CHILDREN deserve to start their lives with a father and mother, State Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said yesterday, as controversial legislation expanding fertility treatment passed its first significant test.
Last night a conscience vote of lower house MPs backed the legislation - giving single women, lesbians and infertile couples greater access to fertility treatments - by 48 votes to 36.
Declaring his opposition to the bill, Mr Baillieu said IVF should be available only to heterosexual married and de facto couples.
"Kids deserve the basics. Every child has got a father and mother and I think that ought to be the starting point," he said. Mr Baillieu, who is widely considered socially progressive, said he was not making a judgement on same-sex couples who raised children.
But as Parliament began debating the fertility legislation yesterday, his views provoked an immediate outcry from same-sex parents, who branded Mr Baillieu's comments a "code for intolerance". Felicity Marlowe, from the Rainbow Families Council, said all children deserved legal certainty about their parentage. "These children of single parent and same-sex couples exist and will continue to do so," she said, adding that the bill gave MPs the opportunity to vote "in favour of children's human rights and dignity".
The legislation would stop some infertile couples having to travel interstate to have babies through IVF, surrogacy or insemination. Currently single women and lesbians must be declared clinically infertile to receive IVF treatment in Victoria but, unlike heterosexual couples, they cannot use donor sperm from a clinic.
Labor MPs Christine Campbell, James Merlino, George Seitz and Marlene Kairouz voted against the bill.
Shadow attorney-general Robert Clark said the bill put the interests of parents well ahead of those of children. "In the past, if a child lost its mother, that would be regarded as a tragedy for that child … however, those tragedies, if this legislation is passed, would be occurring by a deliberate act," he said.
The bill has the backing of Premier John Brumby and his deputy, Rob Hulls. But Mr Merlino, the Sports Minister, has split with them. He told Parliament that the bill turned children into commodities.
Mr Brumby told Parliament the bill modernised Victoria's law in a way that focused on the best interests of the child. Good parenting was about giving children unconditional love, he said, not necessarily the family structures into which they were born.
Opponents of the bill argue it strikes out the role of fathers and replaces it with genderless parents. The Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee - which represents the Catholic Church as well as the Australian Christian Lobby - said the bill was designed to bypass the limitations of gender and biology.