Harry Quick (Franklin, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I, like other members speaking today, welcome this opportunity. This is about our third chance to talk to the committee’s report on overseas adoption in Australia. The previous speaker, the member for Greenway, mentioned the best interests of the children. In our previous report into family separation, the principal motive behind that was the best interests of the children. I think the same is being followed as we talk about the government’s response to our excellent report.

It is interesting to note that in the government’s response it says:

Taken as a whole, the recommendations create a blueprint for systemic change in the way the adoption of children from overseas are handled. The Commonwealth supports the call for reform.

I would like to place on the public record my appreciation for the promptness of the government because it was not just one agency that had to deal with this and bring all of this together; there were a variety of agencies. Sadly the government, in one of our other reports on substance abuse, took three years over two parliaments to respond. But, as I said, it is great to get a very prompt response—not only for us as members who have given up our valuable time to wander around Australia and listen to the wonderful stories of people’s challenges in trying to adopt children from overseas, but also to acknowledge the wonderful work that support groups do to support the families who have taken the step of adopting children from overseas.

I think three noes out of 27 recommendations is pretty good. I am a little bit disappointed that we could not have had 27 out of 27. One of the noes was the issue of an age limit for unpaid adoption leave. Just about everyone who spoke to us said that, the older the children, the greater the difficulty in their blending in not only with their own family but also with society. If you go overseas and visit the orphanages, you will see the fact that there are in excess of 30 children to one carer and these children develop coping mechanisms so that they are able to be independent, even at a very early age—far earlier than any of our children in a normal family make-up. We are not talking about a great deal of money here. We should be talking about and focusing on the best interests of the children. So for goodness sake, in a federal budget of tens of billions of dollars—we are talking about 370 children adopted in 2003-04, and we are not talking about all of those for this unpaid maternity leave—why can’t we have some common sense? As previous speakers have said, this is a bipartisan report. This committee is famous for working through some very sensitive issues and coming up with constructive forward-thinking recommendations.

I congratulate the Commonwealth on deciding to take over the role of overseas adoptions and renegotiating the Commonwealth-state agreement. For too long the states have developed and maintained this rail gauge mentality on a whole range of issues, whether it is registration of nurses or teachers or solicitors; the rail system; adoption; different fees in different states; Queensland locking the whole system up for goodness knows how many years; or Tasmania and the ACT, the favoured state and territory, where families moved to because it was easier to adopt children there. Now that the Commonwealth has taken over the role, let us kick a few heads in some of these state government departments. As members of the committee realised when we tried to speak to some of these state government departments, it was a case of: ‘We are the department. We know what to do. We have been doing it for years. Leave us alone. The interests of the parents and the adoptive parents are secondary to the functioning of the department.’ For goodness sake, we are talking about the best interests of the children—370 of them. There needs to be greater harmonisation of laws, fees and assessment practices so that more families can adopt children.

When I went to China I went to Beijing and visited the agency that had sole responsibility for processing 10,000 Chinese children. Ten thousand! The files in the rooms were enormous. They were huge—almost a couple of feet high. That was 10,000 out of 100,000 that were abandoned each year. There are 10 million babies born every year in China. A hundred thousand are abandoned and they are processing 10,000.

We have wonderful opportunities. We have thousands of parents who would love to be part of the process—who, for a variety of reasons, cannot have their own biological children and would love to adopt. We now have a Commonwealth government that has said, ‘I am going to take charge of it.’ Let us drag the states kicking and screaming into doing whatever needs to be done as quickly as possible so that in the next couple of years we can double the number of children that can come here and take part in what being an Australian is all about.

As I said, it is not a great deal of money. Removing the restriction on unpaid adoption leave for children under the age of five years and introducing amendments to the Maternity Leave (Commonwealth Employees) Act could be done just like a snap of the fingers. Recommendations 6, 7 and 9 could be implemented at minimal cost. I would not hesitate to say that the six members of the government would probably agree with me. When it came to putting this report in place, it seemed sensible and we all agreed. There was no disagreement at all. If we can remove the concerns about the maternity immunisation allowance, why can’t we do the other couple of things? Citizenship, school enrolment, passport applications and Medicare protocols are all ticked off. As I said, there are only three out of 27.

In relation to recommendation 27, the Commonwealth agrees about setting up a national peak overseas adoption support group, but it needs to be not only set up but adequately funded. This is a very big country. If you are adopting Chinese children in Australia and you want to maintain their cultural links to their country—if you want to bring together people from Western Australia, Tasmania or up in the northern parts of Queensland and have some sort of support group—that is going to involve some expense. Once again, we should not be talking about a heap of money within the Commonwealth budget. We are talking about only 370 kids, and if we double that in the next couple of years we are still not talking about a whole heap of money. As I said, it is important that we do this as soon as possible. The Commonwealth’s response says:

... there are significant lead times involved in the implementation of several of the recommendations, especially in renegotiating a new Commonwealth-State Agreement ...

I would hope that, with a forward-looking A-G in Philip Ruddock, with the 10 members of the department—and with the support of the shadow minister here with her enlightened approach to Labor Party policy when we get into government—the lot of us can deal with these issues sooner rather than later, because we are talking about significant lead times. With an election coming up, it could be 2010 before anything changes. As the honourable member opposite knows, when we spoke to these parents—they are wonderful parents who have incurred enormous debts, mortgaged their houses and borrowed money from families and friends to bring children from China, Somalia, Ethiopia, Vietnam or Romania, and I met some of these people this morning—we found they have to pay an arm and a leg and then, until recently, jump through a whole series of hoops. For example, people were going along to the local primary school to enrol their children and being asked humiliating questions. A school might say, ‘We can’t enrol your child unless you give us a birth certificate.’ ‘But my daughter was abandoned in China.’ It does not make any difference: no birth certificate, no enrolment. People were going along to enrol their child for a Medicare card and getting, ‘Oh, your child is adopted, is he?’ So things need to change.

It worries me that we are talking about significant lead times. For goodness sake! The government has said that this is a blueprint for systemic change. For once 10 of us agreed, ‘Here’s the blueprint; let’s drag the states.’ We need to drag them. As the honourable member opposite who is about to speak after me knows, some of the states in their attitudes are absolutely appalling—shameful. We had the minister in Queensland virtually accusing us of falsifying some of our report, yet he would not come along and give evidence in front of us.

Finally, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this, hopefully for the last time. It is a real pleasure to be part of this wonderful committee that has produced this wonderful report, which is a blueprint. I congratulate the parents who have adopted children. I have a family one door up from me in Kingston who adopted two young boys from Thailand. They are just so happy living in Tasmania. They fitted into the local school community and are a credit to their adopted mum and dad. Hopefully, when I leave this place at the next election, those three noes might join the other 24 yeses. I look forward to what the other speakers might say today, and I congratulate the government on its very prompt and in some ways inspiring response to a wonderful issue that we did not know much about when we undertook this whole inquiry. I thank the chamber.

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