Law reform : deciding on access to donor-conception information

On 11 October 2012, the Victorian government tabled its interim response to the report of the Victorian Parliament Law Reform Committee (‘LRC’) Inquiry into Access by Donor-Conceived People to Information about Donors.1 Unfortunately, after taking six months to respond, a final decision regarding whether access to information will be granted to all donor-conceived people in Victoria was not forthcoming.2 The LRC report was based on a two-year, two-part inquiry, and contained unanimous support by Committee members for information release (subject to contact veto and intermediary support service provisions). However, the government has called for a further six months of research to ‘properly consider and assess the views of the community [and] in particular the views of donors’. The Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (‘VARTA’) 3 will conduct the research.