I noted around six months ago that the Queensland Premier was refusing to allow a conscience vote on legislation to reform Queensland’s abortion laws and address the situation faced by a young couple in Cairns who were currently facing criminal charges. The Premier justified this by suggesting that it couldn’t be guaranteed that the Parliament wouldn’t end up making Queensland’s abortion laws even harsher than they currently are.
But this week Queensland has seen a debate and a conscience vote on laws relating to voluntary surrogacy of children. Presumably the Premier’s worry about the uncertainty of outcomes on conscience votes must be lesser on this issue. The vote will happen soon, and it is assumed the law will pass, and Liberal National Party attempts to amend it to exclude same sex couples or single parents from accessing surrogacy will fail.
But a conscience vote doesn’t just provide MPs with a rare chance to vote in a manner completely in accord with the personal beliefs. It also tends to provide a chance for them to make speeches that much more closely reflect their own view, rather than the ‘party line’ type speeches that understandably can constrain their commentary.
As this debate on surrogacy is showing, finding out what MPs really believe can be a bit disconcerting – with one LNP MP saying that allowing same sex couples access to children born by surrogacy will “reduce children to the status of pets.”
Still, it is better to know that some people in parliament do think these things rather than live in ignorant hope that it is not the case. Of course, many of the other contributions on the debate have been more thoughtful. Sadly, it is the more outrageous or attacking comments that are likely to get the media coverage, although some of the more considered views do get a run now and then.
I have always believed that the Labor Party’s blanket prohibition on Members of Parliament voting against caucus decisions, even when it conflict with strongly held beliefs of their own, is excessive (which is hardly a problem for them, seeing I’ve never been on the ALP). I find it hard to see why conscience votes should not be allowed on every piece of legislation, if an MP has a strong enough belief. However, the practice has developed – almost as rigidly on the conservatives side in recent years, as well – where conscience votes are only allowed on a few issues relating to life and death – abortion, stem cells, euthanasia, etc. (although I have never been able to comprehend why these issues are the only ones that get labelled as “moral issues” to justify the conscience vote.)
As we’ve seen, even that very restricted right to a conscience vote only applies if the government agrees to have a parliamentary debate on such matters in the first place. The Queensland government continues to block such a debate on abortion laws.
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Am I the only person who believes that EVERY vote should be a conscience vote? Or is that asking too much of the consciences of our elected reps? We wouldn’t want to over-stretch a limited resource…
Oh I dunno, I thought this was the real meat of the argument:
‘”Just look at the first five years of a child’s life when you’ve got two mothers,” Mr Hopper said. “How do you take them to a public toilet when you go on a so-called family outing? They will have to go to the ladies’ toilet won’t they?”
Madness! A toddler in the ladies’ toilet! How on earth do all those godless heathen single mothers do it?
I tend to agree with you Stevo, although ‘conscience vote’ probably sounds a bit grandiose when applied to a lot of legislation, as much of it is fairly mundane. And to be fair, it’s also not reasonable to expect every single member of Parliament to have a full understanding of every single aspect of every single piece of legislation.
But the point still remains that MPs should be free to vote as they see fit on every Bill if they have a well informed and strongly held view. The fact that on the whole they can’t not only inhibits the proper expression of MP’s beliefs, it also creates a major disincentive to getting as informed as you reasonably can – after all, what’s the point in ensuring you have a solid understanding of a range of things if you’re still going to have to vote the same way in the end anyway. Without wanting to sound too precious or pompous, I see conscience votes as a responsibility as much as a right.
Nobody can deny that abortion will always prove fatal to the child. All those in favour of abortion are already born—-it would be interesting to hear the views of the 100,000 or so abortions in Australia every year, instead of the human resources already born.
“Fatal” and “child” are terms that apply to human beings, not unconscious clumps of cells. Having a shower washes away countless human tissue cells, so why is running water permitted in Queensland but abortion isn’t?
Sancho, to use a quote from blogger Cardinal Pole:
“A newly-fertilised ovum is an ORGANISM, a unified whole, it has a principle of animation; consult an elementary biology textbook if you are unclear as to what an organism is. An unborn baby is no more a cluster of cells than I am or you are. If I chop off a portion of my skin then that is a cluster of cells, but I myself have a principle of animation; I am, as it were, more than the sum of my parts, and so is a baby at any point between conception and death”.
I realize Sancho the gulf between the world views of anti-abortionists and pro-choicers is too wide for any sort of fruitful dialogue. The killing of Baby Jessica showed just how cold hearted the pro-choice lobby has become. http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_a_vote_to_kill
I used to think something like the killing of Baby Jessica would cause pro-choicers to pause and reflect. But of course that didn’t happen. For pro-choicers it was more of the same mindless sloganeering: Free abortion on demand; It’s all about choice; It’s only a clump of cells.
The whole pro-choice mentality can be summed up simply with: “It’s all about me.” And it’s this same “It’s all about me” mentality that motivates those people who support Queensland’s new surrogacy laws.
Also, Andrew, is it really possible to have a conscience vote on all issues? Surely when people vote for a person from a politcal party they do so expecting that politician to vote the party line.
In Australia every year doctors extract over 100,000 ” products of conception” from their mother’s uteruses. The killing of a foetus in this way is not considered a crime if the birth of a child will adversely affect the physical or mental health of its mother. I find it strange: doctors vow to save life not end it. The Aussie dollar speaks all languages, even in medicine, to these doctors of death, without the interference of the leaders of our society.
Andrew, I would have known that not everyone in the Senate has a conscience! Facetious comments aside, though, can you imagine being the leader of a minor party holding the balance of power (actually, yes, I bet you can imagine that) and trying to negotiate with the government wihtout being able to rely on the votes of your own party? And then, how would the government negotiate over your amendments if it has already had to make commitments to its own backbench rebels? This might be more complexity than the Australian parliament can stand.
Another problem is that on a lot of these so-called “moral issues”, parliamentarians are surprisingly unrepresentative of their electorates; in a poll of MPs and Senators a few years ago, their support for a euthanasia bill was tiny compared to the national polling figures. It’s not easy to change that by your voting strategy: what if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal voter, but your local candidate has different views on, say, abortion? Or you want to vote Green, but your local candidate disagrees with his party on the issue of internet filtering?
I think most people vote for parties not individuals, so they should be entitled to expect that their candidate, if successful, votes according to the party platform rather than his/her personal views. Of course I think the Libs have a much better system than Labour in this regard: crossing the floor is a big issue, and a tough decision, but it won’t necessarily get you deselected.
umm, that last post was meant to start with “I thought you would have known that not everyone in the Senate…” sorry.
As far as I recall MPs are free to vote as they wish.
However, if they vote against the party line, their carreer with the party will be short lived.
Considering that they stood for election on the party ticket crossing the floor could be interpreted as a betrayal of the party and of the voters. MPs have the ability to influence the party line from within.
A vote against the ruling party on a bill introduced by the party is a vote of no confidence and can trigger new elections.
A conscience vote is allowed for items for which there is no party line.
Independent candidates are just that.
On issues such as abortion, euthanasia, ‘family values’ and all the other things that Catholics feel impelled to enforce throughout the electorate, people like Barnaby Joyce, Kevin Andrews, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Peter Ryan should be prevented from having a vote on the subject. It is a case between their morals and our values. We know what they think, we know they’re inflexible, so why stuff around?
Exclude those religionists who think they have the right to ram their religion down our throats. And let the real conscience votes begin.