Proposed Changes to Assisted Reproductive Technology in New South Wales

In this video, Page Provan Director and award-winning surrogacy lawyer Stephen Page discusses the proposed changes to assisted reproductive technology in New South Wales. Join us as we break down this important update and discuss what they mean for the future of reproductive health in New South Wales and beyond.

Video Transcript

G’day, Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers. And today I’m talking about the proposed changes for assisted reproductive technology in New South Wales. This has just come out, and I’m talking in late May 2024, the New South Wales government has proposed changes to the assisted reproductive technology regulations, or in fact, to scrap the current regulations and to have new regulations in place. And just excuse me while I go through this, I look down and go through the proposed changes.

The first is an increase in registration and annual fees for ART providers in line with indexation. We’ve got inflation now, so they want to make sure it’s indexed. The second is that there are clarification changes to information requirements in respect of the registered office and principal place of business of corporations. The third is that there’s a clarification change to the infection control policy requirements. The fourth is that there are clarification changes to the medical history requirements for surrogacy information. And I must say it looked not very big at all. It didn’t look significant when I went to the regulation on that. And I think most significantly, Regulation 16 has been amended to clarify that the psychological report required as part of applications under Section 40 of the Act must be obtained by the applicant of their cost and must accompany the application.

And I read that and thought, What does that mean? What it actually means is for those who are seeking out information about their donors and need to undertake counselling, that the state isn’t paying for the counselling. They have to pay for it themselves, and then they can put in their application. Those changes are pretty small in the scheme of things, but submissions are out asking for responses. And we’ll see, one would expect that they’re… Because they’re incremental, one would expect that these will start fairly soon, given that it’s already been drafted, it’s a regulation. But let’s see. Thank you for that, Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers.