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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 125 ..

Importantly, this bill removes the discriminatory provision that has prevented same-sex couples from applying for adoption orders. Once again, this is not about making big changes to the law or about undermining the position of marriage or the family. It is simply about removing a piece of blatant discrimination.

At present, the legislation says that if you are an unmarried couple in a committed long-term domestic partnership and you are two people of opposite sex you can apply to adopt a child, but if you are two people of the same sex you cannot. This is despite the fact that in every case the Supreme Court will give careful consideration to whether or not the welfare of the particular child will be promoted by being parented by the particular couple that has applied. The government considers that there can be no excuse for this kind of outright discrimination in this legislation. Each couple applying for an adoption order should be judged on their own merits.

Apart from removing the discriminatory provisions, no changes are being made to the Adoption Act. The welfare of the child will remain paramount. But it is important to repeat again that the Adoption Act contains a number of safeguards that will not be altered. For example, the adoptive parents of a child must be resident in the ACT. Nobody may apply to be placed on the registrar of persons seeking to adopt a child unless they are persons of good repute and are fit and proper persons to fulfil the responsibilities of parents of a child, including protecting the child’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

They must be suitable persons to adopt a particular child having regard to their ages, their education, their attitude to adoption, and their physical, mental and emotional health, particularly insofar as it impacts on their capacity to nurture the child. The welfare and the interests of the child will be promoted by the making of the order.

Section 19 of the act sets out the criteria that the Supreme Court must use in making an adoption order and these provisions will not be changed. The Supreme Court must consider whether any and all the required consents have been given. The Supreme Court must consider the wishes of the child, where the child is of an age and sufficient understanding to express a wish. The Supreme Court must consider whether the welfare and interests of the child will be promoted by the making of the order. The amendments to the Adoption Act in the Parentage Bill we are debating tonight do not alter any of those provisions.

The government’s view is simply that there is no sustainable reason to automatically exclude a particular group of people, the non-heterosexual group, from being considered against these criteria as potential adoptive parents. As I say and have said continually through this debate, when I look into myself I cannot find a single sustainable reason that I can use to justify to myself—if I cannot justify to myself, I cannot justify to anybody else—why we should continue or maintain this discrimination. There is no sustainable reason to discriminate against this group of prospective adoptive parents.

The changes to adoption law, similar to the changes to parentage presumptions, will promote the interests of children who are being brought up by same-sex partners but who, under current law, are prevented from having a legal relationship to the significant adults in their lives. Like most other children, they will be able to have two parents responsible for their care. These changes will mean that, in the unfortunate event of the

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