Page 699 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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The proposed response does not commit the Government to any expenditure above that already committed in the 1992-93 budget. That expenditure, as I said to Mr Moore, is ready to roll as soon as the Assembly passes the Bill. It is my firm conviction that these changes do not detract from the intent of the original adoption legislation. This legislation reflects sound principles, establishes just administrative and legal procedures and upholds the institution of adoption as an institution able to fulfil an essential role in the life of the community.
Madam Speaker, the Assembly committee looking at this issue worked over the summer break. I thank officers of my department who put an enormous effort into ensuring that the Assembly committee was as fully briefed as possible and was able to respond, often very quickly, to issues as they arose in the committee. The fact that my officials did that shows that they are committed to the passage of appropriate adoption legislation - perhaps rather more than one would normally expect departmental officers to be committed to a piece of legislation. The officials concerned really believe in the importance of what they are doing here, and I thank them for their efforts above and beyond the call of duty.
MR HUMPHRIES (9.59): Madam Speaker, I want to add to the comments that have been made already in this debate. There has been much emphasis, particularly in the comments from the chair of the committee, on the consensual nature of the committee report, both within the committee membership and with those elements of the community that came forward and put submissions to the committee. In some ways the impression I gained was that the report was a synthesis or a coming together of the views of the people who made the effort to talk to the committee and represented a substantial part of all the concerns of those people who spoke to the committee, if not constituting an absolutely agreed position as between everybody.
That raises the question whether the report, or the Bill as, in effect, amended by the report, will settle the issues at the heart of this debate on adoption. Madam Speaker, it is not brave of me to say that the answer to that question is undoubtedly no. Many issues have been canvassed in this debate. Many of them concern access to information, perhaps the most critical or at least the most contentious of those issues. There are many viewpoints in our community and not all of those viewpoints are represented among the official statements of those who speak out as organised groups. Many views are not articulated, partly because of the emotional pain of the circumstances that surround adoption.
The Liberal Party was interested in the extent to which there was consensus in the community about these changes brought forward by the Government, and as a result we took it upon ourselves to engage in an additional round of consultation with the community in the form of a phone-in which we conducted in the middle of December last year. That phone-in was conducted over two days, a Sunday and a Monday, to allow people to ring up either from home or from work, whatever was more convenient. It was clear to us that there was a very large amount of interest in the community in the issues being raised but that there was no clear consensus about what was the best course of action for this Assembly to take.
That is no surprise to any of us. We rarely act in an environment of complete consensus in the community, but perhaps on the question of adoption this was particularly pronounced. In the order of 70 or 80 phone calls were received by our hot line in the space of 48 hours, and three of us were tied up for a full two
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