Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think we all acknowledge that this issue is a complex issue because it involves families, it involves children and—as this motion states—it quite often involves children who feel unloved and unwanted, and children who are placed in difficult circumstances, many of whom face abuse and neglect. I thought of some of the homes and the families and the people I have met in my electorate in reading this motion and preparing my remarks today.

I remember a grandmother. I knocked on her door in North Bendigo. She had three children, and she was their primary carer. She was one of our unsung heroes: a grandparent carer. She was getting them ready for school—it was a Sunday, so they were finishing off their homework and getting ready. She said that her greatest fear was that her daughter would come back into their lives. As a mother, she said, that was really hard to say. Because of the way in which the system has been established her daughter has had a troubled life and was not really capable of caring for her children. The hardest thing for her as a mother was acknowledging that, and then acknowledging the heartbreak and the instability it causes the children when she comes in and out of their lives. Now the legal system is involved.

What I took away from that interaction was the complexity of the situation, the emotion involved in the situation, the complexity of the legal system, and—more importantly—the question that needed to be asked: what is in the best interests of those children? Any reform in this space needs to focus on the best interests of the children and the rights of the children. Too often our children are being used as pawns when we have relationship break-ups and when we have situations where children are coming in and out of care.

I also agree with the previous speaker, the member for Hotham, who highlighted that with any reform in this space of intercountry adoption we need to have strong rules in place to ensure that children do not become victims of trafficking. We need to ensure that these children's rights are also protected. I personally know children who have been adopted from overseas by local parents—loving parents. These children bring joy and happiness into their lives—to the so many Australians who now have these stories. We need to ensure that all children who come here under these arrangements have these rights. We cannot afford to allow one or two to become victims.

I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge the work that the Victorian Labor government has done in this space of adoption. Only recently they have joined many other states and moved to legislate for same-sex adoption. Western Australia adopted similar rules in 2002, the ACT in 2004, New South Wales in 2010 and Tasmania in 2013. The fact that Victoria has now joined them is a good step forward for my home state. Why the change? Legal certainty for the relationships between parents and children is a necessity. It is so that the courts can consider the children in a family to be siblings regardless of the biological relationship between the children. These changes allow children automatic inheritance from their permanent caring parents. They allow parents to apply for passports for children without seeking the birth family's permission and a court order. They also remove the stigma that still existed for so many same-sex parented families in my state of Victoria. Many people spoke out in Victoria about the need for this to happen. This bill in Victoria will remove the discrimination against children and parents of same-sex families. Many of the stories that they told reminded us of why this reform is so important. The bill that the Victorian government introduced in the lower house, which then successfully passed through the upper house, changed the Adoption Act by substituting the gender-neutral word 'person' to replace the reference to a man and a woman. It was that simple to ensure that gay couples and same-sex families in Victoria had the same rights as single-parent families and heterosexual couples.

I would like to finish with a few words of one of the mothers who talked about how important this is:

Most of the time we're just driving to soccer, or forgetting ballet shoes, or trying to be the best parents we can be … It's hard to believe some people see us differently …

That is why these rules were so important to change.

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