Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, Hon William Bradford Marau

THE Adoption (Amendment) Bill 2016 was passed in Parliament yesterday.

The Act seeks to amend the Adoption Act 2004 (the principal Act) in relation to inter-country adoption.

Amendments of the Bill include deleting each reference to ‘infant’ and substituting it with the term ‘child’ instead and ‘infants’ to the term ‘children’.

Other amendments include section 2 of the principal Act, by inserting in alphabetical order the definitions of ‘interim order’ and ‘social welfare officer’.

The amendments also seek to amend section 3 of the principal Act by deleting ‘section 12’ and substituting it as ‘Part VII’.

It would also repeal section 12, 25 and 26 of the principal Act and include a new Part VII after section 24 of the principal Act.

The passage of this Bill into an Act yesterday would add up to a total of four (4) Bills that have now been passed to date in this Parliament meeting.

The Land Entitlements (Amendment) Bill 2016, the Land Surveyors Bill 2016 and the Child and Family Welfare Bill 2016 are the previous Bills that were recently passed in this current Parliament meeting.

The Bills and Legislation Committee (BLC) scrutinised a total of 10 Bills before presenting them to Parliament.

Therefore, Parliament is yet to sit through to six (6) more Bills in this meeting.

Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, Hon William Bradford Marau told Parliament yesterday briefly that the amendment of the principal Act may seem minor, but the importance and legality of the wellbeing of children of Solomon Islands being adopted should be well secured.

The Bill successfully went through the Committee of the Whole House without amendments and was passed in its third reading.