Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the time left, I will try and summarise my contribution. The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Intercountry Adoption) Bill 2014 amends the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to enable children to apply for citizenship in their country of origin in instances where they are adopted by Australian citizens under a bilateral arrangement. Bilateral arrangements relate to those countries that Australia has an adoption arrangement with but are not signatories to the Hague convention on intercountry adoption. These countries are South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and past adoptions from Ethiopia. This more streamlined approach will mean these children will no longer require a visa to enter Australia. Instead, they will already be Australian citizens by the time they reach Australian soil. This is a common-sense approach that gets rid of bureaucracy.

Current arrangements mean that children adopted under a bilateral arrangement from a country that has not ratified the Hague convention are required to apply for and be granted a visa to travel to Australia. These visas are not cheap, costing something like $2,370, and they take forever, sometimes more than 12 months, to deliver—this is from evidence given in the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Intercountry Adoption. It is very clear that this process has to be streamlined and that it has to have the bureaucracy and red tape taken out of it. The report states that whilst they are technically classified as uncapped visas the demand for child category visas, including adoption visas, currently exceeds the planning levels set by the government. The imbalance is considered to be a key contributing element to the delays in processing child category visas.

The amendments to this bill will enable a child to be issued with an Australian passport, facilitating their travel to Australia as an Australian citizen, a process that would take far less time and money to complete than the current arrangements, which I have already mentioned.

I believe that it is right that children now adopted under bilateral agreements will have the same rights to Australian citizenship as those adopted under The Hague convention arrangements. I applaud the Abbott government on their swift action to rectify this issue, which has been raised by the interdepartmental committee. There is no reason why a non-convention country that is willing to enter into an intercountry adoption agreement with Australia and is able to provide evidence to support its adherence to the standards and safeguards required under The Hague convention should not be free to do so. This legislation facilitates that. Not only will the considerations of this bill benefit both the children and families concerned but it will also serve to foster good relations between Australia and other nations of the world.

It should be noted that the key decision-making framework will remain the same, despite the amendments to the bill. The amendments act to expand the scope of the current Hague convention provisions so they will cover adoptions in accordance with bilateral arrangements. The amendments contained in this bill are only a small step by the Australian government to streamline intercountry adoption, set against the backdrop of what could potentially amount to being a comprehensive form of intercountry adoption process. In other words, this is basically the first step. By amending paragraph 19C of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to include the phrase 'or prescribed overseas jurisdiction,' the government has chosen to extend the eligibility for citizenship to persons adopted in accordance with bilateral agreements. Further amendments under this subsection have inserted a new definition for 'prescribed overseas jurisdiction' which, in my view, is a vital component of the reform. It is the combination of these two particular amendments that ensures eligibility for citizenship will apply to persons adopted under current bilateral arrangements and to persons adopted under the bilateral arrangements entered into by Australia into the future.

It is my experience that there are many good constituents in Australia generally, and I certainly have a number of these in the electorate of Canning, who have taken it upon themselves to adopt children from overseas. We know that in Australia there are people who cannot have children, for whatever reason, whether it is for medical or accidental reasons, disease or just a sad fact of life. Since the advent of the pill and other things like that, there are not that many children who are now up for adoption within Australia. There are people out there who are heartbroken that they cannot have children around them. So they are forced to look overseas to fill this heartaching gap.

The probity of these issues has to be surrounded by all of the necessary checks and balances. We will not go into the recent surrogacy issues. That is why there has to be probity and this bill provides that to parents and to those dealing with other countries. It is the government's commitment to continue with intercountry adoption dialogue with other countries, because at the moment we only have a small range of these dialogues going. But it should be extended. For example, I know people in my electorate who are trying to adopt a child, in this particular case, from China. It is difficult because we do not have the protocols in place with China or, for example, the Philippines. So this ongoing dialogue must be fostered because we need to make sure of that when children become available in some of these countries. This particular child was found on the streets of China. She was taken because, as you know, girls are not highly valued in China, particularly under the one-child policy. That has split this good family, who are of Chinese origin but are now Australian citizens, as part of the family have to stay in China to look after this baby while they continue their business and their active citizenship in Australia. This matter cannot be facilitated because we do not have an agreement with China. It would take extraordinary intervention, I suspect by the minister in this case, to look at it on a case-by-case basis. But we are trying to streamline this process with a whole range of countries.

To demonstrate how tough it has been, Australia has one of the lowest adoption rates in the world. The Hague convention's private website stated that, in 2008-2009, Australia only adopted a total of 129 children from non-Hague countries. This compares very, very poorly with that of 7,216, the total number of adoptions in 2009 into the United States from non-Hague countries. It is not very hard to see why Australia needs the amendments to this bill.

I note that this issue was brought forward and precipitated by Deborra-Lee Furness and her husband Hugh Jackman, whom I would like to congratulate. In TheSydney Morning Herald, in December 2013, there was an article where Deborra-Lee Furness addressed the National Press Club and one of her statements was about Australia's very low adoption rates. She has been championing this issue. And can I also congratulate our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. I know this issue has bipartisan support in this parliament, but it needs to get through here because there are people out there—potential parents and potential children—waiting for this legislation to be enacted so they can be joined.

Imagine going overseas and you find a child, and it is still a baby. All of us want to have an intervention into a child's life as early as possible, yet if you are held away from this child for more than 12 months, how do you look after that child? Do you stay in the country of adoption? Do you spend an awful lot of money getting someone else to do it? This is good legislation, it is the right legislation and it is legislation which, as I said, I know that both sides of this House will support. So the sooner this journey happens, the better. There are some people who have fears in relation to child exploitation as a result of intercountry adoption but, as you can see from the cessation of our agreement with Ethiopia, we did something about that because of some of the concerns.

The Australian government and all of us here are fully committed to the best interests of the child. Furthermore, Australia's current bilateral agreements with a handful of countries are evidence of the fact that we need to get on with this.

As my speech draws to a close, I want to congratulate all of those involved. As I said, I want to congratulate from the Prime Minister down and those advocating for this legislation. Obviously, in doing so, I support this great initiative.