Dr. Brian Tobin:

The birth certificate recommendation towards the end of the briefing document refers to the domestic surrogacy model I am proposing. It should be remembered that we are proposing to set up a national surrogacy register and that, to my mind, is where the surrogate's details should be registered and made available to the child at the age of 16, as it is proposed in the 2022 Bill. The birth certificate should, where possible, reflect intended parentage, whether is opposite-sex intended parents or same-sex intended parents, but with the surrogate's information placed in the necessary repository, which is the national surrogacy register, NSR.

I hope it is clear from the briefing document - I do not know if the Senator had time to read it - that I am very much aware of the UN special rapporteur's recommendations on sale of children. In making recommendations I very much try to avoid not complying with her recommendations. She tells us things like contractual arrangements dealing with legal and physical transfer of parentage, with no right to object for the surrogate are massively problematic. I respect that and I totally agree with her position, although it does, to some extent, fetter what we can do in legislation. It can be difficult, practically, to provide for the surrogate's right to object if we go ahead with the recommendation of some activists and academics for pre-birth court orders for the domestic model, for example. I absolutely do not agree with that. As I said in my statement, the AHRRA would be an appropriate body for this, and there is evidence for that as well.

One of the reasons I recommended to the committee to take time with this is that I am au faitwith ongoing law reform projects in both the UK and New Zealand. They have been going on in the UK since 2017. The committee has been given a very short timeframe to do something that is so complex.