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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2787 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

be prepared to move to repeal the Substitute Parent Agreements Act. But at this stage we are saying that certain people have responded to the law which this parliament passed, as they were entitled to do.

Along the way we have picked up at least one other issue-namely, the lawful parentage of the children born as a result of their exercise of their lawful rights. Let us deal with that. Another issue for me is the prospect of twins not being separated. We can deal with that here today. Let us deal with it.

To the extent that there are 1,000 other unanswered questions-I feel as deeply about them as anybody else here-let us get the Law Reform Commission's inquiry under way. Let us deal with it maturely and have a thorough and deep community debate about this difficult issue. It is profoundly difficult. We all accept that.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

MS TUCKER (5.34): Labor have changed their line, but that is fine. Mr Stanhope argued the changed position of Labor. I remind members that originally, when Labor supported this legislation, the intent was not necessarily to encourage surrogacy, because it was of concern. People who have entered into this sort of technology made a decision in full knowledge of what the legal situation in the ACT was.

Mr Stanhope is now saying Labor is no longer reluctant to say, "We are really happy with surrogacy." By fixing this law and by legitimising this law, they are moving their position to say, "Surrogacy is here. We want to make it as easy as possible for those who want it." That is not what their position was before. I understand and accept it if they have changed their position.

I am more comfortable staying with the original position of Labor, which was to say, "This is complicated. Okay, we are not going to ban it." Then Mrs Carnell amended the legislation so that it was no longer an offence for practitioners to use surrogacy technology on altruistic people. That change was quite quick, and the general feeling from Labor still was that this was new and we needed to work on it. I do not know what they thought, but they were not totally enthusiastic about it.

Now they are saying they are comfortable with surrogacy. That is fine if that is their position. As I said, the people who have gone into a surrogacy arrangement understood what the law was. If they did not, then that makes a lie of the claim that they were given full information by the provider. The provider and the government say that full information was given. That interests me. I am really curious. Maybe someone can explain it. It might be something that I have not been able to follow through.

The article in 1996 said that one of the birth mothers was concerned about the Chief Minister waiving the cooling-off period of 30 days. I do not know whether that was incorrect reporting or whatever, but I followed all the law through, and I could not find a 30-day cooling-off period.

Ms Carnell: It is in there.

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