That 22-Hour Surrogacy Speech
Many stories, myths, and legends have been told about a 22-hour speech I gave on a surrogacy bill in 2019. Allow me these brief moments to recount what actually happened.
At its core, it was a battle about Government secrecy, taxpayer funds and my refusal to tolerate blindfolded lawmaking.
It centred on three key things:
The record-breaking 22 hours of speaking time.
A $225,000 taxpayer-funded, 600-page report that the WA Labor Government tried to withhold.
A vindicating report by the Standing Committee on Legislation that confirmed serious flaws in the bill.
Here’s how it all went down.
On 14 February 2018, then Health Minister Roger Cook announced a review of both the Human Reproductive Technology Act 1991 and the Surrogacy Act 2008. Then on 23 August 2018, while the review was still ongoing, the Government introduced the Human Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Legislation Amendment Bill 2018 into WA Parliament’s lower house.
The Bill was eventually introduced into the upper house in October 2018, but not brought on for debate until early 2019.
In the meanwhile, I continued to press the Government on the progress of the review which was originally due to be completed by 12 October 2018. Self-evidently this review would be relevant to the Bill which Members of Parliament were being expected to consider in detail.
Debate on the Bill commenced in the upper house on 14 February 2019. I was the Opposition lead speaker and spoke for 29 minutes that day. The Government next brought the Bill on for debate on 19 February. I spoke all day (some 5 hours and 12 minutes). My message was clear: ‘I’m not going to stop talking until you release the report you are keeping secret’. The Government next brought the Bill on for debate on 21 February. I continued for another 2 hours and 59 minutes. By this stage the Government had awakened to the fact that I was not bluffing.
Despite my repeated questioning, Labor stated that the review had not yet been finalised while also confirming that the cost to date of this review had reached $225,000.
Roger Cook even went as far as stating to the media (as reported in an article on 21 February 2019 by WAtoday) that the Government would not release the review at this stage, because it was not yet ready to be released and was not related to the amendments currently before Parliament. He also added that the 2018 bill was only about making WA compliant with the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act. All these things proved to be false.
For the entire month of March 2019, the WA Labor Government decided not to bring the Bill on for further debate. On 21 March 2019 they finally tabled the Allan Review report.
The tabling of that report confirmed the WA Labor Government had twice deceived Western Australians.
Firstly, the report revealed that it had been completed in January 2019, indicating that the government had been aware of it for at least 2 months.
Secondly, within the report pages and pages were related to the Bill, including a sub-chapter titled exactly after the Bill!
Given the deception by the WA Labor Government along with the size and importance of the matters discussed in the report, an independent crossbench MP asked for more time to review the report. The Government refused. Instead, the debate resumed in April which led me to add another 13 hours and 20 minutes to my speech.
At that point I then moved to refer the Bill to the Standing Committee on Legislation for specialist scrutiny and inquiry, a move that Labor and the Greens opposed but which passed by a solitary vote.
In July 2019, the Committee produced a 117-page report which made damning findings, most notably that the Bill:
“would create unlawful discrimination against women”.
They further added that:
“This cannot be avoided other than by a fundamental change to the policy of the Bill, and to the existing policy of reproductive capability as the basis for the availability of in vitro fertilisation procedures.”
After that, the Government never again brought the Bill back on for debate during the remainder of that 40th Parliament (2017-2021), nor did they introduce a fresh Bill in the next 41st Parliament (2021-2025).
The inconvenient truth for my detractors is that this so-called ‘filibuster’ speech demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that Labor’s surrogacy bill was so fatally flawed that they themselves had to abandon it.
You can read my speech summing up this entire episode here on a motion condemning the WA Labor Government for its lack of transparency and persistent refusal to give full, frank, timely and correct information to members, this Parliament and the people of Western Australia.
You can also read here the debate on my motion which succeeded by one vote in referring Labor’s fatally flawed surrogacy bill for a committee inquiry.