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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 135 ..

Mr Stanhope: It is not exclusive.

MRS DUNNE: These are the things that people might opt to do. People who relinquish a child for adoption do not do that lightly. Obviously they do that because they do not believe—for whatever reason—that they have the capacity to work in the best interests of the child who is being relinquished. However, they might have some passionate views about some issues. If I were a Hindu I might want the child that I was relinquishing to be raised as a Hindu by an Indian family, as that might be of cultural importance to me. It means that I have the right—I might waive that right but I might also exercise it—to discriminate on the basis of the racial, ethnic or religious background of the person to whom I might want to relinquish my child.

I might be a single woman who is putting up her child for adoption. As a single woman I might say, “I cannot provide in the best possible way for my child, therefore I would like somebody who is in a better position to do that.” As a single woman I might decide that it is entirely unsuitable to pass on my child to another single person. The government is stating that that discrimination is permissible. Any member who believes that we have done away with discrimination in the ACT today is an absolute fool. We have not done away with discrimination in the ACT.

What we are doing is depriving people of the right to relinquish their children, for whatever reason. We are taking away their right to make decisions about the future of their children. That might mean that even fewer children in the ACT will be relinquished for adoption. Some parents might go interstate because they will have some control over whether or not their children go to a heterosexual couple.

MS TUCKER (10.18): The Greens do not support this amendment. Basically, section 19 (2) of the Adoption Act states:

In deciding whether or not to make an adoption order, the Court shall have regard to—

(a) where it is appropriate given the age and understanding of the child—the wishes of the child…

(b) any wishes expressed in an instrument of consent, including wishes as regards—

and the section then lists several examples, but it is certainly not an exclusive list. It would have been better if we deleted everything after section 19 (2) (a) and (b). So the court shall have regard to the wishes of the child and any wishes could be expressed in an instrument of consent. We do not need to include the list that is referred to in that section. I do not think it is particularly useful to have that list. That is something that we could look at later.

The Chief Minister said earlier that the government did not want to review the whole act at this point in time. I believe that it is not useful—in fact, it is quite dangerous—to have a list such as that in this legislation. We can have regard to the wishes of a parent and we could cover a wide range of issues. The examples that are included in the act do not represent an exclusive list. If we added sexuality to that list it would have a negative

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