We must adopt a new position on the lost children Adoption in Australia needs to be overhauled, writes Sharon McCrohan. Picture: Thinkstock Source: The Advertiser ONE question screams out from the heartbreaking images of the deadly Philippines typhoon. It's not whether climate change is to blame, or if Australia's $10 million donation is a pee in the ferocious ocean. It's about the impact of a natural disaster that leaves thousands of orphans in its wake. What's going to happen to those poor children? The death toll, already believed to be in the thousands, will rise further. Almost four million children live in the affected region and many will join the 13 million around the world without parents. It is a fair bet that none of those kids will end up in Australia. Not because they will all be swept up into extended families or placed with carers in their own country, or that they wouldn't be welcomed by parents in ours. They just have almost no chance of making it through this country's adoption laws. The latest natural disaster to flatten an entire city and trigger a global aid rush came as Australia marks National Adoption Awareness Week. Once again the poster mum for the cause, actor Deborra-Lee Furness, has hit the airwaves and the National Press Club to campaign for change. There's no questioning the passion and dedication of the patron of Worldwide Orphans, who has received international recognition for her work. But every time I see her talk, I can't believe we still haven't found a solution to this problem. She's a perennial reminder of the insanity of a system that still finds ways to keep apart childless parents and orphans, or kids who need new families. "We do not do adoption well," she said this week with the customary politeness that belies her obvious frustration. Of the 40,000 inter-country adoptions that took place worldwide last year, only 270 of them were Australian. In Victoria, authorities openly warn prospective parents what they're up against on overseas adoption. In a nutshell, the message is this: Well, the good news is there are hundreds of families just like yours who can't have kids and want to adopt from overseas. The bad news is that only a fraction of you will actually end up with a child and only after you've waited so long you're getting a bit old for it. The waiting time is about four years on what they call the "pre-entry list" before couples can even lodge a formal application, then up to five more years before they "may" be matched with a child. We can't just blame the complexities of The Hague Convention, or foreign systems, or fears of human trafficking, or the worthy desire to keep children in their own countries wherever possible. Here in Australia there are 18,000 children in foster care who can't be reunited with their parents because they are dead or permanently out of their lives. Last year the system managed to adopt out only 70 of them. Furness, the mother of two children adopted through the American system because it was easier, says cultural reasons linked to the stolen generation and forced adoptions are partly to blame. But mostly it's a problem of red tape. Each Australian state and territory has a different system and set of eligibility requirements, and then it's the Federal Government that negotiates - and can controversially terminate - the programs. "We need a one-door policy ... where you may get a child from Peru or Parramatta," Furness says. Back in 2005, a federal parliamentary committee chaired by now Speaker Bronwyn Bishop slammed the system. It found state authorities were biased against adoption generally and prejudiced against overseas adoption. Australia lagged behind the rest of the world and our rate of adoptions from overseas was less than one-third the rate of most First World economies. Since then it's gone backwards. The adoption lobby is determined to arrest the decline in Australia's adoption rates. It is upping the ante on lobbying and driving policy change, and wants to double the number of adoptions and halve the waiting time. It won't happen without the support of the Federal Government, which has promised to cut red tape in all areas of government. It started that this week by dismantling dozens of advisory boards, which unfortunately happened to include the National Inter-Country Adoption Advisory Council. But the campaigners are not going away. "It needs a champion in government, and we're trying to find the champion," Furness said. If they can't find one in the aftermath of that hell on Earth in the Philippines, they probably never will. Sharon McCrohan is a Herald Sun columnist