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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2773 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

followed to start with. People have to be appropriately counselled. They have to go through a procedure that only people who are doing it for love would go through. I think that these children have a million more safeguards built into the whole situation that their parents, both birth and genetic, have been through than just about any other kids that are born on this planet.

I will support Mr Stanhope's amendment with regard to twins although, I have to say, I do not believe that it is necessary. For the court to give a parentage order, it has to be confident that it is in the best interests of the child. I cannot comprehend a scenario where the court would perceive that it was in the best interest of a child to separate twins. Twins have been born through these procedures and I would have to say that this situation has never arisen.

The amendment does prevent the court from exercising any discretion that it may have; but again, on the basis that I just cannot imagine a situation where this would arise, I am happy to support Mr Stanhope's amendment.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education) (4.37): I have a few comments to make in relation to this bill. We can all get worried about science as it is something that is very strange to us. Cloning and things such as that are of great concern to me. I fully appreciated the comments made by my colleague the Attorney-General and found a lot of common ground with them. Those sorts of things worry me greatly as well.

We are legislating for a unique situation. It is not something that would have been remotely possible 30 or 40 years ago. It is not natural in terms of what we understand to be natural.

Ms Carnell: Neither are antibiotics.

MR STEFANIAK: Neither are antibiotics, as the Chief Minister says. Yet it is something that on rare occasions occurs in our community and there are a number of factors which make it important to support legislation that will facilitate it.

The possibility of someone actually doing it for money was one of the big problems when this matter came before the Assembly some years ago. It is quite clear that no-one wants to have it actually happening for a fee.

Given that those problems have been sorted out, as I think they have, we are left with two couples who quite clearly are doing things for love, where the child actually will be wanted. Thing can go wrong. The birth mother might want to keep the child, might feel that she does not want to give it back to the genetic parents. Those things are catered for, as far as I can see, in this legislation. That is, perhaps, a very real and obvious concern.

It seems to me that this situation will arise occasionally, albeit rarely. Indeed, Mr Stanhope's amendment covers a situation which will be even more rare, but it is right and proper for him to move the amendment because it will arise. But when these things happen, the key factors there will be love and to the fact that the people desperately want to have a child or, in the case of twins, children; the child or children will be loved and wanted.

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