Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee on donor conception practices in Australia, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

In speaking to this motion, right up front I want to say, on behalf of the committee, that this is a unanimous report and I am very thankful to the other members of the committee, many of whom are in the chamber with me today. I acknowledge Senator Crossin, the deputy chair of the committee, and the other senators who all worked very hard and diligently to produce this report. It is a 100-page report with over 30 recommendations. I would also like to place on record the wonderful support we had from our committee secretariat in this regard. I acknowledge, obviously, Julie Dennett, our committee secretary, but also Lucy Sargeson, who was the principal research officer and did a wonderful job in support of our committee.

This is a complex issue and we received a number of representations from around Australia with respect to the problems, concerns and lack of rights of donor conceived people and their families. As a result of those representations, not only senators but also members of the House of Representatives sought and requested an inquiry into this matter. As a result of that democratic process being in play, the response was that, yes, there was merit in such an inquiry. That has taken place over many months, before the last election and more recently.

The committee received 162 submissions to the inquiry, and public hearings were held in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. Before I address some of the major findings of the report, I want to say on behalf of the committee that we shared the concern given in evidence to the committee, in particular by donor conceived people and their parents, that the system we have in Australia today for regulating donor conception practices is failing donor conceived individuals and their families. It is entirely insufficient and inadequate and there needs to be major reform in this area across the country, particularly at a state and territory level. I will expand on those remarks shortly.

I want to put on record my particular thanks to the donor conceived individuals who shared their personal stories with us at the Melbourne hearing. It would have been problematic and emotionally difficult for them to share in the way they did. On behalf of the committee, I want to say that we are very thankful for the way they did that. It is so regrettable and so sad that many donor conceived individuals are not able to track down the identity of their parentage. Of course, knowing one’s identity is critical and vitally important to knowing who you are and being able to reach your potential as an individual in this nation, Australia. My heart goes out to them. I express my empathy and sympathy for them, and say that I am sorry the system has failed them in past decades. I hope, as a result of this report, that we can make a difference for donor conceived individuals who are currently alive and, indeed, for future donor conceived individuals and their families.

We have made a number of recommendations regarding the regulation of donor conception practices in Australia. In particular we have recommended that state and territory governments create separate but uniform legislative regimes which prohibit donor anonymity—a very key point—and we all supported that unanimously  in the report. We have recommended limits on the number of families that donors are able to assist and we have recommended the provision of rights of access to information about donors for donor conceived individuals. Another recommendation is that the Australian government do everything possible, including through the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, to ensure the establishment of a national register, by states and territories, for donor conceived individuals as a matter of priority.

I acknowledge that four states have legislation in this area—New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Unfortunately, to date the other states and territories do not. There needs to be a national approach to this issue and we have made recommendations in that regard. We have also recommended that the Australian government should conduct a review into the current regulatory framework for overseeing compliance by clinics under the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines. We have recommended that, except in specific circumstances, the importation of gametes and embryos from overseas donors should be banned in Australia, but if that ban is not possible, any imported gametes and embryos should undergo the same requirements and terms and conditions as those gametes and embryos donated in Australia. Factually, on the evidence put to our committee, we have little confidence that the identity of the donors of gametes and embryos coming from overseas can be traced in each case.

We have made a recommendation that donors should be able to assist a maximum of four families Australia wide in the interests of donor conceived individuals. There are different laws applying at the moment in the four states I referred to, but we believe we should have the minimum number possible—certainly my preference is to have one. If there is to be a maximum of four, certain terms and conditions should apply, including the issues related to consanguinity and other relevant factors as set out in the report.

I am very deeply thankful for the opportunity to participate in this Senate committee investigation and inquiry. It gave the committee the opportunity to examine all the key issues relating to past and present practices of donor conception in Australia which, up until now, have received very little attention. Victoria has led the way in legislation going back to the mid-1980s, along with the other three states of New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. I think there are lessons to be learnt in each state and territory in that regard.

I also want to acknowledge that the estimated number of donor conceived individuals in the country was very hard to identify. Different submissions put different views but we do know that there has been an average of 600 donor conceived people born each year since the 1970s and there would be about 20,000 donor conceived people in Australia. That evidence was put by Dr Sonia Allan in particular. Some estimates have suggested that there are in excess of 60,000 donor conceived individuals in Australia.

In conclusion I thank again the members of our committee. It is fair to say that we have a broad church in our committee, with different views and different values, but in this case we were able to put together a unanimous report. It is not easy on an issue like this when competing issues are at play. My thanks go in particular to the many submitters who put forward their views in a personal and emotional way. I am very saddened and regretful that Australia have not provided a better regulatory arrangement in past decades but I hope that this will be a springboard, a foundation for the future, so that we can go forward with confidence knowing that there is a future in store with some certainty and rights for donor conceived individuals.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to also speak to this report that has been tabled by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, of which I am Deputy Chair. At the outset I want to acknowledge the remarks from Senator Guy Barnett and thank him for his chairing of this inquiry and for his cooperation and openness to take on board and listen to the issues that were raised during this inquiry. I also mention the terrific work that our secretariat has done in coordinating witnesses and submissions and in putting together the report. It is a very complicated issue and I think the report will stand the test of time of being another outstanding document that this chamber produces and it is thanks to our secretariat for that.

