Well, here’s a new one.
Independent Northern Territory pollie Gerry Wood has used a speech in parliament to make a somewhat questionable claim: population growth decline and therefore reduced GST income in the Territory can be linked to… abortion.
Gerry Wood, the Member for Nelson, was replying to the revelations in March that the Territory‘s GST share would be reduced by around $269 million for the 2017/18 financial year. This became heated in a discussion around the Territory’s budget. Around $77 million of the reduction was related to the reduction in NT’s share of Australia’s population growth.
“We lose 600 to 1,000 people [each year] through abortion,” Wood told fellow MPs.
And people will laugh at me, I’ve raised it before: why don’t we help promote people go through with pregnancy? Why don’t we look at adoption? Regardless of your opinion, you do reduce one quarter of your population, and yet we’ve got a declining population. And if you looked at alternatives to helping people, we may have some of those increases in population growth.
Of course, it’s a bizarre tack to take – there are probably far more immediate issues at hand when it comes to population growth not related to allowing women the right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy. Attorney-General Natasha Fyles, who helped with the push to decriminalise abortion in the NT back in March, agrees.
Speaking to the ABC, Fyles rebuked Wood’s remarks.
I think it would be very important as parliamentarians that we don’t allow emotive issues like this to come into play when talking about issues such as GST cuts. We need to clearly separate, we need to make sure in the Northern Territory as a Government, and we have done so in delivering contemporary termination of pregnancy legislation for women, for Territorians, if they are to make choices about their bodies.
Source: ABC.
Photo: NT Parliament.
