How many surrogate babies are too many?

The NSW Government is establishing a special Permanency Taskforce to fast track the adoption process and provide permanent and loving homes to vulnerable children in out-of-home care. On average, it can take up to five years for such children to find a home. This is far too long, especially given that there are more than 16,000 vulnerable children in NSW needing a permanent home.

“I wanted to scream, to rip the tablecloth off, to smash something, to go to the bathroom and cry.” Such was the intensity of emotion experienced by Sarah Dingle when her mother disclosed to her at lunch one day that she’d been donor conceived.

There must come a point when we as a nation say “enough is enough” when it comes to stories of intimate partner violence being perpetrated against women and children by their partners, ex-partners and fathers.  In the past two weeks alone, the horrific story of Gold Coast woman Kelly Wilkinson, who was set alight in her own home, allegedly by her estranged husband, and that of Henry Shepherdson, who strapped his infant daughter to himself and jumped over a reservoir at a tourist attraction in South Australia, are but a couple of the incredibly distressing stories that continue to make news and bring to our collective consciousness just how lethal domestic violence can become.