Ross Jami-Lee: Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoss Jami-Lee: Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16122. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): Before I begin Mr Assistant Speaker I wish to advise you that pursuant to Standing Order 118(2) I will be splitting this call with my colleague from Coromandel Scott Simpson JP. Could I have a bell at 4 minutes please?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you very much for that—for informing the House. A split call colleagues.JAMI-LEE ROSS: As I was listening to the speeches from the House I was sitting here wondering whether Doreen andRowen would be watching this debate tonight and I assume that they probably are. I was also wondering to myself whether it would be a moment that they are proud of or whether it is a moment that they would be quite relieved by because I do not think we are talking tonight really about guardianship status and I do not think we are talking about an adoption order either; I think what we are really talking about is a family. I picked up on some words in the speech fromPoto Williams—it is about love and care and it is about family—and I think that this is really what the bill is all about. It is about recognising a family situation that has existed regardless of what laws say and regardless of what pieces of paper say. It is about a family and it is about recognising formally the situation that exists.I want to congratulate Louisa Wall on bringing the Sullivan Birth Certificate Bill to the House. It appears based on the speech from Mr O’Rourke that she has achieved unanimity in this House. Would it not have been great if she could have achieved that on her other bill the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill? That would have been a proud day for New Zealand but it was not to be. But she has done equally well on this bill so congratulations to Louisa Wall.I note also thatPoto Williams—if I could draw from your speech again—mentioned that she was adopted. I was not adopted myself but I am also someone in this House who was not raised in your stock-standard nuclear family of mother father and siblings. I was raised effectively by my grandmother. We never went through the formal route of recognising that in law but certainly growing up I always knew that my grandmother played the role of mother father and everything else. I think that if we think back to it probably formalising that situation would have been an ideal thing to do. It is surplus to requirements for us now but I can understand completely whyRowen would want to see this situation formalised for herself.Although the details around the bill have been discussed in quite a bit of detail tonight already and I do not want to go over them again I just want to say that it is a very good thing that this House is doing for that family. And it is about the family. It is not about the pieces of paper; it is about recognising the family.I was a little bit interested in the mechanisms of private bills. I have been a member of this House for only 3 years and I have not actually seen many private bills come to the debating chamber. So I was quite interested in the history of them and whether or not this was the appropriate mechanism to be used. I found it interesting. I pulled outMcGee and had a bit of a read about private bills. There is a bit of interesting information here.If you want to find out the origins of private bills they really go back to the time when Parliament rarely passed legislation. Nowadays Parliament passes legislation on a very frequent basis but back in the day when Parliament very rarely passed legislation for individuals to seek relief for a particular matter they had to ask Parliament to pass a piece of private legislation. Ironically according toMcGee if one wanted to seek a divorce prior to 1867 one had to get a private bill passed through Parliament—to get a divorce. Parliament would be exceptionally busy these days if that were still the case. Fortunately it is not. But certainly from reading about the history of private bills I can see that this is very much a situation where a private bill is appropriate.As I come to the conclusion of the few remarks that I have to make on this bill I just want to say congratulations again to Louisa Wall and to the Government Administration Committee as well because it has made some good amendments to this piece of legislation. I just want to again say congratulations toRowen and Doreen because I cannot imagine that it would be easy to front up to the New Zealand House of Representatives to go through what I imagine would have been a lengthy process to become the promoter of the bill and to get it all going. So congratulations to them and to everyone who will be voting in favour of this—even New Zealand First. Congratulations.