Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The eighth National Adoption Awareness Week, coordinated by Adopt Change, founded by Deborah Lee Furness, a wonderful, passionate woman, was launched in Parliament House yesterday. Currently around 50,000 children are in out-of-home care in Australia, with more than 15,000 having been in foster care for more than two years, yet only 203 Australian children were adopted last year. Adopt Change aims to raise awareness and advocate for the much-needed reform to the adoption process to provide children with a forever-loving family.

Adopt Change asks us to share 15,000 bedtime stories—one for each Australian child awaiting a permanent loving home. Yesterday's launch included a keynote address advocating for adoption from Sir Martin Narey, who served as a key government adviser on adoption in the UK. We also heard from a mother of a beautiful adopted daughter about how hard the bureaucratic process was made for her. It is a system designed to discourage would-be adoptive parents.

This issue has long been a passionate concern for me. In 2005 I chaired an inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services into overseas adoptions in Australia. It also looked at the whole culture of adoption and found these exists a strong anti-adoption bureaucracy which impedes adoption as a legitimate way of allowing a loving family to be formed or added to. I am therefore delighted that the Turnbull government yesterday announced a new adoption program for Poland and Latvia and the funding of $3.5 million over four years to help families and children going through the intercountry adoption process.