Former radio shock jock Michael Smith could stumble into the black hole of overseas adoption policy after bonding with a young boy in a Somali refugee camp during filming for the SBS series Go Back to Where You Came From.
Mr Smith expressed a desire to adopt 14-year-old orphan 'Mohammad' after spending a day with him in a refugee camp on the Somali-Ethiopian border.
During a debriefing session with SBS Presenter Anton Enus, Michael Smith would not go into detail about potential adoption plans. “Well, it's private,” he said.
“It's very, very difficult to find an authority that exercises guardianship over that little bloke.”
Viewers following the show on Twitter were quick to point out that any adoption attempt would likely be impossible, because Australians no longer have a clear method of adopting children from Ethiopia.
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The federal government announced plans to shut down its Ethiopian adoption program in June, devastating adoption groups.
The Ethiopian adoption program was the only such program Australia had with an African country.
Go Back to Where You Came From concludes tonight at 8.30pm on SBS ONE. You can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #GoBackSBS
Read Michael Smith's column on The Punch about his experiencewith Go Back in Somalia and Christmas Island.
Watch Part 2 of Go Back to Where You Came From
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