Ms Georgina Roberts:

There were a few points in the Senator's questions and I wrote them down. If I look down, it is because I am looking at those.

One of the Senator's first questions was on identity. I have never struggled with my identity personally, within groups, at school or anything like that. Being aware that you were born through surrogacy is vital. Like Ms Baldwin, I look nothing like my mom. My mom is 5 ft nothing and fair, and has ginger hair and blue eyes. We could not be more different. If I had not been told, I would have been one of those people who wondered growing up and thought that surely we could not be genetically related. I never felt any difficulty, as I had been told about my surrogate. I had always known her, I had met her and I grew up alongside my half-siblings, visiting them a few times a year. It was always known.

As Ms Baldwin mentioned, the issue of surrogacy comes up with everyone because people ask how many brothers and sisters someone has. I class my half-brothers as my half-brothers because that is what they are and I did not grow up with any other sibling. For all intents and purposes, they are my half-brothers, and that is how I like to describe them. As such, we are always discussing surrogacy. I have never had a negative reaction, even from people from whom I had believed I might have.

In the university where I am studying, I have encountered many international students from cultures, communities, backgrounds and religions where surrogacy would not be thought of or necessarily accepted and would go against many barriers. However, when I sit and talk with people about my story, I have never had any negative comment at all. That is powerful, because when people hear my story, they realise what a selfless and amazing act it is for one person to do for another. We can confabulate it in a hypothetical setting and decide it is not acceptable, but when we look at a human born in this way and the amazing lives we have all been fortunate enough to have had, there is no arguing that it has worked for us. No one can argue with that experience.

Regarding birth certificates, it is important to respect privacy, but it is also important that it is documented. This is something I have discussed in many other places and we have never really come up with a solution which allows both. The best solution I have heard of is the suggestion of an online portal where information could be stored and there could be a link on every birth certificate which could state that more detailed information about any additional circumstances surrounding the birth can be found at the link. Some people who were born "normally" would go on the website and there would be nothing extra while people born through surrogacy, donor conception or other routes to parenthood would have additional information online. That would mean everybody has access to that information but, equally, it is not plastered over one's birth certificate that one was born through surrogacy, which clearly would not be ideal.

It is very important to me that my parents are listed as my parents. I believe it is in the best interests of everybody that this happens from the very start. In this country, the new legal framework is looking at a six-week cooling off period, which was mentioned in this discussion, as a period of time for the surrogate to put in any objections. If she did not object, then the intended parents would be considered the legal parents. That is probably a good solution to allow the surrogate time but also to give the automatic rights, based on the assumed journey, of the intended parents being the legal parents from birth and avoiding these lengthy processes of court adoptions, which take years and are not good for anybody.

That is all I have to say. Does Ms Baldwin have anything to add?