Senator WONG (Minister for Climate Change and Water) (5:33 PM) —I apologise to the chamber. I thought I had spoken to these amendments previously, but I gathered from the silence that I had not. In essence, the government amendments remove references to ‘the product of the relationship’ in definitions of child and parent in the bill and will instead refer to ‘a child of the person within the meaning of the Family Law Act’. As Senator Brandis has indicated, the amendments implement a recommendation of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

The amendments I have outlined also insert a revised section in the Australian Citizenship Act to provide for recognition of children born to same- and opposite-sex couples as a result of artificial conception procedures and surrogacy arrangements. A number of other technical amendments are made as a consequence of the removal of ‘the product of a relationship’ in the definition of a child.