Theoretically, it means that lesbian couples could reproduce without any need for male sperm.

Dr Orly Lacham-Kaplan said she originally developed the technology to help infertile men conceive with their female partners.

"My aim is to provide a technology and to ensure that it is safe," she said.

"I'll leave it up to countries and IVF clinics to decide whether they would like to treat lesbian couples.

"If lesbian couples would like to use it to achieve their own biological children, so be it."

The technique has been used to fertilise a normal mouse egg by using a cell taken from the body of another mouse.

The egg was treated with chemicals to help it proceed through the normal steps of fertilisation.

This involves the egg and body cell each ejecting a spare set of chromosomes in packages known as polar bodies – leaving the egg with one set of chromosomes from the mother and another from the body cell.

A spokeswoman for Federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams said proposed legislation to allow States to override sexual discrimination laws – enabling them to prevent lesbian couples from participating in IVF treatment – was before the Senate.

She said the legislation, if passed, would allow States to decide whether or not they would use the law to prevent lesbian couples from taking part in IVF programs.

A spokeswoman for NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus said last night the proposal was "not an option that we favour".

"We have an existing anti-discrimination act which prevents people from being discriminated against when using a taxi, plane or IVF program based on sex or gender."

But Senator Brian Harradine said the Monash research was nothing short of cloning. "The Monash researchers are engaging in asexual reproduction," he said.

"These scientists are driven by the technological imperative – if it can be done it should be done."

Right to Life Australia chairwoman Margaret Tighe said scientists should be banned from "manufacturing" human lives and "dehumanising the whole process of human reproduction".

"We are very concerned about medical science going down this path of deliberately creating fatherless human beings," she said.

"Most people in the community want to know who their father or mother is.

"Creating humans in this way will create huge social problems."

But Dr Nigel Morrison, senior lecturer from the Genomics Research Centre at Griffith University, said the Monash research was a remarkable achievement in embryology.

"But it's a long way from producing viable offspring even in animals with an acceptable rate of abnormality," he said.

"It does raise the possibility of asexual reproduction in humans and the question of whether we should permit gay and lesbian couples having children using technology."