and law, is a variety of regulatory appetites—some social judgements, I suppose—about the checks and balances. That has been a pretty universal feature as we have dealt with things like medical research and technology. We have felt confronted about some of the ethical questions that those engender.

We have seen that in our debates about who should get access to things like assisted reproductive technology. Should that be heterosexual couples only? Should that be gay and lesbian people? Should that be single women, for example? We have seen an incredible industry that has popped up around the competitive advantage that we have had here in Victoria around assisted reproductive treatment, leading to the commercialisation of organisations such as Monash IVF and the great interest of venture capital in these spaces. Of course, as we see developing countries internationally develop a greater desire for fertility support and treatment, there are incredible amounts of money to be made in this space. I am not necessarily opposed to the monetisation or the commercialisation of medical research—in fact that is something that we as a state have to get better at—but we also have to make sure that as we seek to regulate it we keep a mindful eye on what some of the ethical issues are, on what it means for access, in a country where we pride ourselves on a model that essentially supports universal access to health, not a model that says you get access to what you can afford. We inevitably come up against these tensions as new technology provides new medical opportunities.

There is no greater example of that, I think, than access to things like ART. In this amendment and in the Gorton review, what we see in some of these debates about something that was once the domain of the few that has now become very, very deeply commercialised—that now has a different economic and business model structure around it—is that we stopped having the right regulatory tools. We discovered when profit- and market-based mechanisms defined access to these issues that we did not have the right regulatory model.

As we sought to provide greater access to ART we made certain policy decisions, and this Parliament made certain policy decisions, that now have not really withstood the community scrutiny that the Gorton review uncovered. A really important area of that scrutiny has been what kind of people and who gets to make the judgements about who is entitled to become a parent. One of the many compelling stories that I heard today was one from the member for Yuroke, who was in fact a parent, and imagine being subjected to a test about whether or not you are fit to be a parent again when you have pretty much demonstrated that. I think that the provisions in that bill were really part of a political compromise or a social policy compromise at the time as we took another bold step in an area that people felt a degree of cautiousness about. Those were about who should get access and what kind of regulatory tools we should apply. So that is one of the really important reforms, and those that have had personal experience with how demeaning the requirement for criminal checks is have made the case far more persuasively than I ever could in the course of this debate. As a former health minister who had the great privilege of meeting and working with Michael Gorton to commence this process, a process that has been comprehensively and I think boldly and fairly completed by Minister Mikakos as our current health minister, I know these are the questions that people constantly raised.

The next issue, I suppose, comes to the issue of economics, and in an era when we have come to expect universal access to health care, we will increasingly come up against the cost issue of where medical technology advances our ability to achieve particular outcomes, including things like having a baby. Being able to make sure that we do not deliver a health economy that says the wealthy, middle and upper classes get access to the benefits of all of that uplift and the middle, lower and lower working classes get no access to the benefits is not in my view an acceptable social or economic outcome. There is indeed a very strong and compelling reason to say why we should invest and why we should regulate—to say that when we get the uplift from medical advancements in technology and medical research everyone serves to benefit from that. Now, that is a lofty principle that is easy to roll off my tongue. Delivering that in terms of health economics and genuine access is another thing. But the advancements and the reform in the ART space speak to us being committed to trying to realise that outcome.

One of the most beautiful things, I think, about today’s reflections has been the great stories of beautiful babies that have been born as a consequence of people’s experiences with IVF. I want to give a shout-out to each and every single one of those babies. What a magnificent and wonderful story and experience. Less highlighted and probably more painfully told, I think, are the stories where IVF and ART have not been successful for people, and I want to give a shout-out to the men and women of this chamber and to the men and women who participated in the Gorton review who shared their incredibly heartfelt pain, how expensive it was and what it did for relationships. One of the things that I think we have all got to reflect upon is it is none of our goddamn business why and where people have babies or not, and please stop asking. That has been one of the really constant features for those that might be carrying either a private pain or a public pain that they have been prepared to share, and again a very heartfelt shout-out to the member for Dandenong for the incredible generosity of her contribution. Her contribution represents the story of many, many women, families, couples and single people who have gone on this journey and for whom it has assumed an incredibly painful yet important part of their life. This reform is long overdue. May it bring greater happiness to people’s lives, and I wish it a speedy passage through the house.

Mr STAIKOS (Bentleigh) (18:49): It is indeed a pleasure to rise to make a brief contribution on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020 during this parliamentary sitting week that is held under very, very unusual circumstances. I suppose on that note I do want to congratulate the minister who has brought this bill to the Parliament, the Minister for Health, who I think is doing a sterling job as she has an enormous weight of responsibility on her shoulders as we navigate our state through this very substantial public health emergency that is the COVID-19 virus. Can I also say with the indulgence of the house that the Minister for Health is not only a close colleague of mine but also a very, very dear friend. I am thinking about her every day as well, and many of us on this side of the house are very, very proud of everything that she is doing at the moment.

