Tony Abbott says Australians accepting 'death on demand' after NSW abortion bill passes
Tony Abbott has told a conservative political conference in Sydney that with the passage of a bill through the NSW lower house formally legalising abortion and Victoria’s new assisted dying laws we had allowed "death on demand" to become a reality in Australia.
Addressing a crowd of around 500 at the Conservative Political Action Conference - a new Australian offshoot of a powerful American libertarian movement - Mr Abbott said we are embracing “fundamentally inhuman positions” in the country.
“This is morally shocking,” he said. Mr Abbott said the NSW bill, which is yet to pass the upper house and become law, would allow for abortion almost until the point of birth, and it had been “sprung on” the people without proper consultation.
The law as drafted would require two doctors to support any abortion after 22 weeks gestation.
Mr Abbott said laws such as these were being contemplated and passed because the nation had lost its “moral anchor points.”
“Restoring them is no simple task. They used to be anchored in the Christian faith. Faith is a gift, some people have it, some people don’t," he said.
Mr Abbott said he believed the Liberal Party had won the election because it was not as bound by ideology as the Labor Party, which allowed it to take more sensible policies on climate change and taxation to the electorate.
He said Australia was suffering from a malaise in the general political culture that had struck more deeply in the United States and the United Kingdom, which was why political “disruptors” had proved to be more successful in those nations.
In order for what he called the Australian centre-left to maintain its “pragmatism based on values” he called on those at the conference to defend their civilisation and read the “great books, the greatest of which is the New Testament.”
The conference will run until Sunday and hear from a range of Australian and international speakers, some of whom are associated with hard-right politics.
Photographers and videographers were ordered not to record Mr Abbott’s speech during what was one of his first public appearances since losing his seat at the federal election.