Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motivation for my adjournment speech this evening is the release last week of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services report titled The winnable war on drugs. In line with Prime Minister Howard’s statements, the tenor of this report is uncompromising in its tough on drugs message. This approach is not necessarily welcomed by all—for instance, the peak body for alcohol and drug issues in Victoria, the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, issued a media release on 14 September stating: ‘The report completely ignores the evidence of the vast majority of drug treatment providers and researchers who gave evidence to the inquiry.’ But that is not the purpose of my speech tonight.

The biggest reaction has been reserved for the astonishing recommendation to almost automatically take children from their parents and give them to strangers. The Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association media release also attacks this controversial proposal that young children of illicit drug-using parents be put up for adoption. It claims that ‘implementing the report’s recommendations would inevitably lead to the creation of a second stolen generation of Australian children’. Recommendation 5 of the report states that when a child protection notification involves the use of illicit drugs by parents, any children aged zero to five years then become subject to adoption as a default care option. There seem to be at least three suppositions here: firstly, that the existing situation in all states and territories allowing for the removal of children at high risk is unsatisfactory and insufficient; secondly, that permanent adoption is better than placement in what might be temporary foster care; and thirdly, that there are legions of suitable adopters out there.

Ignored is the evidence that this disturbing recommendation could have disastrous outcomes for families and children so affected. Ignored is the evidence of how unhappy many adoptees have turned out to be, with blemished adult lives as a result. This recommendation is unnecessarily punitive and very out-of-date and old-fashioned in its highly judgemental approach.

No-one disputes that children at very high risk cannot be left with unsafe parents. All states and territories have laws allowing for this. No-one disputes that adoption is an important mechanism for providing good homes for unwanted children. All states and territories have laws allowing for this too. But for adoption to be an automatic default option is undoubtedly going too far. There is no sign that the members of this committee really understand the long-term social and economic problems emanating from children either forcibly taken from their families or voluntarily placed into out-of-home care. How many of them know of or have read the trilogy of national reports that attest to this? These reports are: the 1997 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Bringing them home report on the Aboriginal stolen generation; the 2001 Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs child migrant report, Lost Innocents: righting the record; and the 2004 Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Forgotten Australians report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children. These are but three reports of many others and a plethora of research literature that clearly attest to the enduring problems of children being raised away from their families of origin.

Many a submission to the Senate inquiries I have just mentioned revealed the trauma of being removed from families. Removal, for the most part, was justified on the grounds of alcohol fuelled family violence. Although many recalled memories of this violence and general neglect, the evidence of most was that they would have preferred to remain with their families as the bonds of attachment were stronger than their dismay at the circumstances they were in. Having spent their childhoods in care, the greatest hardship for them was a sense of dislocation and loss of identity.

Many witnesses told of how the loss of contact with their parents, siblings and place of origin had a lasting impact well into their adult lives. As adults, most have sought the information vital to reconnecting them to their families and to piecing together their childhoods. One former child migrant stated in a hearing that:

Former child migrants have spent their entire lives feeling lost or separated and even abandoned. From my own point of view, I have lived my life with a hole at the centre of my being.

A care leaver wrote in her submission:

Not only did I lose my identity, but I lost my Mother, my Father, Brothers and a sister, my family home, my bedroom, my toys, my family photos, my friends ... Aunties, Uncles, my hometown and connections ... all blown away like points off the stock market just as though it never existed.

These are but two quotes of many that I could give. They reflect major findings of these inquiries. In fact, each of these reports incorporates whole chapters on the search for identity.

I should mention here too that the irony is that this profound sense of dislocation felt by those raised away from their biological families has resulted in many resorting to illicit drug and excessive alcohol use as adults to quell the pain of their loss and identity confusion. This would be repeated for some adoptees, should adoption become the default option for young children of illicit drug using parents. Where is the logic in such a proposal? Why implement a measure that the evidence shows produces psychological problems for some that can lead to substance abuse and create a new generation of licit and illicit drug users? The evidence showed that there is a generational cycle that needs to be broken, but not in this way. Many alcohol and drug abusers to be targeted to lose their children to adoption were themselves taken away from their families as young kids. Empathy, understanding and working out how to change the cycle is what is required, not persecution and punishment of the children.

This recommendation appears to be a low-cost solution made by economic rationalists. The parents are to be treated as criminals. The children are to be dragged before those who will make the judgement that they are in moral danger and that removal is the punishment. It turns out that the kids have a value. There is a demand for kids, so here is the supply. The problem is over; end of story. Instead, what is needed is a huge long-term financial and policy commitment to help individuals and families to get themselves right, to end the intergenerational problems and to address the causes not the effects. Have a look again at the Senate report recommendations and the report itself.

There are practical issues of feasibility too. Dr Alex Wodak, President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s Hospital, was reported in the Canberra Times on 15 September as describing the proposed adoption measure as ‘absolutely outrageous’. He stated:

We have several hundred thousand people a year using heroin. We have about 2.5 million Australians each year using cannabis ...

So we’re going to find adoptive parents for the children of 2.5 million cannabis users a year?

It’s just ludicrous. This is just extremism.

Apart from the fact it’s wanton cruelty, this is stolen generation mark two.

Dr Wodak’s response cannot be ignored. It must not be ignored, because there is ample evidence that shows early intervention with children can produce much better outcomes than this automatic adoption proposal. The government itself has paid attention to Dr Fiona Stanley’s views on early intervention. She is from my home state of Western Australia and is a former Australian of the Year. In this sense, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services The winnable war on drugs report appears to disregard the fact that family focused rehabilitation options can and do work.

As I said earlier, I do acknowledge that in some instances there is no alternative but for children to be removed from their parents. Media reports of the accidental deaths and ill-treatment of children whose parents were users are harrowing to read, but to go down the road of automatic adoption is just not the answer and nor is it practical or feasible.

To conclude, I would like to quote from the editorial of the Canberra Times published last Saturday, 15 September. It reads:

It is to be hoped that Bishop’s demand for a rethink on drug rehabilitation is recognised for what it is—an unreasonably harsh and punitive approach that is more likely to drive drug-users underground than to Naltrexone clinics—and that the minister for Families and Community Services, Mal Brough, gives it the response it deserves.

There is hope a coalition government would let this report recommendation slide. There is even more hope that Labor will do better, because Labor members of the committee have rejected many of the inquiry’s conclusions in their dissenting report, including rejecting the view that automatically taking children from their parents is a good idea. Should they form government after the coming federal election, I trust Labor will turn to the Senate committee reports for inspiration and not to this retrogressive suggestion by some coalition members of the House.