Opposition leader Dr Mike Nahan has defended Liberal MP Nick Goiran’s epic filibuster speech on changing the state’s surrogacy laws saying the politician is just showing how passionate he is about the topic.
Since debate in the Legislative Council began in mid February Goiran has been the only speaker to voice any thoughts on the proposed changes that would allow gay male couples and single men access to altruistic surrogacy.
So far Gorian has spoken for over an accumulative 12 hours, said over 80,000 words, and the transcript in Hansard runs for over 100 pages. When parliament adjourned yesterday Gorian still had the call and showed no signs of being near the end of his speech.
“He is doing what he is supposed to do,” Dr Nahan told the ABC defending the speech which government members have described as a massive waste of time.
Labor’s leader in the upper house, Sue Ellery said the decision to speak for hours on end was a selfish one.
“If one person decides to use up huge amounts of time in just the first part of what will be a long debate anyway, it is selfish,” Ellery said.
Goiran has responded to the criticism arguing that because the government took ten weeks to table the review into the state’s reproductive technology laws conducted by Professor Sonia Allen, it was only reasonable that all MP’s were given the same amount of time to consider the reports contents, possibly indicating his plan to speak for several more weeks of parliamentary time.
Things that are shorter than Nick Gorian’s surrogacy speech
The speech given by Liberal MP Nick Goiran is currently over 80,000 words, and it’s an unknown factor what his final word count will be. If you’re thinking of bringing up Hansard to read the speech, here’s some shorter reads to consider.
J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone clocks in at 76,944 words. A shorter read is J.D. Salinger’s A Catcher in the Rye, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises would also take less time to read. You can add to the list Alice Walker’s A Colour Purple, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Brave New World.
Virginia Woolf used less words to write Mrs Dalloway, and Douglas Adam’s classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is almost half the length of Nick Gioran’s speech. Other shorter works include Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
