Waiting

I'm having one of those lulls where I can't really do much until others respond to lumps of work and important issues I've left with them to resolve. True to form, rather than using this time constructively, I'm wasting it worrying about world events I can't alter (East Timor, Iran, Indonesia, Wadeye).

Something a bit closer to home that's bothering me is a bill the New South Wales government introduced last week to prevent prisoners imprisoned on serious charges storing their 'genetic material'. This came about because the media realised some time ago that a 'bad man' who was in prison had stored sperm while undergoing cancer treatment and the government was paying for it. Instead of responding by simply refusing to pay for these services in future, the government chose to ban the collection of genetic material at all. The Opposition supports the bill.

So, unless the bill doesn't pass the upper house next week, my advice to you, if you live in New South Wales, is to make sure you've had all the kids you want before ending up with a cancer diagnosis in prison because anyone helping you store your genetic material while you're having radiation treatment coud go to prison for six months.

I don't know much about human rights, but I'm pretty sure a sentence of medically caused sterility is probably cruel and unusual punishment. There may be some sort of um treaties about it. It sounds like prisoners could be denied normal medical services for punitive reasons without any reference to a judge. I don't like it but I don't know what to do about it.