Collins Judith: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Collins Judith: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:16694] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This bill is about lost opportunities. That is a comment that has been made throughout the long hours of the debates on this bill. This bill if the Government had had the courage to talk to people who work in the area of family law and listened to families and children would have gone a lot further when it needed to. Unfortunately when the heat came on the Government just whimpered on it. This was an opportunity for parental rights and responsibilities to come to the fore—and note I say parental rights “and responsibilities”. Children in this country do not have enough by way of parental oversight in what they do. Instead the Government’s big issue here is turning custody into day care. One of the big concerns it has is that custody of a child for a parent denotes some sort of ownership. Well parents do own their children and children do own their parents. That requires responsibility. Unfortunately one of the great plugs from the Government is turning custody into day-to-day care which is nothing more than childcare—unpaid childcare work. That is what the Government says of parents now. 
One of the other opportunities lost was that in relation to guardianship. Guardianship is a very very important concept in our law and for children. It is for the benefit of children. Yet this Government has decided that a partner of a mother can after only 1 year and with no court intervention just fill out a form trot along to the Family Court give that form to the registrar and become a guardian. In the select committee process those of us who actually care about parents care about families and care about children had to fight to get some changes to actually show that at least these people who were going to be given this guardianship would have to front up with a criminal conviction record. 
Having said that that would not have helped those little girls in Masterton because their mothers would have just gone willy-nilly along with this sort of process and thought it was fantastic. This was a lost opportunity to take guardianship and be even more serious about it. It was a lost opportunity to open up the Family Court. We have this morning talked extensively about why the Family Court must be more open. It was an opportunity to let the sunlight into the Family Court and to free people who are currently feeling that they are subjected to two very very strange practices from some people who work in that area. 
It was an opportunity to open up so that parents know what is going on with their young children. It was an opportunity for consent to medical procedures to actually extend through a little bit. It was an opportunity for notification for parents when children were having an abortion. Because the stupid thing about this law is of course that any parent needs to consent to his or her 15-year-old undergoing a dental procedure. Yet the Government whipped its people; it would not let them really go to their hearts and go to it. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: That is not true. The member is telling lies. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: The Government did that. This was an opportunity to take paternity seriously. It was an opportunity for this Government to say: “Children need to know who their fathers are and they need to have their father.” but it did not. What did the Government do? It wimped. It wimped out on it because all it wanted to do—the whole purpose of this bill—was to say that men are women women are men and we are all the same. Well we are not all the same and I celebrate the fact that we are not the same. I have no problem—and I want to put this on record—with lesbian couples having children or gay men having children. I do not have a problem with that at all. What I do have a problem with is when we have to say that a lesbian is a father. Well she is not. She might well be the partner of the mother. She might well take over a lot of the parenting role but she is not a man.