Page 4300 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 13 October 2009
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arise. It may not always be in the best interests of the child or young person to be confronted with that situation and the blanket removal of any contact vetos may, I contend, and it is the contention of my party room, not be in the best interest of the child.
Similarly in the case of removal of the nondisclosure rule in relation to the information on adopted children or young people who have been born as the result of rape or incest offences, while there might be good medical reasons for disclosing this kind of information, the psychological impact on a child or young person in discovering their birth origins may not be in their best interests.
Mr Speaker, I made approaches to the minister’s office quite early this morning to adjourn this bill after the in principle stage to allow for the Liberal opposition to contemplate some amendments in these important and very sensitive areas, but I have had a discussion both with the minister and with Ms Hunter and I understand that it is their intention to pursue this bill this morning irrespective of the opposition’s concerns.
On behalf of the opposition I made commitments that we would deal with this Bill this week but had asked that, after we deal with the bill in principle, we adjourn it. It is a problem that I have been overseas on Assembly business during the last fortnight and not able to give my full attention to this matter. This is a very important piece of legislation that has long-term impacts on people who are citizens of the ACT, especially people who are born in and who live their early life in very vulnerable situations, and it is essential that we get this legislation quite right.
We in the opposition have been very keen to ensure that we do have good adoption legislation, and my party room and I have particular concerns, which I have outlined, with this bill but at this stage I have not had the opportunity to have thoughtful consideration of how best to carry this forward. I am extraordinarily disappointed that the Minister for Children and Young People and his opposite number in the Greens would not allow the adjournment of this bill for two sitting days to allow some more contemplation of these very important issues.
If it is the will of the Assembly—that is, the will of the Labor Party and the Greens party—to push this bill through irrespective of the concerns raised here today, I put it on notice that if it is necessary for me to bring back an adoption amendment bill to address the issues that we have concerns about I will do so, but it would be a better, more humane and more rational approach to deal with this in a thoughtful way in the detail stage of the debate, which could happen on Thursday.
I want to reinforce that the general tenor of the changes to the Adoption Act are strongly supported by the Liberal opposition. There are considerable concerns that we would like to address and I think that they should be addressed in the detail stage.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (10.40): The ACT Greens will be supporting this bill. The bill consists of significant changes for adoption in the ACT and brings the ACT more closely into line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 3 of the convention states:
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