I also want to point out that I have been a member of this house now for more than five years and therefore I have been a member of this government for more than five years, and I think something that has characterised this government from day one is that it is a government that is all about enhancing equality and removing discrimination in Victoria wherever it is found. I think that is at the heart of this bill. This bill is about removing the sort of discrimination that many of us in our day-to-day lives would not normally think about. Indeed I am not someone who exactly knew the very arduous, draining process personally of going through IVF, but I think for a lot of women and a lot of couples in that position this bill will ease some of that strain.

What this bill does is remove the requirement for a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement to undergo a police and child protection order check before accessing assisted reproductive treatment. The bill amends the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 to remove the requirement that a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement must undergo a police and child protection order check before accessing assisted reproductive treatment. The amendments in the bill will remove discrimination between people who conceive naturally and those accessing assisted reproductive treatment. Finally, the amendments will reduce the cost of and any delays to treatment. This means that women and their partners can access treatment earlier without unnecessary delays.

Currently in my family I have a close family member in her second trimester of pregnancy. She unfortunately had four miscarriages, and she and her husband were very, very close to going down the path of IVF. Thankfully through some other fertility treatments she did not have to go down what can often be a costly and stressful path. But it certainly does focus my attention on the discrimination inherent in the current legislation, and that of course is what I mentioned just before—that is, between people who conceive naturally and those who are accessing assisted reproductive treatment. Certainly for my close family member and her husband I hate the thought that they could have been discriminated against in any way because they had to become pregnant a different way out of no fault of their own. It is just how life turned out.

I am very pleased that this legislation has arrived in this place and will more than likely pass this house, because I am not speaking from experience but I can imagine that at the best of times being pregnant is a very, very stressful period. I am also thinking of all of the women who are pregnant, whether conceived naturally or through IVF, whose stress has been compounded by the current public health emergency. I wish them well, and I wish all of the health professionals throughout our state helping them along well as we get through the next few months, which will be difficult. But I know that if Victorians stand together and follow the expert advice we will be able to get through this period and be even stronger than before. With those few words, I commend the bill to the house, and I wish it a speedy passage.

Mr MAAS (Narre Warren South) (18:54): It also gives me great pleasure to rise and to also make a short contribution on the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020. Today has been one of those special days in our Parliament where we have been able to reflect upon and to listen to some real stories from members of the house. Can I pay special tribute to the Minister for Women, the member for Dandenong, the member for Footscray, the member for Tarneit, the member for Yuroke and also the member for Eltham, all of whom have made very worthy, very heartfelt and very personal contributions on this bill.

At the heart of this bill it is about promoting equality and it is about removing discrimination in all of its forms. When you think about the pain that many go through to reproduce, it is a bill whose time has well and truly come so that we can remove this requirement that a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement undergo a police and child protection order check before accessing assisted reproductive treatment. Just saying that actually sounds like a really strange thing, but ultimately it has been a part of Victorian law since 2010.

The amendments in this bill will remove discrimination between people who conceive naturally and those accessing assisted reproductive treatment. The amendments will reduce the cost of and the delays to treatment, and this means that women and their partners can access treatment earlier without unnecessary delays.

Currently the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 requires a woman and her partner, if she has one, and parties to a surrogacy arrangement to undergo police and child protection order checks prior to accessing assisted reproductive treatment. Section 14 of the act creates a presumption against providing treatment to a woman if the woman or her partner has returned a criminal record check that shows charges have been proven for a sexual offence of a specified kind or a conviction for a violent offence of a specified kind or where a child protection order check specifies that a child protection order has been made removing a child from the custody or guardianship of the woman or her partner. Where a presumption against treatment applies, a person may apply to the Patient Review Panel for a review of that presumption. The panel is an independent statutory tribunal established to consider a number of matters, including whether treatment can occur if there is a presumption against treatment. After considering the application and having regard to certain matters, the panel must decide whether or not a barrier to treatment applies.

In the last 10 years since checks were introduced, the regulatory landscape for child safeguarding in Victoria has changed significantly, though, and this includes the introduction of a reportable conduct scheme, child safe standards, child information and family violence information-sharing schemes, the expansion of mandatory reporting of child abuse and the working with children check scheme, and significant government investment in initiatives addressing family violence also comes into play. It is for these reasons that it is a good thing that we are removing this requirement that sees that— (Time expired)

Business interrupted under sessional orders.