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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 99 ..

parent. This not only removes discrimination against same-sex couples; it redresses the legal position of their children.

Until now, children who were born into same-sex families were disadvantaged by having only one parent recognised by the law. These changes will also mean that those children will get the legally recognised connections to extended families that children of opposite-sex couples have, such as to grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. While many of them already have those connections in a social sense, this bill allows them to be recognised by the law. That recognition has important implications in relation to inheritance and other property issues.

The Parentage Bill also amends the Adoption Act 1993 to allow the court to consider a wider range of people as potential adoptive parents by removing the current discriminatory provision that only allows the court to make an adoption order in favour of heterosexual couples. This will allow the court to consider a wider range of people as potential adoptive parents. The paramount consideration in every adoption case is for the welfare and the interests of the child concerned. This will not change.

The Adoption Act contains robust safeguards to ensure that the welfare and interests of the child is protected. For example, nobody may apply to be placed on the register of persons seeking to adopt a child unless they are persons of good repute and are fit and proper to fulfil the responsibilities of parents of a child, including protecting the child’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

They must also be suitable persons to adopt a particular child, having regard to their ages, education and attitudes to adoption and their physical, mental and emotional health, particularly insofar as these impact on their capacity to nurture the child and the welfare and the interests of the child are 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, which include whether any required consents have been given; whether the wishes of the child, where a child is of an age and sufficient understanding to express a wish, are met; and whether the welfare and interests of a child will be promoted by making the order.

The amendments to the Adoption Act and to the Parentage Bill do not alter any of these provisions. The changes to adoption law and 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 death of one parent, the children will have another parent with legal responsibility for their care.

Government members have received some noteworthy correspondence from constituents on this matter, and I would like to share some of them with the Assembly today. The first is from a mother of three in the southern part of Tuggeranong, who wrote last year:

Two weeks ago our second oldest child, a daughter aged 17, painfully confided to her father and me that she is a lesbian. As parents we were caught by surprise, but

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