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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 97 ..

So does a child have a right to know who their genetic father is if he is not the mother’s husband? Should we genetically test every husband before he is allowed to go onto the birth certificate? Another example might be the hundreds of children born each year who only have their mother listed on their birth certificate. The father of the child is either not there or had not wanted to be there. Does the child have the right to know? How would a government enforce that right? Would we somehow threaten the mother if she did not disclose who the father was and bring up a whole array of situations that led to the birth of the child?

I put these examples forward to demonstrate that this issue goes way beyond same-sex couples and even beyond artificial conception. The current method of recognising the parents of children is to recognise their social parents. We have been doing that for tens of thousands of years. That is the approach taken in this legislation, and it is applied whatever the gender of the parents.

Other issues have been raised by this bill. I note that today we are specifying that a child may not have more than two parents. I put the question forward: is that always the case? There are numerous examples of Family Court arrangements where parental responsibility has been shared between more than two parents. For example, a child’s mother, father and a stepmother. Are we sure that we are acting in children’s best interests by limiting them to just two parents? There are further issues that we need to explore here, and we need to have a genuine examination of these issues to ensure that our laws continue to act in the best interests of children.

The issue of access to genetic information obviously needs further investigation, and I hope the government will commit to looking further at this issue, as I believe New South Wales is currently doing. However, the fact that this work needs to be done should not prevent us from passing this bill today, which simply implements the existing approach in a non-discriminatory way.

I will now take a moment to acknowledge the hard work that has gone into putting this bill on the table. I know that the staff in JACS have been working hard for a very long time on this legislation and have taken a long-term perspective in producing an integrated approach to parenting laws in the territory. It is true that the laws on parenting are often confusing, unclear and often conflicting across jurisdictions.

This opportunity has been successfully used to unite laws regarding parenting, and a single, logical piece of legislation combines the existing statutes in one place. This process has been above and beyond the piecemeal approach that has occurred in other jurisdictions, and I am happy to commend the work the government has done and the work of the departmental staff.

As I said, I am proud to see this legislation pass in the Assembly today so that the ACT will finally treat the love of all parents as equal. I repeat that there are great gay and lesbian parents and not so great ones, just as there are great heterosexual parents and not so great ones. The main issue that we need to look at is that children need love, commitment, security and attention from their parents, whatever gender they are. And that is what this legislation achieves today.

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