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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4626 ..

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

Debate resumed from 24 September 1996, on motion by Mrs Carnell:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR WOOD (5.51): Mr Speaker, Labor will oppose this Bill. I indicate that in the next Assembly we will revisit the Substitute Parent Agreements Act to see whether it should conform with the resolution of the Australian Health and Social Welfare Ministers of March 1991. We have considered this Bill most carefully. This means a close examination of surrogacy, an issue which is among the most difficult of any that parliaments have to deal with. This Bill enables the genetic parents of a child born through a surrogacy arrangement to be recognised at law as the parents without having to seek adoption. It allows the genetic parents to apply to the Supreme Court for a parentage order to make them the child's legal parents. We are not supporting that.

I should make it absolutely clear that genetic parents - and we know of the case in Canberra - can adopt the child they claim, and they can be confident that the adoption process will deliver the result they want. A birth mother, that is, a relinquishing mother, can indicate her preference for a close relative to adopt the child. That would be observed. That is the course that genetic parents in the ACT can follow, assuming that the birth mother is willing to give up the child which the law decrees is hers.

In a letter to me supporting this Bill, the Chief Minister has claimed support for it from the Community Law Reform Committee's report on it over a year ago. This Assembly asked the Community Law Reform Committee to look at the Bill and report on it, and it has done so. The Chief Minister said that the committee supported the concept and purpose of the Bill. That, however, seems to me to be an overstatement. Let me read from the report:

The Committee notes that, despite provision for substitute parenting agreements in the Substitute Parent Agreements Act 1994 and the Artificial Conception Act 1985, there is considerable public concern about such agreements. A number of submissions to the Committee made this point forcefully. However, the Committee's terms of reference do not invite it to consider broader social concerns relating to substitute parent agreements. Accordingly, the Committee has not considered the appropriateness of substitute parenting agreements. The focus of this report relates to the parentage of children born as a result of an agreement and the consequences of parentage upon the status of the child.

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