Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Madan Speaker. It's my pleasure to stand and take a short call on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. Can I just acknowledge at the start Elizabeth Kerekere who I sat with consistently through most of the submissions that we heard on the Justice Committee along with other members of the committee as well. I think she made a very good point in her speech to the House when she said that most of the submitters that actually came and submitted to the committee a lot of them shared very personal views in terms of what conversion meant to them and the impact that it had had on them. We had doctors and we had parents caregivers that fundamentally were making submissions around the fact that they didn't want to see a chilling effect on the ability for parents to be able to have open conversations with their children or to parent their children.But the one thing that I found very interesting when we started questioning and got into a dialogue with them was that most of them were against conversion therapy. They're against conversion therapy; they just wanted to make sure that they weren't going to be criminalised especially in the case of parents when they were trying to parent their children. Nicole McKee made a very good speech outlining that very succinctly along with Paul Goldsmith and both of the parties are going to be putting up Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). So I hope the Minister will take into serious consideration with his advisers to make sure that we can absolutely give an unequivocal message to parents and caregivers and actually medical practitioners that the Government's not going to be sitting in the room with them with the fear of criminal charges and a term of imprisonment hanging over their heads when they're trying to parent or have discussions with their children.That being said when this bill was first brought to our caucus my initial gut reaction was absolute abhorrence at the thought of conversion therapy. I was actually stunned. I couldn't believe that in modern New Zealand a practice like that could actually be undertaken and I still feel like that. But one thing that I learnt through the select committee process was that it's a lot more complicated and more nuanced. A lot of the submissions that we heard from people that had been to subjected to conversion therapy you could put on the more extreme end of the scale and you could put on the more mild end of the scale but the one thing that was consistent was it had had a deeply negative impact on them. I think as lawmakers when we come to this House one of the things that we all hold fast to is the fact that we should pass legislation and do all that we can to protect vulnerable people in our country and in our communities and that's what this bill is trying to do. That is the spirit and intent of this bill and therefore I do support the bill but I support it on the premise that the Minister would please go away and give serious consideration to the SOPs that have been brought to this House by the National Party and by the ACT Party to give absolute surety and clarity in this legislation that a parent sitting in their lounge with their child trying to parent them and have a discussion with them is not going to be captured by the Government that the Government's not going to be there it's not going to create that chilling effect and that those parents don't have to worry about a sentence of imprisonment when they're trying to engage in the parenting of their children. I do acknowledge that those conversations have to be done with respect and openness and love and not a conversation of trying to change or disrupt or convert what a person fundamentally feels strongly about in terms of their identity. So like I said—me personally—I will be supporting the bill in its passage through this House. I would ask the Minister to please have a look at consider and engage on the SOPs that have been brought to this House to ensure that we don't pass legislation that inadvertently—because I don't think the intent is to catch parents or caregivers or doctors or counsellors. But with the way the bill is written at the moment there is a risk of that and I'd ask that the Minister like I said consider carefully those SOPs. Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Willow-Jean Prime—five minutes.