Bradford Sue: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I thank all the speakers who have addressed my bill tonight. I can hardly remember an occasion in this House when there has been such universal support for a piece of legislation especially for a member’s bill from the Green Party. I am sorry the National Party is not taking a lurch to the left. Nevertheless it is great to have its support and great to have ACT’s as well. 
Members have raised lots of interesting points but I do not sense a lot of controversy and I continue to wonder whether there is a possibility that the Law and Order Committee could look at the option of first of all—as my colleague Sue Kedgley said—speeding it up a little and secondly considering whether in fact 3 years would be a better age than 2 years. As paediatricians and others say 2 years is actually a critical age for a child in terms of its bonding attachment and psychological changes. I think it would be a lot better for the child to be left there for 3 years if everything is going well. Also there is a much greater chance that by that time the mother will have completed her sentence anyway. 
I was very interested that the Minister Mark Burton said that the Department of Corrections would undertake a review of policy in this area anyway. That seems very timely and I am sure it will help us in the process we are about to go through. On the resourcing issue I certainly also take the Minister’s point that financing does matter. I am well aware that Governments have to count the dollars but as Simon Power pointed out the Department of Corrections has gone many millions of dollars over budget in many of its building projects and the comparatively small number of dollars that would be required to enable us to have adequate and good facilities for mother and baby units in our three major women’s prisons would be a drop in the bucket compared with where other spending goes. 
Some people both in the House tonight and externally have raised the issue that perhaps a mother keeping her baby in prison up to the age of 2 or being allowed to breastfeed might be a soft option. I have even heard it said that some women will deliberately get pregnant in order to have that option. My response to that is that for a start very few women would do that. Secondly even if they did the fact remains—as colleagues have said—that the outcome for the baby should be paramount rather than the mother. I totally concur with Simon Power and others who made that point. I agree completely that in looking at this legislation we must always remember that the baby comes first but of course it is a situation where the relationship with the mother plays an integral part. So whatever the mother has done and whatever her motivation for getting pregnant—or how deliberately or not she got pregnant—in the end that needs to be put to the side. We need to look at what is best in terms of the health and future well-being of the child. 
I finish with a personal confession. I have had direct experience of some of the implications of this issue. Quite a long time ago when one of my babies was only 2 weeks old I was in court for several weeks and my baby was taken away from me. I was totally breastfeeding during a big court case after the Springbok tour. I was with a group of seven other people and we faced going to prison for potentially quite a long time as a result of the court case. This was under the cells of the High Court in Auckland. The first trial was aborted; the second trial went through. We were convicted and at the point of sentencing I knew that my few-weeks-old baby might be taken from me. 
 I guess that left an indelible impression on my mind as to what it would mean for a mother to have a baby taken away from her while she was in prison. That was my third baby and the thought of losing her while I went to prison for perhaps 6 months or a year had a tremendous impact on me and has helped to motivate me in putting this legislation forward. There is nothing like the realisation as a mother of a very new baby of what losing that baby would actually mean. 
I put this bill forward and thank members for their support in the name of all the mothers who have gone through—and continue to go through—that experience in a very real way. 
Bill read a first time. 
Bill referred to the Law and Order Committee.referred to Law and Order Committee