SpeechVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) (remote): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Knowing that this bill was coming up for its third reading I dug an article out of an old family storage box and it was published on Sunday 9 August 1973 in the Sun which is a Sri Lankan paper. It was written by the then president of the Ceylon Medical Association and entitled The CMA President asks for liberal laws to terminate early pregnancies". The president at the time Dr S. Rajanayagam was my grandfather an obstetrician and gynaecologist and it's this that I dwelt on over the weekend. While I tend to approach arguments in this space in the dialogue of rights balancing the entirety of his argument as a medical practitioner for liberal laws was health-bound. It was a very practical and real argument for access to healthcare. He unfortunately wasn't successful in his advocacy. Sri Lanka continues to have one of the most Draconian laws in regards to abortion which actually dates from 1883. But reflecting on my grandfather's advocacy made me reflect on the advocates here in New Zealand over the years who have championed women's health issues often in the face of aggressive and what was in some cases very personally directed opposition: Dame Margaret Sparrow Terry Bellamak and there are many more including women in this House one of whom is Louisa Wall whose bill we usher through the House today. Ultimately this bill reminds us that a right to a health service means nothing without the ability to access it safely and I do want to address briefly the apparent rights arguments that I've heard sitting in some of the objection to this bill with the first argument of course being that freedom of speech should not be interfered with. I spoke several weeks ago to the Conversion Therapy Prohibition Bill providing some examples of how freedom of speech is frequently limited in places like consumer law employment law electoral regulation copyright and actually many other areas as well. I noted especially that rights aren't things to be verbally wielded around one's head and I often cringe when giants of thought like Voltaire and Mill are selectively quoted without acknowledging the broader context of their theories which often include recognising the limits that harm can and should place on freedoms. Rights require precision in definition and analysis in imposing what are reasonable limitations. The analysis requires us to consider first the definition of the right itself which in some cases actually might limit how we understand the right and then if the right is engaged we need to consider whether it's limited in a reasonably justifiable way. So the consideration of justifiable limitations in a free and democratic society means walking through explicitly a number of steps. The first is to establish that there is a sufficiently important objective to curtail a right which there is in this case in terms of allowing individuals to safely access healthcare. The second is that there must be a rational connection between the limitation proposed and the objective sought which again there is in this case as we know that women face obstruction and harassment as they attempt to engage healthcare of this nature. Thirdly the limitation must be no more than is reasonably necessary to sufficiently achieve the objective and I'll quote Terry Bellamak here who said "The right of anti-abortion activists to express themselves is not being curtailed it is [simply] being moved down the road … 150 metres. What is being curtailed is their ability to target people who are there to attend a medical appointment". We've heard how the Health Committee very carefully considered this aspect of what is the reasonable limitation and indeed I'll acknowledge that there were changes made at the select committee on that front. Fourthly the limitation must be in due proportion to the importance of the objective and here I want to commend the select committee for their work again. In my view the limitation that the select committee landed on is in this instance a reasonable one. In this case this health access proposal doesn't remove a right to free speech. It proposes reasonable stepped-through limitations. Women should be entitled to be able to walk up to a healthcare provider's premises without worrying about being harassed or obstructed. Some talk about the chilling effect on freedom of speech when we put in any limitation whatsoever on the right to freedom of speech but—let's be honest—the absence of law in this space has created a chill. Without this change many women who need to access safe healthcare simply wouldn't risk it. So I'd like to end just by offering my sincere thanks to the many advocates for women's healthcare both women and men who have done the mahi to get us across many hurdles over the last decades to a place where we can usher this bill through the House today. I commend this bill to the House."