Wednesday, 9 September 2026

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (19:01): (2794) My adjournment matter is for the Attorney-General, and the action that I seek is that the Attorney-General publish the average time from a mother’s first contact with Adoption Victoria to an adoption order and table a plan to cut that process down to months rather than years, including early plain language information for women facing an unplanned pregnancy. There are many, many mothers who want their child raised, but sometimes they are not ready or they do not have the money or a home. They do not want an abortion. They want to adopt their child out. They want a family that is ready for their child. In Victoria that path barely exists. The state now runs adoption itself. Private agencies stopped arranging adoptions in October 2022. Last year the government arranged 13 local adoptions. On 30 June there were 19 families on the whole approved-to-adopt register. That is not a system with any spare capacity. It is a terrible indictment. A woman looking for a real alternative should be able to get one from the government. Instead she is met with delays, forms and uncertainty. Families who have already been assessed are sitting in queues, and the child and the mother are supposed to be at the centre, but instead there is bureaucracy and paperwork that does not actually serve anyone who needs it.

This government pretends that it is all about equality of choice, but in the case of adoption the government seems to have all but removed that choice off the board for pregnant women and especially for the many Victorian families who wish to adopt. The government must make the changes necessary to provide a genuine option to those interested in adoption. When adoption is this slow, it really does stop being a choice. That is a failure of administration, not the mother and not the families who would be willing to adopt that baby. It is not a complicated fix; it is just a matter of improving bureaucracy so that we can tell expectant mothers early, and without pressure, that adoption does exist, it is easy and it works. We need to support the mother and the child and support the families ready to take the child in.