4 days ago
WA government reintroduces long-awaited surrogacy, IVF reforms
The WA government will reintroduce legislation to overhaul the state's surrogacy and IVF laws, eight years after it first promised the long-awaited reform.
Premier Roger Cook said a bill would be introduced to state parliament on Tuesday that would "streamline and modernise" WA's assisted reproductive laws and "bring WA into line" with the rest of Australia.
Mr Cook said the changes would allow more West Australians to start a family because it would remove the requirement for people to demonstrate medical infertility to access assisted reproductive technology, including surrogacy and IVF.
It would also allow same-sex male couples, single men, transgender and intersex people to access altruistic surrogacy, which is currently limited to heterosexual couples and single women.
"This is an historic day for our state and one that many Western Australians have been waiting for ... in many cases too long." Mr Cook said.
The changes have been on the cards for almost a decade, with former Premier Mark McGowan first promising the reforms in 2017 when he led WA Labor to a landslide victory.
In 2019, an independent review found the state's surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology laws were "discriminatory" and 25 years out of date.
But the government's attempts to modernise the laws were scuttled when Upper House Liberal MP Nick Goiran used one of the longest filibuster speeches in WA Parliament's history to delay a vote on the contentious issue.
The bill was then put on the backburner as attention turned to social reforms like voluntary euthanasia, before the COVID pandemic hit.
Over the next few years, the legislation languished despite WA Labor gaining total control over both houses at the 2021 election.
In 2022, Former Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson appointed a panel of experts to redevelop the laws, but it has taken another three years to get them back on the table.
The government will still face roadblocks in getting the new laws across the line this time round, with Mr Goiran still wielding influence in the upper house, where five crossbench MPs could also throw a spanner in the works.
