Page 1938 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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including birth parents, carers, siblings and other significant people in a child’s or young person’s life. This recognises the significant benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with their birth family, wherever that is safe.
I would like to thank the minister for proactively providing a briefing to me on this important legislation, at which I was advised about and subsequently provided with the policy on the adoption of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children and young people, which clearly sets out the government’s position on the non-adoption of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children for whom the director-general has parental responsibility on long-term care and protection orders. I was pleased to see that this had recently been reviewed and updated and will be reviewed again in 2022. I understand that Mrs Kikkert will move an amendment. Assuming that all goes to plan, this policy review could happen at the same time as the legislative review that I understand will be proposed by Mrs Kikkert.
It goes without saying that the Greens’ position is that any review or changes to that policy or legislation, for that matter, must only come about after further community consultation and subsequent wide dissemination of any changes. I recognise that the government is committed to accepting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-led solutions to issues which impact on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, in line with its commitment to self-determination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is a position that we support. I note that the policy was developed in consultation with diverse representatives of our first nations communities, as it should be.
I recognise too the need for children to have permanency and stability, and that this legislation ensures that the ability to dispense with parental consent still exists in certain circumstances. I realise, and I am very pleased, that this does not happen very often; nevertheless the ability to do so, I believe, unfortunately does need to exist. I note also that we cannot legislate for the non-adoption of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, as it would engage human rights and racial discrimination. We cannot have one group of people provided with different protections from another group of people, based on their cultural identity and background.
I was pleased to see the inclusion of the need for parents with a disability or mental health issues to be provided with adequate and appropriate support to make their decision to the best of their ability. However, I do believe that this could have been further strengthened by clearly defining what supported decision-making actually means. At the moment it seems to me to be somewhat unclear how adequate and appropriate support is actually determined. What is important is that there are sufficient resources in the community in order to provide parents with a disability with access to the supports they need.
I support the amendment which will also consider the best interests of the child when it comes to changing any names on birth certificates and note that these amendments also come at a time when my colleague Mr Rattenbury, as minister for justice, has introduced legislation to be debated today which would enable integrated birth certificates. Those changes will support the adoptive community by allowing people born in the ACT and adopted to obtain an integrated birth certificate which recognises
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