Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Breaking barriers report that was tabled here earlier this week. It certainly wasn't lost on me that November is National Adoption Awareness Month. Currently there are more than 47,000 children living in out-of-home care in Australia. Unfortunately, almost 70 per cent of those children have been in out-of-home care for two years or more. Of those numbers, there are close to 20,000 kids who are Indigenous children living in out-of-home care. Unfortunately, there have only been something like 250 children adopted in the last year, and this is a staggering number.

While there are those who are out there opposing permanent adoption—and I respect their views on that—and calling on government, as the previous speaker did, to look at causes rather than focusing on permanent adoption, let me say to you that the time frame for a child's life is very, very short. If the majority or all of that time is spent effectively institutionalised or in out-of-home care without permanency, it has a very serious and negative impact on the child.

We should be looking at the causes of this, but the numbers continue to grow. In doing so, we should not, at the same time, ignore the fact that these numbers are growing. These 47,000 children who I'm talking about at the moment are also desperately looking for permanency. Sadly, Australia has one of the lowest adoption rates in the world, mainly due to very inconsistent, complex and cumbersome laws in our states and territories. One of the biggest challenges that children in out-of-home care face is, as I said earlier, that lack of permanency. They are likely to bounce around the system from carer to carer. We, as legislators, have an obligation to provide these kids with a better solution.

We also must learn from the sins of the past to ensure that they are not repeated in the future. Again, I heard reference to the stolen generation in the past. Of course, we are considering here the adoption of kids who come from very troubled backgrounds. For one reason or another the birth parents do not have the capacity to be able to care for these kids. These kids have gone through a process through the relevant departments and have been identified as being at risk. Surely to goodness, providing a permanent home for these children is a benefit for those children. That is something we need to focus on.

One thing that was extremely evident during the committee process was that Australian adoption laws are extremely complex. This report has made seven recommendations—all of which I support entirely—and provides a comprehensive blueprint to make adoption a more viable option for our children. The case and evidence for a national framework on open adoptions could not be more compelling. Let me be very clear: open adoptions are entirely different from the previous closed adoption concept. This is something that the detractors of this report have attempted to blur. In open adoptions children remain connected to their birth family, their culture and their identity—something I believe is extremely important. However, I found throughout this process that a small number of organisations were quick off the mark to dismiss this process but actually offered no real solutions.

My electorate of Leichhardt is extremely vast and is home to many different people and cultures. Recently the Queensland government announced new laws that will recognise traditional child-rearing practices across the Torres Strait. This is a historic step, not only for the Torres Strait and Queensland but for Australia. This is what they call island adoption, where children go from one family to another and are traditionally adopted into that family. While I disagree with many things that have been dished up by the Queensland government, you have to give credit where credit is due, especially in this instance where the interests of the children were put ahead of politicking. This is now recognised. It's very much in the interests of these children.

This brings me to recommendations 1 and 2 of the report, which I would like to focus on. I mentioned earlier that my electorate of Leichardt is home to many cultures and many Indigenous communities. Recommendation 2 states that:

I would like to expand on this further and speak about adoptions in our Indigenous communities. We have a lot of issues up there. Look at this recommendation here. We have had some appalling tragedies where children had to be taken away from communities. These children in many cases went into care where there was no kinship. Wherever possible, of course you put the children where kinship is available, but in many cases kinship was not available for these children. There was no other family there that was able to take these children, so these children ended up in the system and in foster care.

I know that a lot of people argue that Indigenous children should be adopted only by an Indigenous family through the kinship arrangement. That is culturally appropriate. I've raised that concern. My colleague here was on this committee and has a very different view to me on this. I was at an event on Monday and I saw a number of children who had been adopted from Africa. I've seen quite a number of families bringing them in from India, Bangladesh and a number of other places. These children actually thrive when they come here and have a loving family that is totally supportive of these children. When you talk to the families of these children, they don't try and deny their culture. They in fact support it and do everything they can to maintain the children's connection with their culture. And what they provide that the children are not able to get in a foster care arrangement or an institutionalised arrangement, where they are moving from one to the other, is permanency. So these kids are thriving.

I have asked the question on a number of occasions: why is it culturally appropriate for children who come from all these different cultures around the world to be accepted into families in Australia and it is not acceptable for Indigenous children to have the same opportunity? I am aware of a number of families in my electorate that have been the foster carers and, on rare occasions, adopters of young Indigenous children. Those children have gone on to absolutely thrive—very much part of the family. But the families go to great lengths to ensure that the kids maintain that connection with their culture.

If there are family members there who are able to look after children and provide them with a safe environment, then by all means they need to be given priority in relation to the opportunity to take those children on a permanent basis. However, if family members are not available, and those kids are still going to remain at risk, I think that an adoptive family of another culture is far better than the long-term institutionalisation of those children or sending them from foster carer to foster carer. I've seen many examples of foster parents who really have very little control over the decisions that are being made for children. I think it's a tragedy that this happens. It's not in the best interests of the children.

I support the report absolutely. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank my fellow committee members—in particular, the member for Chisholm, Julia Banks, and my colleague across the chamber here, the member for Macarthur—and staff. I certainly commend the report. (Time expired)

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