Wall Louisa: Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 07 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12467. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa):Kia orana Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson):Meitaki.LOUISA WALL: In concluding this first reading debate I want to focus on a sentence fromRowen’s statement: “Other people can have both their parents on their birth certificate and they don’t have to choose between having their mum’s name taken off or having no family at all as far as the law is concerned.”This Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill is fundamentally aboutRowen’s right to her identity which exists within the context of her family. The Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2004—or HART Act—came about because of the changing ideas of family that permeated court decisions from as early as 1990. Those decisions reflected changing social understandings of the structure of the normal New Zealand family. The old understandings of family as genetically related and nuclear collided with new understandings. These new understandings of family involve same-sex couples reproductive material donors and altruistic surrogacy.Since 2004 we have recognised in law these new understandings of family and parenting. The Care of Children Act 2004 widened the practice of guardianship changing from the traditional Western ideology of the nuclear family towards a more traditionalMāori concept of the extended family. The 2004 amendment to the Status of Children Act recognised parenting roles where a child is born as a result of an assisted human reproduction procedure. All this legislation reflected the actual realities of families in a modern contemporary society that recognises choice.Rowen is part of a new family. Under the 2004 amendment to the Status of Children Act bothRowen’s parents would have been identified as such and accordingly could have been recorded onRowen’s birth certificate. However due to the circumstances of when and whereRowen was conceived this was not possible at that time. However now as a New Zealand citizen with a New Zealand parentRowen is entitled to have a New Zealand birth certificate that records all of who she is.A birth certificate is an official document that contains the registered information about your birth. As the Department of Internal Affairs states on its website the birth certificate states the fact of the birth the place and date of that birth and the name or names registered for the child and establishes a link between a child and its parents.Rowen has a New Zealand birth certificate. It states the date and place of her birth it states her names but it has only one of her parents’ names recorded on it because it is a post-adoption certificate and the law requires that in issuing that certificate her mother’s name must be removed.The passage of this bill would mean thatRowen’s link with both of her parents will be clearly identified on the one document that she will use as evidence of who she is. Her birth certificate would then describe her family in real terms. Kia oratātou katoa.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Government Administration Committee.