Too many abortions

Herald Sun, Sunday November 7, 2004

Governor-General calls for change: Too many abortions

Governor-General Michael Jeffery entered the abortion debate when he declared there were too many terminations in Australia.

Maj-Gen Jeffery, 67, said he was not critising women who had made a 'terrible decision', but 100,000 abortions a year were too many for a country with Australia's population. "That's as many as our immigration quota. It's an awful lot", Maj-Gen Jeffery said. "Look at our population. It's a lot of lives. I would agree with any prescription that said we all have to work together to keep it to an absolute minimum.

"Nobody likes it. The girls who have to go through it, the families and so on." Maj-Gen Jeffery said he believed that improved education was the best method to reduce the numbers.

With a majority in the new Senate, senior Howard Government ministers are proposing a limit on Medicare funded abortions, especially of late term fetuses.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald Sun, Maj-Gen Jeffrey, who is a little more than a year into his job as Governor-General, also attacked Australia's celebrity culture and revealed he will visit China next year.

The former Governor of Western Australia and head of the SAS insisted he was not a rubber stamp for the government of the day.

And he outlined a new role as a sort of "super diplomat" representing Australian interests overseas.

Maj-Gen Jeffery, a Vietnam veteran, said he believed the cult of celebrity heroes in sport or popular culture was being taken too seriously. "Hero in the old sense was warrior-like, I guess, denoting bravery and courage and so on," he said. "In recent times, it seems to me we give the category of hero more to celebrity type culture. But I think you have to be a bit careful of whom you define as national icons or heroes in the true sense."

Maj-Gen Jeffrey said he believed parts of the media were too preoccupied with bad news and also warned Australians not to be rattled by the treat of terrorism. "One of the ways to beat terrorism is to show that we are not frightened by it and that we don't react to it in a stupid way," he said.

"There's a great danger that we get so worried about these things that they impact on our lives and we refuse to travel or go to the beach or to a restaurant - and I don't think that's quite right." Maj-Gen Jeffrey also said he believed that Islamic terrorists who made out they were driven by religion were "fooling themselves."

"I don't see that particular philosophy (terrorism) as having anything to do with religion. Mohammed, I'm sure, would be horrified. and Christ would be horrified," Maj-Gen Jeffrey said. "Look at the basic teachings of these great religions - which talk about the brotherhood of men, doing unto others, loving thy neighbor as thy self - the fundamentals.

"It's a bit hard to then go out and kill babies and blow people up with explosives if you believe in that philosophy." Maj-Gen Jeffrey said China's president, Hu Jintao, had invited him on a state visit, the first by an Australian Governor General, which he hoped to make next year.

And he said he had been impressed by US President George W. Bush during a recent 40 minute one-on-one talk. Maj-Gen Jeffrey has been trying to restore respect for the Governor-General's office since replacing Archbishop Peter Hollingworth, who resigned during a scandal over the Anglican Church's handling of child abuse cases last year. Praising the power of evangelical religion to instill values, the Governor-General said he was a believer in the afterlife. "I have a strong sense of spirituality.," he said. I believe every human is born with a spirit that makes us different from the birds and bees and trees