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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4634 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Then we get the Greens - Kerrie Tucker - getting up and saying that I am naive on this issue. I have been working on this issue for a very long time. I have spoken to all of the people involved and have been part of this for years and years. Yes, I might have a different view from some people in this Assembly, and I have no problems with that. I do have problems with chronic procrastination and allowing people's lives to be affected really badly by, possibly, the Labor Party's incapacity to support anything that I put on the table. I am sure that if we had a Bill to say that tomorrow is Friday they would oppose it at this stage. That is all good, clean fun when it is just about what day tomorrow is; but this is not like that. If those opposite had a problem with the initial legislation we passed, they have had three years to rescind it. Nothing awful has happened, Mr Speaker; none of the shock, horror stuff; none of the huge personal problems and none of the huge ethical problems that Ms Tucker spoke about at length. It has not happened. It has not happened, because the process that is in place makes sure it does not happen.

We have to remember that, as Mrs Littlewood said, anybody can pop down to the pub tonight, have a couple of drinks, go home with whomever they might choose, as long as it is a member of the opposite sex, and produce a baby - no problems; it happens every day. No counselling, no financial capacity, no capacity to look after the child, but a child will end up on the planet. In this situation the people involved go through counselling, they go through personality checks, and they go through huge medical procedures at quite large personal cost. They are assessed for their capacity to deal with this situation. Both the birth mother and the genetic parents go through enormous difficulties to get to the stage where a fertilised egg is implanted in the birth mother. The birth mother then, obviously, has nine months to change her mind. She has the baby and she still has the prerequisite amount of time that always exists with adoptions to change her mind; so a birth mother under this legislation still has the total right to keep the child that she gives birth to. There is never any doubt about that.

What members of this Assembly are now saying, and I still hope that they will change their mind, is that more children are going to be born in this way before those opposite get a chance to do something with this legislation that they have now decided, over three years after they passed it, they do not like. Mr Speaker, I hope that those opposite and the Greens understand what they are doing here. Children are going to be born totally legally to a birth mother for genetic parents and the genetic parents are not going to be able to adopt their own children simply because of, I think, bottom line procrastination, not being able to come to grips with a difficult situation. That is fine if you were going to oppose it; but why did you not do it last August? Then the problem would not have existed. But no, it is too hard. They send it to the Community Law Reform Committee, put it out for 12 months, so that we actually end up with some pregnancies, come back today with no indication at all that they are going to oppose it, and oppose it today with no amendments.

I have to say, Ms Tucker, that I am not the naive one here. There is a lot of naivety around here today, and the naivety is causing human distress. Again, I simply cannot understand why the Assembly is behaving in this way. If members wanted other parts of the Community Law Reform Committee's recommendations put in place, all it took was to ask for them to be drafted. I told everybody what we were putting forward.

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