Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. There has been a lot of tension in the House this afternoon in people speaking to the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. That is understandable because there is no place for violent and abusive conversion therapy practices in New Zealand and I want to say from the outset of my speech that no one in the National Party believes that there is a place for violent and abusive conversion therapy practices in New Zealand. We support the core intent of this bill.Now just in terms of legislation—and I know there's a lot of participation from the public in here today—we came to Parliament all of us to make better legislation. Legislation goes through three readings and a submissions process and it goes through the committee of the whole House and the whole intention of that is to make better legislation. Rawiri Waititi said just a few minutes ago that we want to ensure the wording is right. That is why we are standing here today saying that we do not support conversion therapy but we're not in a place yet where we can support this piece of legislation. We want to. We want you to help us. I know there have been lots of people on the opposite side of the House today who have genuinely been shaking their head and saying it's not going to affect parents. We've got some advice here which says interactions within a family would also be captured if they meet the definition of conversion practices. It would be a criminal offence for parents or other members of a family to attempt to change or suppress the sexual orientation gender identity or expression of children within the family. This would align with other existing regulatory controls of parental behaviour that could harm children.Now there is a lot of wording in this bill that is quite vague. The language is very vague and so it's hard to understand exactly what is considered conversion practices under the law. In this bill our primary concern is that this bill exposes parents to prosecution. So if there are people over on the other side of the House who truly believe that there is absolutely zero risk of that good luck to you but we want to be sure we want to sit down and we want to have the conversation. We want to hear the submissions on this because one piece of precedent under law—if there was one piece of law that set a precedent around this stuff then we've got a problem on our hands. Is it too much to ask that we sit down at select committee and we have an adult discussion around this conversation? The history of conversion therapy practices is abhorrent. We want it gone; we just want to make sure that in the process of finding ourselves in a place where we could move to support this bill—and I'm telling you today and other members of our caucus have told you we want to support this bill. We just want to make sure that we have the best piece of legislation that is possible to be able to support this bill.The thing is in this bill there is a real conflation around the language that is very vague talking about sexual orientation and gender identity expression and it's confused things. So sexual orientation requires no medical intervention whereas when it comes to gender identity expression parents are naturally concerned about being able to make decisions about their children being given puberty blockers and hormones. We want to make sure that the public of New Zealand has the ability to understand the conversations that can and can't be had around these things and we want to be able to separate that from what is historically known or has been bad practice of the past.I saw Dr Elizabeth Kerekere up before with a book which I haven't seen before and I would really love to have a copy of that book as I'm sure many members of our party would because it sounded to me like there was a lot of good wording in that book and good methods to be able to understand how whānau and family can deal with situations like this. And I'm hoping that going forward family and whānau will be a lot more accepting of this than what they have been in the past because certainly I don't want people ending up feeling like Glen Bennett—and look we're both from Taranaki. I don't want people to feel in the future like they're an issue as Glen Bennett did. Everyone's got the right to be who they want to be; there is no argument around that. We support LGBTI people. We condemn those who are intolerant. We do not want to be intolerant. But what we want is we want to make sure that we have got a watertight piece of legislation. This is not—for the Government I'm sure you all know this is a first reading. This is not a third reading—[Interruption]DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sorry to interrupt the member. Sorry I'm going to warn the members on the Government side that that's a barrage of interjections which is out of order—OK. That's just way too much.BARBARA KURIGER: Thank you Mr Speaker. So all we're asking for is the Government members to engage at select committee with public submissions to ensure that you allay our fears around the whānau. I can see Dr Elizabeth Kerekere nodding. I really do want to have a look at that and I know other members in our party will do. We want to be absolutely sure when we support this piece of legislation that all our concerns and fears around parents and families have been allayed—that is all we are asking for. The reason I believe that part of the barrage over on the other side of the House today has been happening is because we've heard all sorts of things about how we're not supportive of this. We are absolutely supportive of this—Louisa Wall: Well then you have to vote for it.BARBARA KURIGER: No we are not voting for it today. We are being cautious and we are preserving our rights as members of Parliament to completely understand that when we make a decision we're making the right decision.And it may be only a matter of changing a clause in the bill that will satisfy us that we are not going to create any further harm by having families caught up in something that we're not sure that they won't be caught up in. So we're just asking the Government—and look we've got that opportunity for select committee. You might not be willing to give us a bit of leeway today but we do know that we've got the select committee process coming up and we will be looking for you to reassure us around that clause in the bill that we believe at the moment could have the potential to implicate parents. We're asking to just make this piece of legislation more foolproof than what it has been and if you can do that we'll certainly be going back because we all want to support this piece of legislation. And it's not too much to ask that you convince us that this piece of legislation that we're very concerned about—just this one little piece in the legislation. And if you can do that we will have no problem. We would support it we want to support it and we're just giving the Government the opportunity to make one clause better. And after all these years for a bit of certainty to make one clause better is in our view not asking for a whole lot. So we look forward to the select committee process so we can help make this a better piece of legislation. Thank you Mr Speaker.