MEDIA RELEASE
14 October 2012
Adoption Laws Should Be Maintained For Sake of Children

Family First NZ is rejecting calls for adoption laws to be overhauled, labeling the proposed bills flawed and unnecessary.

“There is no need to overhaul the current law because the adoption act isn’t broken. There is no huge queue of children desperately waiting to be adopted. There is no shortage of suitable married couples wanting to adopt,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“There may be room for tweaking the Act around the issue of open versus closed adoptions and better recognition of whangai adoptions, but proposals to substantially overhaul the Act are not in the best interests of children.”

“What the proposed bills by Labour’s Jacinda Ardern and Green’s Kevin Hague are really about is allowing same sex couples to adopt. Same sex couple and single parent adoption where there is no biological connection and surrogacy potentially harms children because it intentionally creates motherless and fatherless families - all at the same time as we express concern at the high rates of absent fathers and solo parent households.”

“While a compassionate and caring society should come to the aid of children who have lost their father and/or mother, it is dangerous ground to intentionally give children no father or no mother. Who wants to tell a 15 year old boy that we didn’t think he needed a dad, or a 14 year old girl that we don’t think she needs a mum?”

“A child has a right to a mother and a father. Death, divorce and disaster may not always deliver that, but we should not set out in public policy to deny a child that basic right.”

“The two most loving and capable women in the world simply cannot provide a daddy - and two men cannot provide a mum," says Mr McCoskrie.

"This is not a sexuality issue. This is a gender issue. The gender of the parents does matter to a child."

Family First NZ is calling on politicians to reject both the Ardern and the Hague bills as they stand, as they are both unnecessary and flawed.
ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On Failures Of Care For Those With Mental Disabilities

Hard to imagine a more disturbing insight into the treatment of the vulnerable than the Health Ministry report on Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau. The Ministry has found that the country’s only kaupapa Maori intellectual disability residential care provider has been “seriously dysfunctional.”

The ministry says the business has failed to recruit and retain quality staff – and says the kaimahi (caregivers) that have been employed are seriously unsuitable for the job, lacking basic knowledge. But Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau doesn’t get all the blame. The report says there’s a significant gap under disability laws to ensure there’s oversight by qualified clinical professionals. More>>