Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Good choice. Thank you very much Mr Chair. Sir we have a deadly serious matter before us and I will commence a detailed examination of certain aspects of Part 1 very shortly. Please allow me to prefix my remarks by noting the considerable importance of the detail that we are as a House about to consider in this matter—literally life and death of course.I start with the purpose of the bill as set out in new clause 2A of Supplementary Order Paper 259 and note that it is part of a suite of changes that have arrived on the desks of members of Parliament very recently indeed—a little over 24 hours ago in fact. And so it is that I take this opportunity to interrogate the detail of that very carefully. I will be making queries of the member who sponsored the bill to provide some guidance on these so that we can understand in the absence of particularly much time to consider them before now what it is that he is meaning and intending by it and the extent to which this will be affecting the rights of New Zealanders who will be subject to the provisions for euthanasia and assisted suicide in this bill.So let me start with the word persons". I ask the member if it was a deliberate choice to speak about "persons" with a terminal illness as distinct from "certain persons" acknowledging that not all persons to whom the rest of this provision will apply will actually be eligible. So for example it will not be those who don't meet the age criterion—and I don't wish to get into the substantive detail of that at the moment. No doubt that will be fertile ground for much debate and discussion later by various colleagues across the House who I know will take a serious interest in that matter. As a matter of drafting it seems slightly strange to me and possibly unfortunate that Mr Seymour's talking about persons with "a terminal illness." I don't know if he's expecting that all these persons will just have one terminal illness between them. But it's really just a matter of poor drafting rather than something substantive that I raise for his comment.So we go then to the rest of that new clause 2A(a) and we see that if certain criteria are met then the persons with this one terminal illness are to be given the option of lawfully requesting assistance to end their lives. I wish to propose to the member whether he'd consider an amendment to his amendment whereby we would instead be considering "an option" of lawfully requesting assistance to end their lives—noting of course that a person who meets those criteria still does have in fact the option not to request assistance to end their life in the way that the bill contemplates. There is more than one option available and so the indefinite article "an option" rather than "the option" of lawfully requesting assistance seems to me to be more appropriate and I look forward to the member's comments on that.Going forward then to the rest of the purpose of the Act—the second part of that—we see that "a lawful process" is to be established for assisting eligible persons who exercise that option. Of course the purpose of the Act is to do a lot more than this and it seems to me that it would be helpful for a bit more detail in the purpose to be given at that point. But noting the member's comments around the fact that it is to guide interpretation that's all the more reason for something that is quite unprecedented in New Zealand law since the abolition of the death penalty. That New Zealanders would be consciously killed by other New Zealanders other than in self-defence the more guidance that can be given in a clause such as the purpose of the Act would be helpful.So my final comment on that purpose of the Act the new provision that's been added is why it doesn't employ the language "assisted dying" which I note is a defined term within the legislation and instead we've got "assistance to end their lives." It seems to me that it would be a matter of efficiency albeit employing the euphemism "assisted dying" as a catch-all for euthanasia and assisted suicide that at least the purpose of the bill and its definition and one of its key components indeed that of "assisted dying" would at least be consistent. So if the member could provide some advice on that point that would be very helpful indeed as well.I also note actually one further note in relation to the purpose of the Act that the phrase "terminal illness" is used. I commented before that it's being used in relation—but I can't understand why it's being used in that way in a rather short-handed fashion so to speak when it's again not defined in the bill. I think the answer is obvious probably to all concerned bar the member himself why there isn't a definition of that in Part 1 of the bill—the answer of course being that it is difficult to impossible to define such a thing as "terminal illness". It's not recognised in modern medical parlance certainly not by the palliative care industry—if anyone would know about such things you would expect that they would know. So it seems strange to me that we've got a purpose of an Act referring to such a key concept as "terminal illness" but that's not defined in there. So I would welcome the member's comments on that aspect in particular to the extent that it represents a departure from the bill that he previously provided to this Parliament some time ago in which he's now seeing fit to change so significantly in the last few hours—the dying days so to speak—of the period prior to the committee stage.So moving to the interpretation clause—namely clause 3 within that Part 1—I note that the member has attempted something rather interesting by deleting the words "a lethal dose of". So what we now have under the heading of "assisted dying" the definition of that is "medication" as opposed to "a lethal dose of medication." So too in the next subclause "a lethal dose of medication" is removed. I wonder what justification the member can give for making the bill less clear by no longer referring to "a lethal dose of medication" and instead having a rather comforting and more generic term for medication which has a totally different meaning to the minds of most people who would be subject to this bill potentially and certainly those medical practitioners who would be expected to apply it and to execute its provisions if you'll excuse the pun.Then my next question in relation to the interpretation clause comes to the point that I can't help but notice we've got a definition for "Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights". Well that's a good thing to define because we might as well know what is meant by that. But how interesting that now we have inserted whereas we didn't have before in the member's previous version of the bill—suddenly we have this code of patients' rights being introduced. It's a novel concept perhaps to the member or certainly as far as this particular bill is concerned. It does raise the question what consideration he's given to a situation where the provisions of the code—the patients' rights—conflict with the provisions of the bill.I think that particularly in relation to the notion of informed consent for which certain very specific criteria must be met in relation to medical practice generally as would be judged in accordance with the code or not—as compared with the bill in which there is rather a different meaning of "informed consent" and a different concept in relation to the amount of coercion that can be applied—is clearly intended by him to be effective.Continuing we're up to letter H so far if you're following along no doubt you are: "health practitioner". So that's all very well to have the definition of that—and I do note pleasingly this has actually survived through from Mr Seymour's first crack—but actually what we don't have there is a requirement that the health practitioner in order to be defined as such and eligible to carry out the functions under this bill doesn't need to have held a practising certificate for five years or more and yet that is the case later on where we have the definition of an independent medical practitioner. So I wonder if two medical practitioners must be involved in signing off such a momentous decision as one that a person be subject to euthanasia or assisted suicide why would one of those medical practitioners have to be relatively experienced and the other one not at all? It seems rather anomalous to have such a requirement in two different levels. I would welcome the member's comments as to why he would establish such an anomalous arrangement in the first place and whether he would consider changing it perhaps by way of amendment to his amendment. I think I could probably just about get that on there before the ink dries fully on these changes that he's provided to us so recently.I note in relation to the definition of nurse practitioner—interesting that we've had this inserted and I wonder why suddenly whether lots of nurses have been lining up to say that they want to be involved in ending the lives of their patients such that we now need—[Time expired]"