The legal ambit of the case was about constitutional law and about how State and Federal legislation operates. Essentially Victorian legislation provides that there is an irrebuttable presumption that if a woman has a child conceived through artificial insemination, the male who donates the sperm (provided it is not her husband) is presumed not to be the Father of the resulting child. The effect of the Federal legislation is that whether a person is regarded as a parent is, “a question of fact and degree to be determined according to the ordinary contemporary Australian understanding of parent”
