Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Inquiry into Responses to Historical Forced Adoption in Victoria

Ms COUZENS (Geelong) (10:27): I am pleased to rise again to speak on the Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry into responses to historical forced adoption in Victoria. I want to again acknowledge and pay my respects to all the courageous women—the mothers—who experienced forced adoption, and importantly to those who gave evidence during the hearings in Melbourne and regional Victoria. The committee heard of the trauma experienced by mothers and the lifelong impacts on all aspects of their lives. The grief, sadness, shame and guilt have stayed with them forever. It was clear to the committee that the need for acknowledgement and recognition for the horrific experience of what the mothers had been through is a key issue for this inquiry.

In my previous contribution I spoke pretty much on the impact of forced adoption on those mothers that gave evidence, so in this contribution I want to focus a bit on the recommendations. There were 56 recommendations, and obviously I do not have time to go through all of those, but in summary I will touch on a few of the key elements. The committee made recommendations to improve the process for assessing hospital records for mothers, including that a specific application form be developed, fees waived and that applicants be informed as to why their records cannot be located, and additionally that the Victorian government encourage all organisations involved to identify all records in their possession and make these more readily available. One of the traumas for many of the women who gave evidence was the difficulty they had in accessing their records. Often it was met with hostility, so I think these are important recommendations in relation to access to records.

In relation to the acknowledgement and recognition of historical forced adoptions, several recommendations were made to increase community awareness of historical wrongdoings and what mothers endured under the policies and practices. The committee recommends that the Victorian government establish a redress scheme comprising financial compensation, counselling support and a direct personal response from responsible organisations such as mothers homes, hospitals and adoption agencies. The committee heard that it is difficult to assess psychiatric impairments for historical forced adoption due to the passage of time.

Therefore the committee recommends that the Victorian government investigate removing the requirement to prove a significant injury has been suffered as a result of forced adoptions under the Wrongs Act 1958. The committee believes that people should have the choice of obtaining a birth certificate that recognises their parents and adoptive parents. We have recommended integrated certificates upon request for adopted people.

Family reunification is complex and challenging. The committee recommends that the Victorian government offer specialist adoption-informed counsellors to support people through this time and then on an ongoing basis. Counselling has been really difficult for a lot of those women to access; it was more around appropriate access to counselling. A number of those women expressed their concern that the counsellors that they were dealing with did not understand the issues that they had faced and were still facing, so counselling was a huge issue, and getting that appropriate counselling for those women was a big deal for them. So that is a really important aspect to the recommendations of this report.

The extensive inquiry laid bare the shocking treatment of those women and of course their babies. So the fact is that these women were able to step up and tell their story in excruciating detail but also had to deal with the consequences of that, and I was really proud that our committee and our secretariat were able to put resources in place for those women to access counselling right there in the inquiry room or outside the inquiry room. These were really difficult and challenging inquiries that we did across Victoria, but I am really proud of what we have done. I am really looking forward to the government response, which is coming soon.