Two years ago a group called the Donor Conception Support Group came into Parliament House and wandered the corridors looking for someone to listen to their concerns about their journey of being donor conceived persons. I think that, with some frustration, they had not been able to get across the myriad of complexities that they had encountered in their life. So, armed with booklets and pages of information and stories from people who were in fact donor conceived, or donors themselves who wanted some body to look at the situation, they lobbied a number of us to take the issue on board and to listen to their story. I was fairly moved by their story and it became pretty obvious to me, when I read through the booklets they had produced and went back and looked at the Four Corners program, that, really, this was a mess. It was a situation in this country that no government, particularly any federal government, had dealt with.

We have had inquiries into what should happen with children who are adopted and with overseas adoptions. We have looked at forgotten Australians. We have looked at people who have been institutionalised. But there is now one special group of people in this country. They are the offspring of a donor conceived arrangement and their rights, their feelings and their legal journey in this country have not been given the due respect and admission that they need.

The fact that we still have Queensland, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT with no legislation in place relating to donor conception is appalling, quite frankly. The committee found that it was a huge, gigantic jigsaw puzzle with pieces that did not match when you tried to put them together. There is no legal basis, there is no protection, there is limited access to information and there are very limited rights for these people.

So, Senator Barnett and I did talk about this and we did lobby. Together we put forward a bipartisan motion in this chamber to at least, initially, look at the issue. We thought we would give these people an opportunity to tell us their story. We received 162 submissions from organisations involved in donor conception practices, from clinics, from individuals and from academics. They detailed a huge range of issues relating to all aspects of donor conception.

In the remaining time I have to speak, I will point out some of what we found. There is no consistency in legislation across Australia. Some states have legislation and some of that legislation stands out, such as the Victorian legislation. There are, as I said, four states and territories that have no legislation in place. But even where those laws are in place in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales, they are inconsistent. The inconsistency relates to all aspects of donor conception from the regulation of the clinics right down to whether the parties have access to counselling.

For someone who wants to donate, do they have counselling? What does it mean if, because of the donation, a child upon turning 18 wants to find out who the donor is? Has the donor thought about that? Has the donor thought about what implications that might have for them in 18 years time? What about the couples who are using that donation? And, of course, take the child—or the ‘donor conceived person’ as we now refer to that person. What about their rights as they grow up? Are they told about their background? Should they be told? If they are told and then they decide when they are an adult they want to know who their father is—it predominantly relates to fathers or mothers—how do they go about that? What rights do they have? Should there be limits on how many donations a donor can make? There are inconsistencies relating to whether a donor conceived offspring can access particular information, if at all, about their donor, including important information such as the medical history and information relating to their donor’s identity that assists the donor conceived offspring to complete their own sense of identity.

There is a vital need to create a national registry, at the very least, as a result of this inquiry. There should be a central repository with information about donors’ identities. A regulatory role should be undertaken which facilitates contact between donors, donor conceived people and their siblings. We discovered many difficulties in enforcing the regulatory requirements on clinics, mainly because they self-regulate, because there are different regulatory requirements between jurisdictions.

There is not one, single, national regulatory body that oversees the enforcements. At this point in time clinics must stick to guidelines. The guidelines are monitored by a certain group and then whether or not those clinics are abiding by those regulations is somehow regulated or looked at by the Fertility Society of Australia. But, at the end of the day, there is no legislated, designated government body that can enforce those guidelines, that can penalise, that can fine, that can restrict, that can stop and that can close down organisations if those guidelines are not being met adequately.

There is a lack of an organised system of sharing information. It is important that a limit be imposed on the number of donations a donor can make to mitigate the risk of consanguinity, as Senator Barnett said, and to minimise the number of siblings a donor conceived person potentially may have. We have suggested that it be limited to assisting four families. Have a look through the submissions and you see the number of times people have donated is simply incredible when you think of the consequences this could have throughout our society. Evidence presented to the committee showed how important it is for the donor conceived offspring to know even the most basic information about their genetic, medical and social history.

There are many things I could say about this report. That just gives us a bit of a snapshot. In the time that I have left I do want to say that this is a unanimous report across all of the parties involved and across all of the different views that each of us as senators brings to this committee. I think that is really important to emphasise. We were all convinced that this is a major national area of importance that needs to be addressed very quickly through SCAG, through COAG and through all of the states and territories, particularly the four states and territories that do not have legislation.

We have made 32 recommendations and each and every one of them is very serious and important. As I said when I stood up to speak to this report, this is an area in this country that has been completely ignored up until now. It is very serious. In my mind, it has the same importance as adopted children and everyone else who wants to track their journey of where they come from and where they are going. I sincerely hope that Attorneys-General right across this country, including our own Attorney-General, take this report seriously. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.