Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm also delighted like the previous speaker Rachel Brooking to stand and speak in support of the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The bill of course in legislation allows certain maternal birth injuries received during childbirth to be covered by ACC and the schedule sets out that list of injuries. At select committee by dint of careful consideration of the submissions and a great deal of discussion and good technical advice it was further defined and other specific injuries were added to the schedule and I think we did good work in achieving that at the select committee.Look it was a very collaborative process I would have to say and a very enjoyable process to be working in the select committee on this bill. Like all the others I would like to acknowledge the submitters that put their very personal and often very emotional stories to us. When you think that this bill isn't retrospective none of those particular women mothers giving their stories were doing this for the benefit of themselves but rather for the benefit of other women who were going to go after them. So I really want to acknowledge them and their bravery in speaking out about some of the very most vulnerable and harrowing periods of their time.The chair Marja Lubeck gave a submission that obviously hit home to her and I want to share one of the ones that was really a penny-dropping moment for me.Hon Member: Penny dropping! We got you there.PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you good. Everyone is awake! So in the midst of hearing a number of these very harrowing stories you get very immersed in it but one young woman told us of the situation where her partner went to rugby practice and at rugby practice he pulled his hamstring. He then went to the doctor or went to his physio was able to straight away go through to physio through ACC yet this poor woman as a mother who had suffered significant pelvic floor injuries wasn't covered had been trying to get cover to be able to go to physio couldn't afford to pay to go to physio and it was obviously impacting on her quality of life her ability to care for her children and was likely going to have ongoing impacts for her. All of a sudden the nonsensicalness of this situation was very very clear: that you could pull your hamstring in rugby and straight away be covered for physio through ACC but go through a traumatic birth experience get a significant injury and not be able to get cover. Immediately it was obvious that changes needed to occur. I think that speaks to some of the equity issues that the Minister commented on earlier.I would like to acknowledge my colleagues on the select committee. I felt we worked well together to get the very best out of this bill but also to make provision for being able to review it and see if further changes needed to occur. I also like the chair want to acknowledge the officials who supported our select committee the clerks and the report writers. I think we may well have scarred our very young male report-writer for life in some of our technical discussions about birth injuries.Look there were nearly 800 submitters and they were across a wide range of people—health professionals mothers and a wide range of people. Of those we heard 46 orally. I do want to very briefly acknowledge those who submitted on behalf of the hearing impaired. We heard some very good technical advice and some very real-life stories from those people with a hearing impairment as well so I don't want them to get lost in our euphoria of the maternal birth injuries being accepted. But I think we've gone through a very good process with this bill and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.