Page 3228 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 November 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
ADOPTION BILL 1992
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.19): Madam Speaker, I present the Adoption Bill 1992.
Title read by Clerk.
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
This Bill, relating to the adoption of children in the ACT, vastly reforms existing legislation in line with modern adoption legislation and thinking, both throughout Australia and overseas. The Bill is a result of substantial community consultation. Reviews of existing legislation were conducted by the Human Rights Commission in 1986 and a specialist review committee in 1987. As a result of these, a draft Adoption Bill was released for further public consultation in January 1992.
Like all other jurisdictions in Australia, the ACT's adoption law was passed in the mid-1960s and was primarily designed to provide for infants born to single mothers and relinquished soon after birth to be adopted by unrelated adoptive parents. In the last two decades community attitudes have changed. These attitudes, together with other significant changes in family patterns and the types of children available for adoption, have given rise to reviews of adoption legislation and practice in most other Australian jurisdictions.
The basis of these reviews has been a recognition of the need for greater emphasis on the needs and rights of children; changes in community attitudes towards the secrecy surrounding adoption in the past and the development of access to information provisions; the need to develop a wider range of legal options for children, including open adoption and the use of guardianship and custody orders; and the need for greater awareness and appreciation of the needs and rights of birth parents. These principles have formed the basis of the Bill before members today. Central to them is that the interests of the child should be paramount. Rather than focusing on the needs of persons wanting to adopt, the emphasis is on the extent to which adoption applicants are able to meet the needs of the children concerned.
Madam Speaker, I now wish to summarise the major provisions of the legislation to explain their implications for the ACT community. The main provisions include access to identifying information, including pre-adoptive or original birth certificates, to adoptees and their adoptive and birth families subject to contact veto provisions; flexibility to allow for confidential or open adoptions where the birth parents and the adoptive parents have agreed to provisions for ongoing access with and/or exchange of information about the adopted child; preferred use of alternative legal options to adoption, such as custody and guardianship orders in the area of step-parent or birth relative adoption; incorporation of placement principles for Aboriginal children which will ensure that as far as possible preference is given to placement within the Aboriginal community; recognition of the wishes of birth parents, including the race or ethnic
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .