Robert Ludbrook Adoption reformer

Adoption reformer

Robert Ludbrook is frustrated. Bordering on exasperated. The retired lawyer and advocate for adoption reform leafs through a timeline of attempts to reform the Adoption Act of 1955. It starts in 1979 and runs for page upon page up to last July.

It involves a clutch of reviews by Justice Departments over various governments, Law Commission reports and discussion papers, government briefing papers, petitions, a draft bill, a Human Rights Tribunal decision. Yet, after 40 years of attempts to reform the act, little has been done to bring it up to date.

In the family law area there are no acts as outdated as the 1955 Adoption Act, says Ludbrook, who has spent decades pushing for reform through Adoption Action.

In July, Justice Minister Andrew Little admitted adoption laws needed an overhaul and said a review was likely to start late in 2020.

But Ludbrook, 84, will believe it when he sees it. He remains utterly mystified as to why the act has not undergone change, particularly given progress in other areas, such as the passing of the Marriage Amendment Bill (2013) – which allows for same-sex couples to legally adopt – the Civil Union Act (2004) and the Care of Children Act (2004).

‘‘I think there’s a hoodoo over it. I think it’s just been put in the too-hard basket.’’

It’s unacceptable, he says, given the weight behind calls for reform.

A Human Rights Review Tribunal decision in 2016 found the act and the Adult Adoption Information Act 1985 contradicted the Human Rights Act and the Bill of Rights Act by discriminating against people based on sex, age, marital status and disability.

The Human Rights Commission was a joint plaintiff with Adoption Action against the state in their case. The tribunal found seven provisions in adoption legislation were inconsistent with the Bill of Rights.

Ludbrook says the act no longer reflects New Zealand’s values and practices. He labels the adoption rules around surrogacy ‘‘ridiculous’’. The best way to fix that part of the act is to deal with it under the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2004, which has surrogacy provisions, he says.

Lost relationships

But perhaps one of the worst aspects of the act was that, despite the open adoption amendment in 1985, adopted children could still be utterly cut off from their blood relatives.

‘‘On the making of an adoption order all blood relatives cease to be relatives of the child and in some cases the father ceases to be the father without being given any opportunity to disagree or be heard on the adoption order and that breaches the very important principle of natural justice in the Bill of Rights Act . . .

‘‘That’s taking away a huge right and that’s particularly important with Ma¯ ori children adopted by Pa¯ keha¯ families because the children have their relationship with their wha¯ nau/iwi/hapu¯ immediately truncated – parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, step-siblings – they are all gone.

‘‘The open adoption process has improved the act but I’ve always said open adoption does not confer any rights. The biological family have absolutely no legal standing. It’s a strange world when an act of Parliament can cut off your biological and genetic heritage.’’

His personal view is that we should do away with adoption altogether. Legal guardianship gives all the rights of a parent without the potential for discrimination against adoptive parents, birth parents and the child, he says.

Ludbrook’s interest in adoption was piqued after meeting Joss Shawyer in the 1970s. Shawyer, who had been single when she gave birth to twins, became an activist and campaigner for single mothers’ rights. ‘‘She was bullied to give up the children. . . but she pushed back and kept those children.

‘‘She told me how nurses had insisted on addressing her as ‘Mrs’ because of the public shame and embarrassment at being a single mother but that she had insisted on . . . ‘Ms’. The attitudes at that time were shocking.’’

With Shawyer he co-wrote a book on single mothers’ rights.

As a young lawyer, he fought several cases trying to have children returned to their birth mothers, who, in the 1970s, had only 10 days to decide if they wanted to give their child up for adoption. Those cases, none of which he won, broke his heart.

But adoption reform is only one of the battles he has chosen to fight. Outside his formal work in private practice, his fight for social change – for the powerless, for the underdog – has defined him.

A life in the law

Born in Auckland, Ludbrook was sent to boarding school at Whanganui Collegiate. More bookish than sporty, he felt out of place there. ‘‘If you weren’t a farmer’s son or into sport you sort of went into your shell. Some good things happened to me but it wasn’t a happy time.’’

In a fortuitous meeting with an old friend, he was encouraged to study law, which he did at the University of Canterbury. He got work in a local practice, married and started a family before heading off to London.

The week after he joined a legal firm there he was asked to be the legal adviser at the local Citizens Advice Bureau. He didn’t know what the CAB was. ‘‘But I went along one evening and listened to the legal problems of the local community. I loved it. I loved the people. I liked being able to help these people for free because these were people who would never dream of being able to go to a lawyer.’’

On his return to Auckland seven years later he got involved in the CAB movement here, setting up the free legal service.

He remembers the first client came in not for advice but needing to borrow $50. ‘‘We weren’t allowed to give out money . . . but we wanted to help him so we decided we could give him a prize for being the first through the doors. We said, ‘Congratulations, you are our first client’ and handed him $10.’’

The free legal service was such a success that, within three or four years, several more CABs were set up around the city.

His pro bono work led to a two-month stint in California, where he took part in the Asian Workshop on Legal Services for the Poor.

Using the law to change the law

Part of his time on the workshop included work at the public defender’s office and at a neighbourhood law office in rural California.

They were radical. ‘‘They used to say ‘you can use the law to change the law’ and I’d never thought about it like that before.’’

He went on to London to look at other neighbourhood law offices before returning to New Zealand, where he and other like-minded lawyers set up the Grey Lynn Neighbourhood Law Office in 1978. The concept caught on and neighbourhood law offices mushroomed all over the country.

But Ludbrook hankered for the diversity of London and so in the mid-1980s he and his family – now with three children – returned, He found work at the Children’s Legal Centre in Islington. ‘‘It gave me a passion for children’s rights. Working there opened my eyes to a lot of children’s rights issues I hadn’t thought about before.’’

This awakening led him to start up the YouthLaw Aotearoa – now a nationwide community law centre offering free legal services to children and young people – when he returned to New Zealand in 1987.

He represented youth caught up in Robert Muldoon’s dawn raids on Pacific Island families in Ponsonby and Grey Lynn searching for overstayers. He remembers one kid who had been picked up by police. He had a pen with the logo of a company on it and, when he couldn’t explain where he got it, he was arrested and charged with theft of a pen.

Ludbrook’s fight against racism had earlier led him to join the Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD).

It was through ACORD that he became aware of mistreatment of youth in institutions. ‘‘Kids were receiving shock treatment as punishment. They were being bullied and mistreated and abused. The government wouldn’t hold an inquiry and we were labelled troublemakers, so we went to the Human Rights Commission, which passed regulations to try and stem these abuses. I came out of it with a deep suspicion and fear of institutions.’’

The fight continues

These days he is winding down some of his advocacy work. But there are discrimination campaigns to fight and complaints to be filed. There’s a conference on adoption reform early next year to organise.

Ever the optimist, he’s picking that the long-outdated Adoption Act will get kicked into the 21st century in the next year. His decadeslong fight for justice in that area may just come to fruition.