Tolley AnneHon ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast): It's a pleasure to stand and talk to this bill. Can I start by paying tribute to the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians group co-chaired by Jo Hayes and Louisa Wall who have worked very hard to focus and drive the cross-party work the result of which we see here in the House today and ensured at the same time as Golriz Ghahraman and others have said that we have represented the voices of other women in our community who want us on their behalf to make a change and who want us to work together to make that change. So it is with some pride that we all stand here in the House on this quite historic day when we see a bill for the very first time in this House with four names on it rather than one name.I want to thank the Business Committee—which of course is made up of representatives of all the parties in this Parliament—who have enabled that to happen. It hasn't been an easy path but they have enabled that and they have supported that right through the process. I also want to thank the agencies—and they've already been mentioned—that have been in the background ensuring that this bill was not an attack on a particular culture but rather was the voice of women coming through saying this is a change we want to see made and again we want it made by Parliament and by the women that work together in Parliament.So we've heard that the bill updates the definition of female genital mutilation in New Zealand's Crimes Act and brings it into line with the World Health Organization classifications and what is commonly accepted internationally as best practice. But it does more than that because we are making it very clear that in New Zealand we see this as violence against women. We are standing together here in this Parliament to say that that is intolerable and that we in New Zealand in our laws are not going to tolerate that in any way shape or form. It is an abuse it is cruel and it can be fatal. Throughout many countries the victims can die from blood loss they can die from infection and of course they can die and do die from subsequent complications.I just want to use my last couple of minutes to acknowledge a woman that I read about in the newspaper recently and I saved the cutting because I was so impressed. I apologise to her relations because she has died. She died last month and her name is Bogaletch Gebre—I think is how you pronounce it. She's an Ethiopian woman. She's about the same age as me but they're not quite sure when she actually was born. She had no birth certificate. In her Ethiopian village she was mutilated at the request of her mother who cried who didn't want it done but realised that it needed to be done. But she went on to educate herself and then went back to Ethiopia and she started an agency that then worked with her communities. The interesting thing about her was that she didn't seek change by demonstrations or confrontation; she sought to make change by what she described as community conversations. In other words she worked with her communities to educate them and that's why it's so good to be supporting the FGM education trust who are doing exactly that.Also the agency that she founded involved men and women because this isn't just a women's issue—there's no such thing actually as women's issues. They are issues that affect the men and the women in our communities and we need to have them both involved in that fight against violence against women and girls. So she had remarkable success in the villages that she worked through and her death is deeply regretted. I did want to pay tribute to her as one of a number of women that have gone back to work in their communities and the women that are working with our New Zealand communities to educate them that this is an abuse this is cruel and this is not needed or wanted in our New Zealand communities. I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House.