Thursday, 16 October 2025

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (18:00): (2025) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. Currently in Victoria health practitioners can refuse to participate in a medical procedure because it conflicts with their deeply held personal, moral or religious beliefs. This is known as a conscientious objection. I have spoken before in this place about my own experience dealing with a provider who had a conscientious objection. Healthcare practitioners cannot do this for all procedures, but they can for voluntary assisted dying and reproductive care – in particular, for pregnancy terminations and contraception. Providers are, however, required to refer patients to another practitioner in the same profession who does not hold an objection.

Earlier this month I released a report alongside my colleague Rachel Payne in this place, and our report looked into abortion accessibility in Victoria. Through our research and consultation we discovered that conscientious objection is far more extensive than we originally realised. The system is failing, and evidence shows that some objectors are not fulfilling their legal obligation to refer patients on, are intentionally delaying access or are contributing to feelings of shame and of stigma. Those last few points are the key. Conscientious objection does not always look like a particular practitioner just declining to perform a procedure. People seeking reproductive healthcare services are already going through a stressful enough experience, and dealing with intentional delays, roadblocks to seeking care and the shame associated with being told your healthcare provider has a moral objection to the care you require can make things significantly worse and potentially turn a difficult experience into a traumatic one. That is certainly what we have been told by many Victorians who contacted us. Delays can also have real medical consequences, with significant and, importantly, avoidable complications. Ultimately, health care delayed is health care denied, but this is neither recognised by our laws nor monitored by our government.

We do not know how widespread this problem is, but we know that it is a problem. There is no statewide data collected on conscientious objections. We do not know how many conscientious objectors there are in Victoria, and we do not know how many comply with their referral obligations. This lack of knowledge makes it far more difficult to improve services, particularly in remote and regional areas like my own. I am not for a moment suggesting that a health practitioner should be forced to perform a non-emergency procedure that they have a moral or religious objection to, but they have a legal – and in my view moral – requirement to refer, which the government must guarantee that they are complying with. So the action that I seek is for the government to investigate the feasibility of establishing an oversight mechanism for conscientious objections in Victoria.