Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Speaker. In my first reading speech on this bill I noted that we would treat Ms Oxborough's bill and her story with the care and respect that it deserves and I hope that we have done that. I'm aware that Annie will hopefully be listening to the debate this afternoon and I hope that she is as comfortable as she can be with the process that we have followed.This is the second private bill that the Governance and Administration Committee—that I'm happy to be a member of—has considered this term of Parliament relating to birth records. Through both of those processes it would be acknowledged I believe by most members of the committee and most members of this House that we need a simpler and less intrusive process. Now that does have some difficulty with it and I'll come to that later.I note it being an intrusive process because the submission from Ms Oxborough makes harrowing reading. I'm not going to read it out in detail tonight because part of me wishes to ensure that Ms Oxborough is the one that has that ability to tell her story and it's for us as parliamentarians today to follow the process of the bill and to leave Ms Oxborough to be the one that shares her story with the world.I want to note my colleague Chris Penk who has brought this bill through in a very considered and constructive way on behalf of his constituent and I acknowledge him for that. He has outlined the important elements of Ms Oxborough's story today.My thanks do go to the Business Committee for agreeing to a truncated process today which is certainly something that the select committee supported. We are aware that for health reasons for some of Ms Oxborough's family members it's important that we do pass this bill as soon as we are able to and my thanks to the House for agreeing for us to be able to follow a truncated process and I do hope that we will be able to finalise this bill today.There were some changes made through the select committee process that Mr Penk has already outlined but I did just want to take us through. As I've already stated this bill has had to come to Parliament because there is no process under existing law and that's why we've had to bring a private bill to the House.Ms Oxborough wishes for her birth certificate to be updated and corrected. On advice from officials we did find that wasn't necessarily the most straightforward approach to take and that what we needed to do was actually amend the birth record. So my thanks to officials—in particular the Parliamentary Counsel Office—for assisting with some drafting to ensure we had the clarity here in the bill. As you read through the bill you'll note that there has been definitions provided for birth record" and three different definitions provided for "birth certificate". So we have the pre-adoptive birth certificate which was the original birth certificate when Ms Oxborough was born; the post-adoptive birth certificate which was updated when the adoption order was made; and finally the new birth certificate which is what will be able to be issued to Ms Oxborough once her birth record has been amended.I want to make some commentary around wider reform before I finish my call because whenever we have looked through these private bills a lot of commentary has occurred within the House and within the select committee about the need for wider reform.Can I first acknowledge the private member's bill in the name of my colleague Tāmati Coffey and note that he has had a very special day today in being able to formally adopt his daughter today. Mr Coffey's private member's bill is regarding surrogacy law. Now this is another adoption issue that exists that wasn't an issue when Ms Oxborough was born but is becoming more of an issue now and does speak to the need for wider reform. I note that the Government has picked up Mr Coffey's private member's bill because it is such a substantial piece of reform that needs to occur.There's further reform occurring being led by the Ministry of Justice. This is looking specifically at how we can ensure we've moved from what was a dreadful—utterly dreadful—closed adoption process where quite frankly babies were taken from their parents without their permission. We've moved from that process to a far more open adoption process where children were able to retain contact with their birth parents and their birth family.One of the options that the Ministry of Justice is now looking at is the ability to continue keeping those records in place the records of the birth parents and the records of the adoptive parents and having more modern and flexible approaches. The challenge that presents that I do want to acknowledge that this House does need to grapple with at some point is that those reforms won't necessarily apply retrospectively because that's very challenging. In Ms Oxborough's case because her adoptive parents who would not have supported this law have passed away that has made it somewhat easier for her to progress with this. But there will be thousands of other people out there in Aotearoa in similar circumstances who would like to be able to take a private bill but know that in doing so it could cause significant hurt to their family.The other matter with that is that it would take up a considerable amount of the House's time. I think what all members of the committee feel—but we don't necessarily have an easy answer to this—is that we need a simpler less-intrusive process where people can update their records in a private way without having to expose their life and their story and public in such a way.For Ms Oxborough what I do want to congratulate her on is that she's taken this journey for herself and for her family but in doing so she has exposed to the country and to the Parliament a genuine issue that exists that I think we need to correct.And so it is a pleasure to be able to hold Ms Oxborough's story with the care and respect that it deserves and I do hope very much that she will look back on this process and feel that she achieved something for herself and for the country. It is an excellent bill. I congratulate the member again on the diligence and care he has approached this with. I commend it to the House."