Mackey Moana: Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 07 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12459. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour):I am very pleased to support the Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill a private bill being brought to the House by my friend and colleague Louisa Wall. I think that as we went through the marriage equality legislation process which was also at the Government Administration Committee we really did see the human face of the issue that we were dealing with. Although the politics of the marriage equality debate was very real and ever-present it was during the submission process—where you had to look into the faces of the families of the individuals of the couples and of the children who were directly affected by the change that we were proposing to make—that the rubber really hit the road for the committee.I think even the most hardened of opponents of the marriage equality legislation were moved by some of the submissions. [Interruption ] Mr Auchinvole says maybe not. I think they were. I think that the tenor of the debate was very different because we realised that we were talking about real people. We were talking about their families. We were passing judgment on their families and it was a very respectful debate. I think this bill is yet another reminder of how an issue that might seem to be theoretical for some members actually has a very real impact on people’s lives right down to the point of the State effectively telling someone that someone who has always been their parentsomeone who has loved them and raised them legally has no standing in the eyes of the law in New Zealand because of the laws at the time that they were born.So I hope that all members of the House are going to support this particular bill. I commend the courage of Rowen Sullivan and her family in bringing this bill to the House. I do not underestimate how difficult it must be to put themselves up there personally as a family asking for a change to be made because of discrimination under the law. That cannot be easy but I think that speaks to how important this particular measure is to this family and how strongly they feel that it is in the best interests of their family that this issue be addressed and that this bill pass through Parliament.When we went through the civil union legislation that was really about recognising the partners of same-sex couples. We heard dreadful stories about what happened when one of the partners was for example in an accident or ended up incapacitated in some way. A partner would get to the hospital and because the relationship with the family was strained they would be refused access to their loved one because they had no legal standing under the law. Of course that is a risk for de facto heterosexual couples as well except that you are less likely to have a family in disagreement where the relationship is heterosexual as opposed to where it is a same-sex relationship.The stories we heard were just devastating. We heard about partners being shut out of funeral arrangements. We heard about partners being shut out of care arrangements for the person whom they had loved and cared for—for decades in cases—where the family had been completely absent. Parliament agreed that that was untenable under the law and we passed the civil union legislation. But it did not deal with the issue of adoption. It did not. My colleague Jacinda Ardern has a member’s bill in the ballot to deal with this issue and I sincerely hope that it gets drawn and dealt with in the House. But the civil union legislation did not deal with the issue of adoption. That still remains you could say a grey area—an area of deep uncertainty for all couples who are in civil unions.Given how much time we spend in this House and how much time we as MPs spend out in the community dealing with horrific fallout from having parents not wanting to be engaged in their kids’ lives and not wanting to take legal responsibility for their kids it seems to me utterly repugnant that the State would stand in the way of a parent who says “I want to be there.” or “I want to be on that birth certificate I want to be legally responsible and I want to be the person society sees as having a role in raising that young man or that young woman.” The law should not stand in the way as it has in the past. But the reality is that guardianship was applied for and that is great but your relationship with your parents does not end at age 18. In fact if anything I think it gets better. It goes from a person telling you what to do and a person being told what to do to a friendship to a much deeper relationship. So I entirely understand why beyond 18 it is important that that relationship becomes more than simply guardianship; it becomes legal.I want to end just by making the point that this bill highlights a very real fact which is that until we get full equality under the law for same-sex couples there will always be these loopholes. There will always be someone who misses out. There will always be someone put into a horrible situation that those of us who have the luxury of having all these rights afforded to us on birth—we did not earn them; because of our genetics we got them—will not be put into and sometimes we take those rights for granted. But the reality is that until we get full equality under the law for same-sex couples we will continue to see issues like this which are very upsetting for the people involved and should be completely unacceptable in a modern Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you.