Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I rise with a heavy heart to speak at this final debate in the committee of the whole House. It is about the title of the bill its commencement and also the referendum that the member who has just resumed her seat Jenny Marcroft has outlined in some detail. I would also like in my call now and in subsequent calls if I am given those to refer to some of the Supplementary Order Papers from colleagues such as one from the Hon Tim Macindoe which does seek to change the title of the bill.Coming back to some of the opening remarks from the sponsor there were some glaring inaccuracies in there which I will clear up because I was the deputy chair of the Justice Committee. There was not at any time an agreement in the committee that the words euthanasia" and "assisted suicide" should not be used. In fact at every opportunity I had over two years or so that I presided over the committee heard the submissions went to public hearings and so forth I made every effort on any opportunity I could to ensure that the right words and terminology were used. This bill to be clear seeks to change the Crimes Act in half a dozen places to enable euthanasia and assisted suicide. That's the clarity of what this bill is seeking to do. It's a law change. That's why it came through the Justice Committee as opposed to for example the Health Committee. So when we look at what the bill is doing it is not at all clear in the title of the bill what the outcome will be. "End of life choice"—what does that mean? In a chamber of this kind we could get 100 different definitions of it; in the wider public there could be even more than that. A Curia poll a couple of years ago showed that more than 85 percent of people believed that assisted dying involved turning off life support stopping medication and refusing food and drink. Those things are legal now and they will remain legal. But it showed that poll very clearly how little understanding there is about the terminology which is why I'm so deeply disturbed that the pro-euthanasia people among whom the sponsor of this bill is clearly a prominent person are absolutely adamant that those words should not be used. And to me that is deliberately trying to obscure what this bill is trying to do. By speaking in euphemisms—"assisted dying"; "choice"—it is presuming to simplify something that's very complicated and has a lot of unintended consequences attached to it. And for those of us who spent a lot of time looking at this bill and understanding that it is not fit for purpose it is truly distressing to think that it could go out to the wider public who have not had the benefit of sitting and listening to experts on the subject as they outlined real and genuine concerns about why this bill is so dangerous in what it seeks to do. So when we look at clarity and the fact that words have meaning I support Supplementary Order Paper 396 from the Hon Tim Macindoe which seeks to rewrite the title clause so that instead of "End of Life Choice Act 2017" it would be "Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Act 2019". So this is a way as we've tried throughout this process in the House to make it more apparent put in some safeguards and try to ensure that the public and the people in this House know exactly what we're dealing with. The trouble is that they don't. The trouble is that this bill has emerged with a title that is misleading and euphemistic. It is a title which if it's tied in with a referendum as New Zealand First would like would not add to the clarity of public understanding of what the bill's consequences would be which is why I'm very supportive of the Hon Tim Macindoe's Supplementary Order Paper and I hope that it will be voted on. But I would have to say that having seen this bill out of the select committee—where the only thing the select committee did agree on is that the bill was not fit to go into law it was not fit for purpose. It still isn't. Every single safeguard that we put up for elder abuse for coercion for dementia diagnosis for having more medical people involved conscientious objections—they have all been voted down. This is a less safe bill than it was when it came to this House. The idea that we got rid of "grievous and irremediable" doesn't really make any difference at all. No one knew what the heck it meant. It didn't make any difference to the people in the disability community the disabled and the people who are worried about elder abuse because it is irrelevant. This is not a bill that is only for terminally ill persons. And it's not just about choice.So I would say when I talk about the Supplementary Order Paper we need a name that absolutely accurately reflects the practices that the legal provisions would establish. So in the explanatory note—[Time expired]"