Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Adoption informationAdoption information is treated separately. All States and Territories except SAhave legislation to permit adopted children to find out who their natural parents arewithout using FoI procedures. Legislation varies somewhat in each State and Territory. InNSW the birth parent or the adopted child can lodge a contact veto but cannot prevent therelease of identifying information. In other jurisdictions the parties can register a vetoover the release of identifying information or can permit this release but prevent the otherperson from making contact. In Queensland even if parents’ identity cannot be disclosedthe adopted child will be told their age, religion, occupation, ethnicity and a generaldescription. In all jurisdictions adopted children are only entitled to the information abouttheir birth once they reach 18.No right of access to non-government recordsRecords made by non-government organisations, for example churches runningchildren’s homes and orphanages, are not covered by FoI. Some researchers’ records, forexample the extensive ‘Tindale Collection’ of photographs and genealogies created byanthropologist Norman Tindale in the first half of this century, and some non-governmentagency record collections, for example some mission records in the NT and the A ONeville collection in WA, have been deposited in various State, Territory andCommonwealth archives. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander Studies also holds significant family and biographical information. The generalrule is that the depositing organisation and not the archives itself decides who can haveaccess to these materials and on what conditions.Non-government organisations are under no statutory obligation to retain theirrecords or to expend resources preserving and indexing them. ‘It really is up to theorganisations concerned to have some sort of general social conscience in terms ofensuring survival of important records’ (Richard Gore, NSW Archives, evidence).A current proposal to extend the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 to nongovernmentorganisations should ensure the protection of relevant church and missionrecords and grant a right of access for people whose personal information is held inchurch archives.No right of access to family informationFamily information, as distinct from personal information, is treated as informationabout third parties. Third party information is protected to varying degrees by privacyprinciples with the practical effect that the searcher may be denied information aboutfamily members. ‘And yet that file may provide the information that is the missing link tothat person’s history’ (Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement submission 484 page 47).… Freedom of Information legislation places restrictions on the actual information that a personcan access in their file, as it excludes identifying information about other people. This posesparticular difficulties for Aboriginal people, as the excluded information is often exactly whatthey are searching for (SA Government interim submission page 24).