Sarah Game calls Liberal response on abortion ‘wussy’
Game is labelling Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia’s response to her abortion bill “pathetic” – despite a Liberal party member endorsing her motion yesterday.
Legislative Councillor and Liberal party member Dennis Hood seconded the ex-One Nation member’s bill on late-term abortion in parliament on Wednesday night.
But while Game, now leader of the Fair Go for Australia Party, said she was “glad” Dennis Hood supported the bill, she would like to see a more “confident” position from his party leader.
Tarzia has maintained that Game’s bill would be a conscience vote and not a priority for the party since the bill was announced earlier this month. He said after a similar bill was introduced by his own party member Ben Hood last year that “abortion was a distraction and we won’t be revisiting it under my leadership”.
“There’s been a lot of criticism that the Liberal Party don’t know what they’re doing, ‘they’re not strong enough, they’re not confident, they sit on the fence’, there’s an opportunity for you to come out and say, ‘I believe in this, I’ll be supporting this’,” Game told InDaily.
“Like, yes, it’s a conscience vote for my party, if that’s how you’re going to do it, but this is something that I believe, and I think he would have been respected for that.
“Instead, he’s gone down this sort of wussy sort of out really. I mean, I think that’s pathetic.”
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Game said it “should be an easy bill to pass” because it was worded the same as a 2021 amendment to abortion legislation.
When asked on Wednesday if he would support the bill, Tarzia said “to be honest with you, I haven’t even looked at the bill, it’s in the upper house”.
“I don’t think it will get up, I can’t see anything that’s fundamentally changed in terms of the people that voted last time, I think it will go the same way,” Tarzia said.
“We have been able to navigate issues on conscience right throughout my time, from euthanasia to abortion and these are issues people feel very strongly about one way or another.
“This is not our bill… I made it very clear what our priorities are, this isn’t one of them.”
Dennis Hood said Tarzia’s position was completely appropriate.
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“Vincent has done the only appropriate thing that he could do as leader, and acted entirely correctly, in line with very long-standing Liberal Party tradition, and that is that these matters are and should be a conscience vote,” Hood said.
“Vincent is doing exactly the right thing by maintaining that tradition, and he’s to be commended for it.”
Dennis Hood said he chose to second Game’s bill because he “had strong feelings on these matters since I entered the parliament nearly 20 years ago”.
When the matter of abortion was voted on in 2024, after being introduced by Liberal MLC Ben Hood, it failed by one vote.
The night of the 2024 vote Liberal MLC Michelle Lensink, who was on leave for breast cancer treatment at the time, rushed to parliament to secure a pairing arrangement after the voting convention fell through.
Dennis Hood paired votes with Lensink – his yes vote with her no vote – and he said it was very clear this did not change the result of the vote.
“I made that decision at the time because one of the members who was going to oppose the bill was suffering from cancer, she had been approved on leave, it is a long-standing convention that her vote was recorded,” Hood said.
“Anyone who suggests my decision did change the result is either being deliberately misleading or, at the very least, grossly ignorant of parliamentary procedures.”
As Game introduced the bill in parliament, anti-abortion supporters rallied on the steps of parliament.
Game plans to bring her bill to a vote on October 15. She said if it was supported in the legislative council, she wanted to give it enough time to be voted on in the House of Representatives by the end of the year.
