SpeechHon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thanks Mr Speaker. First of all Ginny Andersen well done. It's such an exciting thing to get a member's bill drawn but to have something so powerful to take to this House that gets the support across the House is a big deal. So well done. Thank you to you Erica Stanford for bringing up IVF which is another often unspoken experience that so many women have. I am one of those women. Nine cycles I went through over 18 months. You know I've had a few painful experiences in my life but that was probably the most in terms of the impact that it has on you psychologically. I am so thankful to have two beautiful boys—twins—as a result of that process so it was worth it. But for so many women—and we know that the stats say one in four suffer a miscarriage and it may be much higher than that. We in this House today are providing recognition to women who have had that experience that they often suffer in silence and feel that they can't really speak of and it goes unrecognised. One of the powerful things that was said—and I think Ginny said it right in her speech—was that it's not sickness but it's bereavement and therefore it's grief that needs to be acknowledged. So I want to say thank you to Kathryn van Beek—in fact a heartfelt thankyou to Kathryn van Beek—who first came to my office in Dunedin at the beginning of 2017 with her idea for a member's bill. She was quite clear about what she wanted to change. I talked it through with her and I thought it was a good idea. I asked her to go away and to see if she could build some support and to come back to me. It took her quite a few months. By the time she came back to me with that incredible support that she had built up through the Sands website and the Facebook group that she had worked through the Government had changed and I was a Minister and I couldn't take a member's bill through for her but I'm so pleased that Ginny has taken that up. I'm so proud of her tenacious and sensitive approach to this issue that has touched a real nerve around the country and in this House indeed. So well done and I know that we're not quite there yet. We've still got to go through the committee stage and the third reading but it feels like a really powerful powerful moment in our House tonight. So I certainly commend this bill to the House. Just quickly I'll touch on the messages that came out through the Education and Workforce Committee around the distress around miscarriage and stillbirth. They were around the employers requiring workers to use sick leave for miscarriages and stillbirths and around the stigma around miscarriages and submitters said that there needs to be more open dialogue. They said that miscarriage impacts those dealing with chronic illness more significantly and that Māori and Pacific women and women from migrant cultures may currently be more likely to avoid discussing pregnancy loss with their employer. All of those issues came out through the 37 oral submissions that we had on the select committee and they have provided the ability for us to produce a much better bill out of that select committee which means now that it's going back through the House it will be a much more solid piece of legislation. Just finally I do want to give another shout out to Kathryn van Beek who actually writes children's books now. Her latest book is called Bruce Goes Outside and I heartily recommend that you go and look it up. So I really commend this bill to the House. Bill read a second time.