Australia - MPs call for addicts' children to be adopted (Australia)

[~lostgurl~]

MPs call for addicts' children to be adopted

Mark Metherell
September 14, 2007
The Sydney Morning Herald

GOVERNMENT MPs have called for the infant children of illicit drug users to be put up for adoption in a report advocating hardline measures aimed at addicts who are parents.

The parliamentary committee chaired by Bronwyn Bishop has demanded a rethink of Australia's "anti-adoption attitude" in proposals that have drawn criticism from Labor MPs and community groups.

Its report, which includes heart-wrenching cases of children who have suffered and even died as a result of their addicted parents' neglect, says such children are among the most vulnerable members of the community.

It recommends that the Federal Government with the state and territory governments establish adoption as the "default" care option for children aged up to five where child protection orders involve illicit drug use by parents.

The committee also calls for a national adoption strategy that acknowledges that "adoption is a desirable way of providing a stable life for a significant proportion of children with drug-addicted parents".

It cites the death of six-year-old girl in NSW after her mother and a boyfriend administered methadone to her and calls for withdrawal of prescription subsidies for takeaway supplies of methadone for drug-using parents.

The committee also recommends that any illicit drug use by parents should trigger the new Centrelink income management provisions under which payments to parents can be withheld and only spent on food and essentials.

But three Labor members of the committee dissented from the majority report and said the Government members had argued that addiction alone should determine whether a child was separated from parents rather than the more robust test of the best interests of the child as assessed by qualified people.

The inquiry had focused on attempting to legitimise the political stance of the Government, said the Labor members, who included the committee's deputy chairwoman, Julia Irwin.

A spokesman for the Minister for Families and Community Services, Mal Brough, said the minister would respond to the report once he had studied it.

The Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform said the report was a recipe for disaster, disregarding the existing evidence in proposing a reversal of harm-minimisation policies.

"What is amoral is that the report says that the lives and wellbeing of our young people and of the whole community are less important than forcing people to become drug free," said the group's president, Brian McConnell.

But the report blames "drug industry elites", who it said had hindered the zero-tolerance approach advocated by the Federal Government. These elites advocated treatment approaches that aimed to reduce harm, "but do not have the aim of enabling users to become drug-free".

The report, by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services, also calls for government funding to favour treatment centres whose objective is to make their patients drug-free.

But the president of Hepatitis Australia, Helen McNeill, said the measures recommended by the committee "would almost certainly lead to an increase in incidence of hepatitis C and could ultimately cost lives". She said the report eschewed the successful government policy of harm minimisation over the past 20 years.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...76899593.html#

[Jatelka]

You would have thought that Australia would have learned something from their last forced adoption programme.

This is truly horrifying

[Nagognog2]

I hope they take the MP out to the Great Barrier Reef and feed him to the Irukanji. Or at least stuff a Cane Toad up his arse.