Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Chair and thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this bill and to be able to continue the conversation around Part 4 of the End of Life Choice Bill and to bring new material and new perspectives to this debate and I'm glad that you are the determiner of that. I'd like to speak in support of my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 371 and this is amending David Seymour's Supplementary Order Paper 259. What it proposes to do here is in regards to clause 24A which is around advance care directives and how they may not be provided for assisted dying or how they may provide and the interaction between the choice that someone makes to have their life ended through assisted dying and what they may have or may not have already said in a will in an advance written or oral directive in a contract or other document. What the Supplementary Order Paper specifically is is in regards to clause 24A(2) and it is to remove the second part of that clause which is and to the extent that any provision expressing such a wish is included by the person in an advance written or oral directive will contract or other document (not being a rescind document) that provision is invalid". So what my Supplementary Order Paper aims to do is to ensure that if someone does choose to rescind their will or change their mind basically this SOP is designed to ensure that there is no conflict or hierarchy between the decision they're making to go forward with having their life ended and a previous document they may have signed where they've already said that they don't want to end their life through assisted suicide. Essentially at the moment what this clause is saying is that the express wish of the person at that time is what stands and what my Supplementary Order Paper will ensure that that person has to do is actually first rescind their previous will or rescind their previous advance written directive so that it ensures that it is very clear to the health practitioner or to the person who is assisting them through the process what that person's will is. This is to remove any conflict between the two. I guess the important point here is that we are dealing here with matters of life and death. We want to ensure that if this bill passes into law the people who are having their lives ended through assisted dying are the people who have made it very abundantly clear that that is the choice and that there is no conflict of what they may or may not have said. What is important in that is that we want to ensure that we don't have this conflict because if something does go wrong or if there's a review or if there's something else which happens later we don't want to have a conflict of what their intentions were. So my Supplementary Order Paper is aimed at trying to address that conflict and by doing so it removes the second part of that clause. I would while I've got the call also just speak briefly to Supplementary Order Paper 367 in the name of my colleague Melissa Lee and that is to do with the penalties which are inserted here under offences in clause 27. The wording here is around the offences and what they mean and the actual penalties which can be put in place. The member has tried to downplay these penalties as being important but I think it is incredibly important. When one looks at proposed clause 27(1) it says "A person who is a medical practitioner or specialist commits an offence if the medical practitioner nurse practitioner or psychiatrist wilfully fails to comply with any requirement of this Act." Now if they do that—if they wilfully fail to comply—they have committed an offence. The penalty which is here is a maximum of three months' imprisonment—Hon Member: How much? SIMEON BROWN: —three months' imprisonment—or a fine not exceeding $10000. I think that's absolutely abhorrently low. We're talking again here about life and death and I urge members to consider Supplementary Order Paper 367 in the name of Melissa Lee which seeks to bring those into line with what I think this House should find appropriate. Thank you Mr Chair."