Page 3230 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 November 1992
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New South Wales has now conducted a review of the operation of its legislation and has found that the vast majority of adopted persons and birth parents welcome the right to information. There has been complete compliance with the contact veto system. Indeed, the New South Wales experience indicates that privacy is adequately protected by the contact veto system. The present Bill will provide for the establishment of a contact veto register. Members will be aware that the original Bill had provision for information veto to take those privacy protections further. At the time that Bill had been prepared - it was the end of 1991 - there was widespread community concern that the New South Wales contact veto system would provide inadequate protection, but the experience over the subsequent 12 months has shown that that system is working effectively. We have done away with the information veto, again in response to an overwhelming community consultation response.
Where an adult adopted person - or adopted person approaching adulthood - or a birth parent does not want other parties to make contact, they may lodge the contact veto. In the same way, members of the adoptive or birth families can also register a contact veto if they do not want other parties to make contact with them. When a party to an adoption requests access to identifying information and a contact veto is in operation, the applicant is required to be counselled about relevant issues and to sign an undertaking that he or she will not make contact with the other party.
The Bill provides that contact vetoes will remain in force for an indefinite period to be effective beyond the vetoer's lifetime. Vetoes, however, may be revoked by the person at any time, on his or her initiative, or upon being contacted by the Director of Family Services. Special provisions are made to ensure the privacy rights of birth or adoptive family members under the age of 18 years by enabling their parents to register contact vetoes on their behalf, effective until they attain the age of 18 years.
Madam Speaker, these provisions have been proposed after careful and serious consideration of the views of the community. They are similar to those of New South Wales legislation in that they provide for a veto on contact, but they also differ from New South Wales in enabling a wider class of persons to lodge contact vetoes and in not providing for a criminal penalty for breach of veto. It is this Government's considered opinion that punitive measures would not achieve any effective deterrent in this sensitive area of human relationships. I am confident that the vast majority of people affected by this Bill will exercise their rights responsibly and with respect for others. Indeed, the experience in other States where similar legislation is in place has confirmed this to be the case. To date in both New South Wales and Queensland there has not been a single known instance of a breach of a contact veto.
Madam Speaker, it is the Government's intention to conduct extensive publicity over several months prior to commencement of the provisions, to provide adequate opportunity for those affected to consider their options and either to accept the possibility of contact or to register vetoes.
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