Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) (remote): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a real privilege to be able to speak on this particular bill today and I have a couple of reflections to offer before some final words to the beautiful family. The first I want to offer comes from my own experience and my husband's experience as we battled our way through infertility ourselves and our three daughters are the great blessing of our lives. But because we battled our way through infertility it made me think about the nature of what it is to be a parent and I think we can separate parents out in many ways. There is a genetic parent the person from whom the DNA comes and then there is the gestational parent the woman who carries a child and the person—usually a man; sometimes someone else—who supports her who is also a gestational parent as they support go through a pregnancy. And then there is a social parent the parent who raises a child. Usually all those three roles are contained within the one person: a person is a social a gestational and a genetic parent and they never really think about dividing those roles up. Why should they? But it turns out in our times we have learnt through the use of science we have learnt through love to see those roles as being something that can be done by a number of people. But our law doesn't recognise that yet. Our law doesn't understand the difference between a genetic parent and a gestational parent and a social parent. And hopefully in Tāmati Coffey's bill we'll discuss that a little bit more because it does deal with this particular issue. In this particular case the law simply had not caught up with the particular circumstances that applied for wee Paige's family—that there was a difference between the gestational parent and the genetic and social parents. Today we're helping the law to catch up to that particular problem and to sort it out today. I'm very glad we've been able to do that. The second reflection I want to offer is about the process that had to be gone through here before we could make the law fit this family. Josh one of the gestational parents came along to the select committee and he told us about how hard he had worked to get Parliament to take notice of this issue. He'd emailed and emailed and emailed some more and he'd taken to emailing every day and couldn't get a response. Eventually he went to the media and thank goodness he did because from then of course the issue was picked up by Louisa Wall and we have resolved it very quickly in parliamentary terms. But what it showed to us—for me in particular—was that Josh just didn't quite know how to approach our Parliament. I'm really worried that that's the case for lots of other New Zealanders—that they just don't know how to approach our Parliament how to get something done. In fact it was an experience of mine a few weeks ago when I sat down with a local who just didn't know how to get going in politics. We live and breathe politics in Parliament every day so we understand it. But so many of the people we try to serve don't and I think that's a real challenge to us. When I was an MP I spent a lot of time out at community events and the like and in part it's just so that people get to know how to approach our Parliament. Again I don't want anyone like Josh to have to go through that again—that they email and email and just don't know how to do it. So that's another reflection from this process. But today we've spent the time of this House which is quite precious and we normally spend it on big matters like human rights and the health system and budgets and the like—today we have spent it on in some ways what is quite a small matter. But it is huge for Josh for Renee for Katherine for Kyle and for Paige and it has been wonderful for us to stop and take notice of this incredibly important matter for this beautiful family. I'm so glad we could do it for them. Thank you Madam Speaker.