I think it might just be worthwhile to repeat very briefly what is this amendment is about. This amendment would require a minimum of 20 participants to go through the trial phase before proceeding to the clinical stage of mitochondrial donation. I repeat that nothing in this amendment would delay or prevent Australian parents from accessing mitochondrial services. The bill, if amended, would still immediately allow the trial processes to occur, including the full suite of mitochondrial donation processes through to live birth, so parents can go through that process. The intention of this amendment is to ensure there is a sufficiently large amount of data such that we can have information about the risks of this revolutionary and novel technique before proceeding to provide it in a wider clinical fashion, where there will be much less oversight and involvement of researchers on a day-to-day basis as per the trial phase.
It’s a simple amendment. It provides some protection for us as legislators in that there’ll be sufficient information before the minister, who will make regulations to go to the clinical phase. As discussed last night, some senators here would have preferred if we had required legislation to come back to this place before we could proceed to the clinical phase, that we did not delegate that power to the minister, but those amendments have not been proceeded with. This is a sensible approach that would still allow the minister the delegated power to proceed to the clinical stage, but after 20 participants go through the trial.
