PRIME MINISTER:
I’d like to formally welcome everyone to Parliament House and to the Cabinet Ante Room to help mark Adoption Awareness Week next week. Unfortunately, I will be overseas next week at the APEC and the East Asia Summit conference, so I thought it was important to do something for Adoption Awareness before I left.
As many of you might remember, in December of last year I said that we wanted to make a difference and wanted to make a difference within 12 months. So far, there have been by my count three COAG discussions on adoption and there is general agreement that we all want the adoption process to be easier than it is.
20 years ago, adopting a child took about six months. Today, adopting a child can take five years. Given the number of children who are looking for a good home and the number of homes that would love to welcome a child into them, that’s just not good enough.
Adoption is not always right in all circumstances, but it’s not always wrong in all circumstances and I think in recent times there has been an anti-adoption ideology and it’s important that we roll that back and put in place better institutional arrangements that will make it so much easier to adopt in the future than it has been in the recent past.
So, we have made changes to our visa requirements, we have been talking to a range of other countries. We do have agreement from the states on the establishment of a national agency to handle overseas adoptions. That agency should be up and running by the middle of next year. We are working towards a national framework on adoption to try to ensure that at least we can get the time taken to organise adoptions down to 12 months. If people can have a child in nine months, why can’t we arrange an adoption within 12 months? I also hope that we’ll shortly be able to announce a significant increase in the number of countries with which Australia has overseas adoption arrangements.
A lot of work has been done, a lot of improvements are in train and I am confident that we can make a difference. I am determined that we will make a difference. We owe it to all the children who don’t have a decent home; we owe it to all the prospective parents who would like to do the right thing by children who need love. We owe it to all of them to make a difference and we will do our damndest to deliver.
So, thanks everyone for being here. I want to thank you, John, for all the work that you and your team have done over a long, long time to raise adoption awareness and it’s an honour and a thrill to have you here at Parliament House.
MR JOHN O’NEILL:
Thank you, Prime Minister, and if I may I’m going to try and channel my inner Deb! I’m not as good off the cuff as you are, but I’ve prepared a few notes which we’d like to record I guess the progress that you’ve made in the last year and our appreciation of it.
A year ago, we were here in Canberra and Deborra-Lee Furness, who as many of you know is our patron and founder of Adopt Change, said at the Press Club, “Our mission is to bring adoption out of the shadows and help thousands of vulnerable Australian children and millions of kids from all over the world know what it is to find a family”.
Deb said if we stop talking about these kids who literally don’t have a mum or a dad to advocate for them, then any chance they have at realising their potential is lost; any chance that they might have had of belonging to a family will be just a dream.
But more importantly, Deb knew what was required, as she so often does. She said, “To serve these kids, we need a champion within our government to take leadership and drive the issue forward. We need to streamline the procedures surrounding adoption so it works efficiently and ethically and expediently”.
Prime Minister, you are that champion.
On behalf of all of the families and children here today, we thank you deeply and sincerely for your concern, your compassion and leadership and the reforms that you’ve set in train.
Thanks to your support and the commitment followed through, I must say, of your staff has been extraordinary, your ministers and the agencies that report to them, we’ve come a remarkably long way in 12 months.
As you’ve said, you’ve begun establishing new inter-country adoption arrangements with more countries, you’ve removed red tape that delayed the bestowing of citizenship on many adopted children and sometimes took years, and you’ve secured the agreement of the states to the establishment by the Commonwealth of a new national agency to drive more efficient, consistent and effective adoption process.
Adopt Change has some goals and we are just so overwhelmed to hear that you have just really exceeded our expectations. Our goal is to see the number of children in Australia adopted each year to be at least doubled in the mid-term and we wanted to see the average waiting time of five years at least halved. We couldn’t be happier than to learn that you’re committed to an even bigger set of goals.
We also hope that Australia, with the backing of universities and state and federal government, may establish a centre for excellence to research and inform best practice parenting of children from hard places, so critical to successful adoption outcomes.
We look forward to continuing to work closely with you to bring many more children in need of permanent love and care together with the thousands of Australian families who are ready, willing and able to embrace them.
Thank you so much.
[ends]