SpeechPAIGE HARRIS BIRTH REGISTRATION BILLSecond ReadingLOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I move That the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill be now read a second time.It is an absolute pleasure to stand in this House 34 days after the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill was introduced to Parliament. I particularly want to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for an expedited process so to you Mr Chair who is the Speaker this afternoon I thank you very much and the members of your committee.For background this bill will enable the name of Paige's late mother Katherine Harris to be recorded on her New Zealand birth record. Paige was born of surrogacy and was carried by a close friend of Kyle and Katherine Renee Johnson. Renee was supported by her partner Josh who we found out through the select committee process was the number one advocate for Karl and the family and we certainly appreciated his contribution. Paige's biological mother Katherine died before Paige was born and Paige will turn two on 25 March 2022.In deciding what I should contribute today I want to begin with the submission of Alison Fraser who is Paige Harris' grandmother. Katherine Harris was her daughter. Alison Fraser's contribution to the select committee deliberation was essentially that laws for surrogacy and adoption in Aotearoa New Zealand are not fit for purpose. How can we be in a situation where the genetic mother of a child is not registered on her birth record and therefore can't be registered on her birth certificate? For those who don't know the story currently Paige Harris' birth certificate has mother" as "not recorded". And that's what this piece of legislation this private bill is attempting to do.I think from that perspective we have to decouple in some ways surrogacy from adoption which is the current practice within our jurisdiction. We have an ability to decouple adoption from surrogacy within the context of my colleague Tāmati Coffey's member's bill and I know Tāmati will have an opportunity to contribute to this debate as well because along with me he was the other submitter on this piece of legislation.So the philosophical change that this bill will hopefully bring about is to enable an ethical process at the beginning of a surrogacy that will ensure that a genetic parent does not have to go through an Oranga Tamariki assessment does not have to go through a court process that can cost up to $10000 and does not have to adopt in fact their own biological genetic child.From my perspective I focused in the submission process on the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child and the fact that convention 3 reinforces the best interests of the child and in Paige's case the best interests of Paige is for her mother Katherine Harris to be recorded on her birth record and therefore her birth certificate. Under convention 7 Paige has the right to a name and nationality and convention 8 is about the right to an identity which I think is at the heart of this legislation. Paige's identity stems from the fact that she is Kyle Harris' and Katherine Harris' daughter and so we are here today to ensure that this piece of legislation enables that.Finally in terms of those submissions I want to give a bit of a shout-out to Josh Johnson a very good friend of Kyle and Katherine. It was his wife Renee who was the surrogate and he fronted up to the select committee and told an incredibly compelling story of an over two year process before Katherine passed away of trying to find a solution so that baby Paige could have her mum Katherine listed on her birth certificate.I just want to say again to Josh as I did during that process what an amazing advocate and friend and spokesperson he was for Kyle who I want to acknowledge did not participate in the process. After a two-year fight and the fact that his wife had died and he had been motivated to seek his redress for his daughter Paige—he had previously said he would fight his entire life for the right of his daughter to have her mother on her birth certificate—I think the realisation that it was about to happen that this Parliament had unanimously supported it that we were expediting this legislation on his behest because he wanted it completed before his daughter turned two was incredibly overwhelming. But Josh you were incredibly compelling and I want to thank you again for your contribution to the debate on Paige's bill.An amendment that has been proposed by the select committee is to replace "registration of birth" with "birth record." because in fact you have to register the birth of Paige before you can then obtain a birth certificate from the Department of Internal Affairs from Births Deaths and Marriages. So that will enable a subsequent birth record to reflect that Katherine Elizabeth Harris as mother of Paige Katherine Elizabeth Harris alongside the details of Kyle Jason Harris as Paige's father. That's what we are enabling through the passage of this legislation through the House today. So without further ado I commend the bill to the House. Kia ora."