Overruled by Memo: Shelton Says Minns Health Bureaucrats Have Seized the Very Power Parliament Refused to Give Them
Family First Party
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
25 August 2026
Overruled by Memo: Shelton Says Minns Health Bureaucrats Have Seized the Very Power Parliament Refused to Give Them
Family First National Director and NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton says the Minns Government’s health bureaucracy has quietly awarded itself, by departmental directive, the power over conscientious objection that the New South Wales Parliament expressly refused to legislate little more than a year ago, and is demanding Health Minister Ryan Park rescind the directive and bring his department back under the authority of the Parliament.
Mr Shelton says NSW Health Policy Directive PD2026_032, Termination of Pregnancy in New South Wales, published on 24 July 2026, declares that the conscientious objection provisions “do not extend to” “administrative, managerial or other tasks ancillary to the performance of a termination” or to “hospitals, institutions or services”, and goes further still by placing clinical assessment, referral and non-directive counselling outside the protection of conscience altogether.
Mr Shelton says the timing tells the story. In May 2025 the Legislative Council considered precisely these questions when it debated Greens MLC Amanda Cohn’s Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025 — and struck out the clauses that would have given the Health Minister power to direct public hospitals to provide abortions, imposed a “reasonable distance” access duty, and forced an individual conscientious objector to hand a patient directly to an abortion provider rather than simply provide information. The Act assented to on 11 June 2025 contains none of those things.
“Parliament looked at this, debated it, divided on it, and said no,” said Mr Shelton. “Little more than a year later, unelected officials in the Ministry of Health have written the rejected policy into a departmental directive and enforced it as a condition of hospital funding. That is not administration, that is legislating by memo, and it is contempt for the Parliament of New South Wales.”
Mr Shelton says the directive’s own legal foundation collapses on inspection. It claims authority under section 14 of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019, but section 14(3) of that Act binds only “a registered health practitioner performing a termination, or assisting in the performance of a termination”, and the directive’s own opening section concedes that it “applies to all registered health practitioners in NSW who perform, or assist in the performance of, a termination of pregnancy.”
Its conscientious objection provisions nonetheless purport to bind hospitals, institutions and services - bodies Parliament never gave the Secretary power to bind. The only lever the directive holds over them is the line declaring compliance “mandatory for NSW Health” and “a condition of subsidy for public health organisations.”
“When the law will not carry the load, they reach for the chequebook,” Mr Shelton said. “Hospitals are being told the price of keeping their funding is surrendering a conscience protection that Parliament put in the statute and refused to take out. That is coercion dressed up as compliance.”
Mr Shelton says the gravest overreach is buried in section 4.3. Section 9(1) of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 expressly protects a practitioner who conscientiously objects to being asked to “advise the first person about the performance of a termination.” The directive strips that protection away, ruling that “clinical assessment, referral or non-directive counselling”, together with all pre- and post-termination care, sit outside the clinical performance of a termination and therefore outside conscientious objection entirely.
“Parliament wrote conscience protection for advising a woman about an abortion into the black-letter law. A department cannot delete it with a bullet point,” Mr Shelton said. “A nurse or midwife who wants no part in steering a woman toward an abortion is now told by her own employer that her conscience stops at the theatre door. Parliament said otherwise, and Parliament outranks the Ministry.”
Family First is calling on Premier Chris Minns and Health Minister Ryan Park to rescind PD2026_032 in full; to direct the Secretary of NSW Health to reissue a directive that goes no further than the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 as Parliament actually passed it; to withdraw the “condition of subsidy” threat held over public hospitals; and to explain to the Parliament who authorised officials to implement by directive the very provisions the Legislative Council had struck out of a bill.
Mr Shelton says Family First will campaign at the 2027 New South Wales election for legislation that entrenches conscientious objection in statute — for individual practitioners and for institutions alike — and places it beyond the reach of any future policy directive, so that no health bureaucrat can again undo by memorandum what the people’s representatives have decided on the floor of the House.
Mr Shelton says the question for the Minns Government is a simple one, and it is not really about abortion at all: does the Health Minister run his department, or does his department run the state? Mr Shelton says every member of the New South Wales Parliament who voted to remove these provisions in May 2025 now has an obligation to say publicly whether they accept being overruled by their own officials, and the case for a genuinely independent voice in Parliament — one prepared to ask that question when the major parties will not — has never been clearer.
— ENDS —
KEY FACTS:
- NSW Health Policy Directive PD2026_032, “Termination of Pregnancy in New South Wales”, was published on 24 July 2026 and replaced PD2025_026
- Section 4.2 of the directive states the conscientious objection provisions “do not extend to” “administrative, managerial or other tasks ancillary to the performance of a termination”, or to “hospitals, institutions or services (as conscientious objection is a personal and individual right)”
- Section 4.3 places “clinical assessment, referral or non-directive counselling, pre- and post-termination of pregnancy care (including pre- and post-operative care), and intrapartum or postpartum care after feticide” outside the clinical performance of a termination, and therefore outside conscientious objection protection
- Section 9(1) of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 expressly extends conscientious objection to a registered health practitioner asked to “advise the first person about the performance of a termination”
- The directive claims authority under section 14 of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019; section 14(3) binds only “a registered health practitioner performing a termination, or assisting in the performance of a termination”
- The directive states that compliance “is mandatory for NSW Health and is a condition of subsidy for public health organisations”
- Dr Amanda Cohn’s Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025, introduced in the Legislative Council on 19 February 2025, would have inserted a new section 4A requiring the Minister to ensure abortion services “are provided throughout the State within a reasonable distance of residents’ homes”, with power to direct the Secretary and public health organisations, who “must comply with a direction”
- On 8 May 2025 the Legislative Council agreed to amendments omitting that provision in its entirety, and omitting the amendment to section 9 that would have required an objecting practitioner to transfer a patient’s care directly rather than provide information on how to locate another practitioner
- The Act as assented to on 11 June 2025 (Act No 26 of 2025) extended early medical abortion prescribing to endorsed midwives and nurse practitioners and added annual reporting to Parliament under a new section 15A; it contains no reasonable-distance duty, no ministerial power to compel facilities to provide abortions, and no change to the conscientious objection provisions in section 9
MEDIA ENQUIRIES:
Lyle Shelton, Family First National Director
Email: [email protected]
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Lyle Shelton
