Page 700 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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days in dealing with those comments. It indicated to us the very large range of views being expressed by the community. Indeed, many people were strongly supportive of the Bill that the Government had brought forward and urged that it be passed as soon as possible by the Assembly. There were others who took the view that the Bill represented a retrograde step and was - - -
Mr Berry: How many?
MR HUMPHRIES: I would say that in the order of 15 to 20 expressed that view. That is not a majority by any means, but there are grave dangers in measuring these sorts of things purely in terms of the number of people who vote in a random way for a particular option. If the number of people who voted against the Bill were any indication of concern, then perhaps we would not today have a Territory flag, because a similar measure was used to measure the community viewpoint on that issue, too, Mr Berry.
Madam Speaker, we were concerned about the range of views. We wanted to see whether those views were sound views, whether they were views reflecting some experience in adoption or whether they were merely views that were put forward to justify some position taken at some point by an official group. Among the views that were expressed were those of lawyers who had dealt in the area of adoption for some years. Some of those people expressed the view that open adoption was the preference of only a minority - indeed, a small minority - of their clients. I must say that that view was not the view expressed by a majority of the people who responded to the phone-in.
One caller, a young woman from Queanbeyan, said that she had been approached by her birth mother contrary to a veto which she had placed on such contact. That is significant because it has been claimed in the course of this debate that there have been no recorded cases under the New South Wales legislation of a contact veto having been breached. I do not know whether a single breach coming to our attention proves very much at all, but it was significant and very moving to hear that person talk about her experience in that respect. The one thing which the phone-in certainly indicated to me, as a person who sat on the end of the phone for many hours listening to these views, is that there is an enormous amount of emotional investment in adoption in this community, and we are trying to pick a very prickly path through those viewpoints to try to find the best solution.
Madam Speaker, what is the net result of all of that? It is hard to measure. As I said in answer to Mr Berry's interjection, we cannot measure this purely in quantitative terms. We cannot say, "Well, X number of people voted for this and Y number of people voted for that".
Mr Berry: I did not express a view. I just asked how many.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am just commenting in answer to that interjection. We cannot measure it in any scientific sense. We have to use our own good judgment as members of this Assembly to assess what is best for the community in the context of that range of emotional viewpoints.
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