Law Commission should lead rewrite of adoption laws
The Adoption Act is in need of a complete overhaul and the Law Commission should lead the debate, says Labour’s Justice spokesperson Lianne Dalziel.
“Labour supports calls for a law change supporting the ability of gay, lesbian and de facto couples to adopt children, but it believes a more fundamental review of the Act is also needed.
“The Adoption Act has not been fully reviewed since 1955 and is outdated and full of anomalies. For example the current law permits a single gay or lesbian person to adopt a child, but not a gay or lesbian couple, which is a bizarre distinction.
“Labour did considerable work while in Government revamping the guardianship laws which resulted in the Care of Children Act 2004. It also introduced legislation to remove relationship-based discrimination in countless laws.
“But the Adoption Act was left out of these reforms because it needed a complete overhaul, which was on our work programme,” says Lianne Dalziel.
“I believe the child-centred approach which is the focus of the Care of Children Act should also be at the heart of modern adoption laws. The 2004 Act states that the “welfare and best interests of the child must be the first and paramount consideration” and it applies to all couples regardless of their relationship status.
“It may be that the best approach is to amend the Care of Children Act to include adoption, as well as some of the other legal issues around parenthood. The matter should be referred to the Law Commission so it can develop an issues paper in the same way it has done with the liquor laws,” says Lianne Dalziel.
“The matters that need revisiting are complex and we need all the facts on the table to ensure a constructive debate. The issues include whether it remains appropriate to have laws in place which sever relationships with wider family members as well as birth parents, when an adoption takes place.
“Less than a quarter of adoptions these days are stranger adoptions, meaning that adoption is much more often about providing a legal framework around an existing set of relationships. Laws in regard to surrogacy and inter-country adoption need revisiting, as does the way the law treats the practice of whangai, or Maori customary adoption.”