About 100 people joined a snap protest outside New South Wales Parliament on November 7 to oppose the state Coalition government鈥檚 attempt to amend the NSW Adoption Act 2000 and allow for a new generation of forced adoptions.
Speakers warned the proposed changes would institutionalise forced adoptions and raise the rate of Aboriginal and poor children being stolen from their families.聽
They included Public Sector Association assistant general secretary Tony Wright, Grandmothers Against Removals鈥 Ann Weldon, Community Legal Centres (CLC) spokesperson Mark Riboldi, NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge, NSW Labor MLA Tania Mihailuk and Darelle Duncan, a survivor of a forced adoption, who told her heart-breaking story of having a son taken away.
Family and community services minister Pru Goward wants to pass the Care and Protection Amendment Bill (2018) to enable the Supreme Court to dispense with the existing requirement that adoption require the consent of the birth parents.聽聽
Currently, if Family and Community Services (FACS) do not agree to return your child, you can appeal to the court. If the law is amended, that appeal won鈥檛 be possible if FACS opposes it and can show the child is in a 鈥渟table鈥 placement.
The CLC has released a calling on Premier Gladys Berejiklian not to pass the bill. It was signed by 24 organisations, including Kinchella Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Women鈥檚 Health NSW and Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney.
The letter notes: 鈥淔orced adoptions played a central role in the trauma that led to the National Apologies to Survivors of Institutionalised Child Sexual Abuse, the Forgotten Australians, and the Stolen Generations鈥.
The Guardian that if the amendment is passed, 鈥渕ore than 800 Aboriginal children in New South Wales could be adopted without parental consent鈥.聽
There has been a significant rise in state governments stealing children over the past decade. A 聽revealed that over the decade since former prime minister Kevin Rudd鈥檚 apology, the number of Indigenous children in out-of-home care has almost doubled.
Another has been called for outside Parliament on November 14, 2.30pm, when a vote on the bill is expected to occur.