Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Earlier I spoke on my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) and it was a rather emotional speech and I'd like to thank some members who have sent me lovely messages. Although we disagree in this Chamber and we may take different positions we actually support each other; so thank you. We have been rather respectful as the Hon Tim Macindoe said earlier. I'd like to once again thank the gentleman behind me Mr Tim Macindoe for supporting my Supplementary Order Papers 478 and 479 and hopefully there will be many more members in this Chamber who will vote for my SOPs. Earlier I spoke on the disability area of Supplementary Order Paper 479 a little bit more than on the other; so I'd like to focus more on the gender or sex discrimination in this part. But before I get to that I just want to quote an email that I got from Krystal Kendon and it says It creates less room for empathy compassion understanding and community support for those that may look act or have different needs to the rest of us. The issue that needs to be addressed is how can we better support equip and empower those mothers and families to raise their children with disability instead of filling them with fear and providing a seemingly—yet deceptive—easy way out." I just want to quote that for the part on the disability issue that I spoke about earlier on Supplementary Order Paper 479. There have been many people who have talked about the gender issue and I think previously the Minister of Justice has also talked about the potential that in this legislation we have made it very clear apparently that we do not tolerate gender selection in New Zealand and yet it is not part of the bill. We do not make it illegal for people to decide to have abortions based on gender selection. I think the Minister had also talked earlier about the very fact that he did not want people to ethnically profile if we have my SOP adopted. I'd like to ask the Minister: there is some ethnic profiling already happening in the health sector. Some ethnic communities are predisposed to certain diseases so they actually look at that. Perhaps it is the Asian community who are predisposed to certain diseases or the Pacific community. People are already aware of some things that are already happening; so I do not think that ethnic profiling per se is actually a negative thing because they can prepare to provide better health services. But in terms of gender selection the reason why I oppose this I guess is that I am an Oriental person and I know for a fact that in some of our communities people abort purely based on gender selection. For example in China there was a Government policy that allowed only one child per family which meant the parents had to decide which gender they wanted when they got pregnant. So for the purposes of them wanting to secure their superannuation—so their children could look after them when they were older and they were aged—they wanted a boy child because boy children were deemed to be the ones who would provide for their elderly parents and that is the reason why they chose one gender. They wanted boy children; so when they got pregnant with a girl child they aborted them. Now it is no longer the policy of the Chinese Government but 30 million Chinese men do not have wives because they cannot find a partner because the parents aborted female children when they were deciding which gender they wanted. I'm not suggesting that that would happen in New Zealand but the thing is that the very fact that parents chose often later in the pregnancy when they find out what gender what sex their child is—I think it is actually wrong for them to decide to have an abortion because they want children by design. I mean the Prime Minister herself has actually said that this is a kind country and this is a country that cares about the most vulnerable. When we are allowing people to abort babies based on their gender or because of the disabilities that they have I am not so sure what kind of message we are sending to the world. We are no longer the kind country that the Prime Minister seems to be very proud of—we're not. This cannot happen."