Dr. Geoffrey Shannon:

I am sure that the view articulated by Senator Bacik on protections is hugely important. It is also important that there is consistency between this Bill and other statutes, such as in the context of consent under the Adoption Act 2010. A person cannot give consent to adoption until a period of six weeks has elapsed, but in this Bill it is a period of 30 days. In terms of the message that is sent out, why should consent for surrogacy be different to consent for adoption?

In answer to the question on definitions, there are several areas in which we feel the Bill could benefit from tighter definitions. Rather than take up the time of the committee today, we could certainly send in a supplemental submission addressing those issues. We feel that this is a significant step forward in regulating an area that heretofore has remained unregulated. We fully agree with the Senator's comments. It is also important from a child's perspective and I come at this with the lens that children who are not regulated under this Bill do not find themselves in a legal limbo. I wonder whether there are parts of the Bill that might be overly restrictive and will still leave children conceived and born as a result of a surrogacy arrangement in a legal limbo.