Page 3627 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 8 December 1992
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the adoption has occurred, is necessary apart from those adoptions from countries where it is a requirement. I can understand that support is desirable and often necessary, but supervision only for parents adopting overseas seems to me inappropriate. If there are reports of adopting parents abandoning or abusing their babies in the first year, we have mechanisms for dealing with that already, as indeed for any parent. I think there is a case for support visits made to those parents adopting overseas, especially when those adoptees are in their teens and need to know their heritage.
Even stranger, though, Madam Speaker, is subclause 56(3). I think this subclause should be deleted. It says:
Where the Director supervises the welfare and interests of a child -
remember that the director has decided that he or she is going to do the supervision; it has nothing to do with the choice of a parent -
under this section, the Director may require payment by the adoptive parents of the child of a fee not exceeding the determined fee.
I think this is entirely inappropriate. Perhaps it has been put in there under a user-pays concept. However, in this case the user is forced to do something at the will of the director and then is charged for it. I think that is an entirely inappropriate way to go about it. So, there are a few further concerns that I have raised, Madam Speaker; but there are others in this Bill that Mr Connolly wants to push through tonight.
Clause 65 deals with medical information and I will read it. It says:
Where, under this Division, information concerning the medical or psychiatric condition of an applicant for that information or of a birth parent, birth relative or child of the applicant, may be disclosed, the relevant authority may, if the authority considers that the disclosure might be prejudicial to the physical or mental health or well-being of the applicant, refuse to disclose the information to the applicant personally and instead may disclose it (without identifying a person other than the applicant) to a medical practitioner nominated by the applicant and approved by the authority.
This means that medical information can be passed from one doctor to another rather than given directly to the applicant. This legislation applies to people seeking medical information about others; but it also includes seeking information, as I read it, about oneself. It seems to me that an applicant has a basic right to his or her own medical information long before a medical practitioner.
You may have the AMA view - if it is its view; it probably is not - that a medical practitioner is entitled to information about one's medical information before oneself. Whilst I can accept that that might be important in terms of a third party, I think there are real questions - and I am just raising them as questions at this point - of a deploringly patronising stance taken by the medical profession who believe that a patient does not have the right to know. The legislation should
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