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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2786 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

the face of what happens now to every woman who gives birth to twins. She is faced with the conundrum of whether she will keep them both or keep only one.

Mr Osborne: I take a point of order. I think Mr Stanhope is directing his speech to Ms Tucker, when he has to do it through the chair. I want to remind him of that fact.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I understand that the Leader of the Opposition is directing his remarks through the chair, as is appropriate under standing orders. There no point of order.

MR STANHOPE: The issue for parents that find themselves in that tragic circumstance of feeling that they cannot appropriately care for twins is an issue that some parents face today, every day and every week of the year. We have in place through our family services, our family law acts and our adoption acts arrangements to deal with those circumstances. All we are saying here is that it is a nonsense that we can have an arrangement whereby a set of twins can be divided through a parentage order under the Substitute Parent Agreements Act, with one of the children remaining with the surrogate parents and one of the children going to the birth parents.

There is no discussion about who will decide which one goes and which one stays. It is either both or none. If the receiving parent, the biological parent, says, "We never anticipated two children; we cannot manage two children," they probably should not have been accepted into the surrogacy program in the first place. In the second place, if they cannot manage both children, then it is for them, as the parents that have been deemed by the court to be the lawful parents, to make arrangements that they feel they need to make through our family services or under the Adoption Act. They could arrange for one of those children, through a directed adoption, to be adopted by the surrogate mother or some other person. That is the capacity that exists now, and surely that is the capacity which should exist in relation to twins born through a surrogacy arrangement.

I think it is odd in the extreme to suggest that where twins are born under a surrogacy arrangement the biological mother might choose to keep one and the surrogate mother might choose to keep the other; that they will toss a coin or have some other arrangements for deciding who will be the lawful parents. It is a prospect I find quite strange and unacceptable. But the issue of whether or not parents can maintain twins is something that I imagine is not an uncommon occurrence.

Subjecting this law to a sunset clause is quite logical, quite consistent and extremely reasonable. We all accept that this parliament has not done this job particularly well over the last six years. If none of us are going to stand up today and seek to repeal the Substitute Parent Agreements Act but rather say, "Let us persist with this bad law until we can make it better, but do nothing about it along the way," how does that advantage us? It is the law. It is supreme in its magnificence. It is there. This parliament passed it. It might be bad law but it is there. Either change it or repeal it. Nobody here is inclined to repeal it at this stage.

The Labor Party is moving for a sunset clause in relation to matters being debated today. If that is accepted, then this law-if this Assembly does not deal with the issue beforehand-will cease to exist in July 2002. Implicit in the Labor Party's position on this is that, if this matter is not dealt with by the Assembly before July 2002, we would

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