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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1507 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

Regrettably, that bill was opposed, but nothing was offered in its place. But obviously the world still moved on.

I remember warning at the time that those who were opposing the bill should try to understand the consequences of what they were doing. I foreshadowed that children such as Hamish, whom we have seen in the media this week, were going to be born totally legally to a birth mother for genetic parents, but the genetic parents would not be able to be the legal parents of their own child without an adoption process. We are lucky that Gilbert and Sullivan had not heard about such a farce! I remember urging members not to throw the genetic parents and their children out in the cold but to give them some confidence. I said at the time:

At that time baby Jessica and her parents were in exactly this situation. They still are. Jessica's mother has told me of the anguish of not being recognised in law as Jessica's mother. She is not shown on Jessica's birth certificate, and she cannot even sign the formalities for preschool. She cannot give medical permissions. She counts for nothing in the eyes of the law. Jessica thinks she is Mum, and rightly so. She is the only mother that Jessica has ever known, but unfortunately the law still says no. This is confusing, unsettling, unfair and wrong, Most importantly, it is not in the best interests of Jessica or other children in this situation.

We now have young Hamish in exactly the same situation. The time has come when forms must be filled in and legal processes undergone which require evidence of legal recognition of the boy's parents, and he is at a disadvantage. His parentage is in legal limbo. So the parents turned to the court to seek recognition of their status. However, Judge Ken Crispin could not accede to their request, because under the Artificial Conception Act 1985 the law is unambiguous:

The judge expressed his concern at what he saw as an "unsatisfactory situation". He pointed out that the current law does not allow the court even to consider the welfare of the child and recommended that the law be changed to allow the court to do so. Currently, no legal claim at all can be made on the child by the genetic parent. The law is similar in all jurisdictions. This must not be allowed to go on; the time has come when something has to be done. That is why I am proposing this bill.

The bill is relatively straightforward and very narrow in its application. It enables the genetic parents to apply to the Supreme Court for a parentage order. A parentage order has the effect of making them the legal parents of the child. Without this amendment, the law says that the woman who gives birth to a child, and her husband, are the legal parents of that child, even though the child does not carry their genes and even though the birth mother and father have had that child to allow another couple, who are the genetic parents, to form a family. It says that the genetic parents have no legal claim on that child.

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