The Guest Speaker at our recent meeting was Jills Angus Burney who, as an adoptee and a barrister, introduced us to the current review of the law surrounding adoption in New Zealand.
Jills was born in June 1960 on her birth parents’ honeymoon. Adoption transferred the legal responsibility for and parentage of her from her newly married Angus family (birth parents) to the Burney family (adoptive parents). Once the formal adoption order was made in early 1961, the law under the Adoption Act 1955 treated her as if she were born to the Burney family.
Until law reform in 1985 partially opened the door, the law totally restricted all access to her birth information. She grew up with two adopted brothers, knowing the State had created them and her as legal fictions. She was confused by being raised among her adopted Mum’s family as a Burney, her father’s family, of whom she was told little. The information available in 1991, when she requested release of her file, allowed her in January 1995 to make reunion with her Angus birth father and her younger sister. Sadly, she missed out on meeting both her brother and her birth mother, who died respectively in 1991 and 1992.
She accepts that the Adoption Act 1955 reflected the common social and Victorian moral norms of the time, for example, that children were raised by heterosexual married parents and that adopted children did not have contact with their birth parents. Of the three Burney children, it shocked her that her eldest brother was led to believe he was ‘part-Māori’, in spite of several in the Burney family knowing his true Fijian heritage.
Jills said, “The Act is now out of step with contemporary norms and best practice regarding the care of children. Open adoption, where contact is encouraged between birth and adoptive families and whānau, is now the norm but the law does not yet provide a framework for this. Many aspects of the Adoption Act have been criticised as being out of step with tikanga Māori.”
Adoption law reform offers an opportunity to take a child-centric approach to adoption law and processes, in keeping with other domestic child-focused legislationIt will be possible to better enhance the values of Māori and other cultures, to better meet te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations.
The topics covered by the recent public consultation, which closed on 8 August, included examining the big questions like the purpose of adoption, who can be adopted and who may adopt. “Under the legal effect of adoption”, said Jills, “who can access adoption information is of great interest to me as the State still refuses to fully release our birth files.”
The South Wairarapa Rebus Club <https://southwairaraparebus.com> meets in the South Wairarapa Working Men’s Club on the fourth Friday morning of each month and organises an outing in those months with a fifth Friday. Anyone in the retired age group who may be interested in SW Rebus Club is welcome to come along to a meeting as a visitor. Please contact David Woodhams, 306 8319.
