One of the key ongoing struggles for full LGBTI equality in Australia is the campaign for the recognition, and rights, of ‘Rainbow Families’.

This encompasses a whole range of somewhat related issues, including non-discriminatory access to adoption, both in Australia and overseas, access to assisted reproductive technology (including surrogacy and perhaps most controversially commercial surrogacy) and even to paid parental leave.

The most ‘popular’ post I have written on the subject of Rainbow Families, by far, has been my Submission on Review of NSW Surrogacy Act 2010. Alas, almost 3 full years later, it appears this review has gone absolutely nowhere.

Another consultation process that sadly resulted in no change to the status quo was my Submission to Commonwealth Parliamentary Inquiry into Surrogacy.

While my most recent posts have been the:

• Submission to Review of the Queensland Adoption Act 2009 and subsequently

• Submission re Queensland’s Adoption and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2016

At least those submissions were part of an overall process that resulted in Queensland finally introducing adoption equality in November 2016.

I have also written two submissions to the ongoing Review of Ethical Guidelines for Assisted Reproductive Technology by the National Health and Medical Research Council:

• Submission on NHMRC Review of Ethical Guidelines for Assisted Reproductive Technology and

• Submission on NHMRC Review of Ethical Guidelines for Assisted Reproductive Technology Stage 2.

In 2014, I wrote twice to then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott about the need for equal treatment of LGBTI couples in international adoption arrangements, in particular around the COAG review of this issue:

• Letter to Prime Minister Abbott re Inter-Country Adoption by Same-Sex Couples and

• Letter to Primer Minister Abbott re Inter-Country Adoption by Same-Sex Couples Part 2 (including details on the historic agreement with South Africa which explicitly included Australian same-sex couples in inter-country adoption for the first time).

Finally, in the lead-up to the 2013 Federal Election I wrote two posts about the then Liberal-National Opposition’s proposed policy on paid parental leave and whether it would include LGBTI-parented families:

• How Does Tony Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme Affect Same-Sex Parents and

• Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme and Same-Sex Parents (which included Joe Hockey’s public commitment, via twitter, that they would, indeed, be treated equally).