Severin ToniTONI SEVERIN (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm proud to stand here on behalf of the ACT Party on the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. As previous speakers have said this is definitely a great day for birthing-women in New Zealand. It's something that has been overlooked for many years and especially that's become very apparent when we had all our submitters come to the Education and Workforce Committee and give us their stories of very uncomfortable lives which some of them still carry to this day—and some of these injuries occurred up to 40 years ago. So it's sad to say that they are not going to be recognised. However from 1 October on women shall be recognised and looked after.The other thing is again I'd also like to thank Sarah Pallett who is a midwife because she helped guide us through these very interesting injuries which I will not list. But most of all I am very proud to say that the officials sat listened and came back with a revised list for us. It was great to hear that they were listening to the lovely submitters even though their circumstances varied. The other thing is that the officials had a three- to five-year review. As most of us said we thought five years was just a little bit too long so I was very pleased for them to come back with the three. They also mentioned to us that they were going to be monitoring the system and hopefully they're going to put a robust monitoring system in so if anything does show up sooner than the three years it will be added to the list. Now that's very important because as we all know there are things that constantly happen that we who are not experts would not know but we would hope the medical profession would be able to do that.Also with my other colleagues especially with National and the Greens around injuries to babies—you know the hard thing is also knowing what is natural and what is an injury. There's so many grey zones but there are so many babies that have come away with injuries from birth that have not been picked up and looked after by ACC which is very sad to say that these kids then continue through their lives having difficulties in many different forms. So again I would actually support this bill to see how we can improve it. But the biggest thing of all I foresee is we've got to make sure that our health system and ACC are communicating a bit better. We know there is that grey zone between what is medical and what is an accident but the thing is if we don't know then we can't know but if they report it we can find out and we can add these things.Now the other thing I'd like to bring up is I know that we wanted to get this bill through by October. However I felt a little bit disappointed that the select committee of the whole debate—there were some questions that we still wanted to get a few clarifications around. It's not because we were opposing things but just to get some clarifications on a few things that were in this other matters bill. However I felt that it was not given its due course. I don't think it would have gone on for long; however it's just sad that it was closed down I felt a little bit too soon and we could not debate a few things which is what I thought we were here—and because also there might have been something in that that they would be able to—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I just ask the member to come back to the third reading.TONI SEVERIN: Thank you Madam Speaker. Also as they estimated because we added to this bill more injuries around 28000 birthing women would be included in this—a lot greater than what they thought. Also we know that that's going to be another huge expense on all this but hopefully it'll be a great expense to make women feel a lot more comfortable and also for women to be able to possibly go back to work sooner if they wish to because they have had the right treatments to fix the problems that can occur during birthing.The other thing is mostly that the other matters as Michael Woodhouse said—there are a few things in it that we could have debated a little bit more but because the majority of this bill was around the maternity injuries it took up most of our time at the select committee for the hearing. So we missed out I think as Jan Logie said around hearing—there could have been maybe a little bit more robust information around hearing—as well as again what's considered of long-term effects in section 30 and also as the Hon Carmel Sepuloni mentioned about firefighters which has been a hugely contested thing as Michael Woodhouse said around cancers that have been proven around the rest of the world. So it would be very interesting to see if some of these things could be possibly taken up in the next round if not by Labour maybe National in the next few years if they become Government.But overall I'm very pleased to say that this bill is hopefully going to give around 28000 birthing women a greater opportunity for a better future for them in the long term. So I commend this bill to the House.