Salesa JennyDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) (remote): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's an absolute pleasure to be here for the third and final reading of this bill. I'd just like to start by acknowledging my colleague Louisa Wall for bringing the bill to the House. This is a bill that the Health Committee spent a considerable amount of time on because I think we felt that it was important to get it right and I think it was because on the one hand we wanted to make sure that the bill set out what it wanted to achieve and that's to protect the privacy and the dignity of woman accessing abortion services but also the staff that are working in those facilities. But on the other hand what it was important to do was to make sure that the bill was consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and making sure that those freedoms of speech and other freedoms were preserved in that bill. I think as a committee we managed to achieve this.But what I wanted to do is just share with you some of the views and the stories of the submitters that we heard. We heard a whole range of different people talking about this bill and I think as we started to listen to those submissions it became quite clear that there was an issue that needed to be addressed. I want to start with just some of the submissions from the Abortion Providers Group Aotearoa New Zealand and what they talked about was the fact that they'd sent out a questionnaire to clinics in June 2020 because there had been quite a bit of debate about whether this was an issue or not and they asked them about their experiences of current protest action over the past three years and they got 13 responses back. Of those eight reported that they did see current protest action and six of those said there was protest action every week and it was usually on the days that abortions were provided. One had monthly protests and one had them annually. And apart from that larger annual protest what they talked about was sometimes single or up to 10 regular protesters and one clinic reporting 15 to 20 people turning up regularly. Some qualitative comments within that survey one said that Now they're not allowed in the main hospital but sometimes on occasion people managed to bypass security and they know where our department is and they'll question women attending appointments." And another comment "One person in question will give money to women as an incentive for not proceeding with their appointment." So just really signalling that this is an ongoing issue for many providers.But also the stories of individual submitters and we had a few. Some just actually said "I support the bill" and that was it in their written submission but some actually talked a little bit more. One said "I've been a victim of verbal abuse in the past while attending a clinic for a routine scan and there were protesters outside. I was pregnant at the time and I found out that I was having a miscarriage. It was a highly emotional time and to exit the building and have people protesting about abortion as murder was very upsetting." I can't imagine a young woman with no support trying to make the best decision for her and her baby hearing the same. So I think there was a real suggestion that this is an area where we did need to provide some protection.But on the other hand we also had a number of submitters coming in with quite opposing views and a lot of them said "Look we've got really deeply held views about abortion and we feel that this bill impacts negatively on our freedom of speech." So I'll just read you an example of a quote from one of those that says "I'm completely opposed to this bill. It effectively removes the right of freedom to peaceful assembly for us as citizens and the right to peacefully object to the practice of abortion. If those who are in favour of abortion want to have it as a right we believe we deserve the right to dissent and object."—and so basically those tensions.But the other issue that was raised by the Attorney-General as we've had spoken about in a number of the meetings was that clause 5 of the bill he felt was not sufficiently narrow enough so it was inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that the term "communicating" in his view was overly broad and it may not be interpreted as just relating to issues around abortion or abortion related matters. He thought that might be a problem also about inadvertently capturing say discussions by family members that were accompanying people into the services. There were also other broader issues with clinicians who might be discussing bad news about a baby and that might be inadvertently captured. So basically I think where we've ended up as a committee is the recommendations that we've made I think have achieved the right balance between protecting women's privacy and dignity but ensuring that we've gone sufficiently narrow in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.I think how we've managed to do that was basically by prescribing a certain range of things that it would be prohibited for people to do in the safe area and those are things that could be safely seen and heard by somebody accessing abortion services. I think one of the issues that we were so concerned about was the concept of a protected person because in the bill as introduced it was around a protected person being impacted by the behaviour. But a protected person was somebody that was then attending those services for the purpose of accessing abortion services. So the concern we had was the ability for people to be able to testify but in testifying they would also have to then declare the reason they were in the safe area. We felt that that would actually prevent a lot of people stepping up and saying you know "I've experienced this" and testifying in court.So with the changes that we recommended and made we removed that whole provision of having to have somebody that was a protected person and rather instead made it a range of behaviours that were quite clearly defined. So what that meant was that while you would still need evidence of the behaviour occurring it didn't have to be actually that person accessing services themselves that could bring that forward. So I think that added an extra layer for those who wanted to be protected so that things could still go ahead without them having to be the one to do it.Then just finally the timeliness issue was something that was really important to the committee because there was a real sense that we needed to get on and provide protections in a very timely manner. The question was that there was a range of options considered but if we could put in place a blanket protection 150 metres from all abortion services—could you do that quickly—and I think that brought up a whole range of questions about "OK if you're sitting in a safe area that is 150 metres from the service or from the building; is it the building itself or is it the land on which the service is located?" because you've got a lot of services that may be delivered in a big hospital complex where the land area is rather large. Where do you put that boundary? Then there are other issues around private property and could you include private property in a safe area? I think where we landed was going back to the original provisions where we've got a customised regulation-making power so that each facility has its own regulations developed around that so that we've got the ability to work out for each area how to potentially exclude private property but also make sure we've got the maximum protection.So I think this was a bill where submitters really suggested that something needed to be done. We had to work through the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provisions but I think where we've ended up is a good balance between the two. So I think that I'm really happy with where this has landed and I'd just like to acknowledge all the work of those involved in the select committee and again acknowledge Louisa Wall for bringing this bill to the House. I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to."