Seymour DavidEND OF LIFE CHOICE BILLIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 25 September.Clauses 1 and 2DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you very much Mr Chair. We are debating only two clauses of the 28 that make up the End of Life Choice Bill the first being the title and the second being the commencement. Let me quickly address the title. The title of the bill is the End of Life Choice Bill and I think that's very appropriate. This is a bill only for people who have a terminal illness as diagnosed by two doctors. It is for people who are sadly at the end of their lives and it is a choice. The bill is very clear in a number of places that I won't rehearse today that only the person whose life it is can make the choice.I note that there's an amendment on the Table that would change it to a title that mentions assisted suicide and euthanasia. I think that would be a mistake for two reasons. The first is that the committee has rejected putting such terms in other parts of the bill already so you would have a title that had two terms that the committee had rejected putting into the bill and you would also have a view of the bill that would be saying we are actually looking at this from an external or third-party perspective—that we are looking at this as something that happens to a person rather than a choice the person makes. I think it's very important that this bill is recognised as being about choice and that's why I'd urge the committee to reject the amendment to change the title and support the title standing as it is.Next I come to commencement. Currently the bill reads that the Act comes into force 12 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. I'd like to commend to the committee two amendments both in the name of Jenny Marcroft. The first of those is Supplementary Order Paper 361 and the second is Supplementary Order Paper 287. Supplementary Order Paper 361 is an amendment to Supplementary Order Paper 287 and it sets out the question that would be asked in a referendum on whether this bill should receive Royal assent or at least should come into force. Presently it is scheduled to come into force 12 months after it receives the Royal assent. Jenny Marcroft's two amendments together would say that the bill comes into force 12 months after the majority of New Zealand electors vote in a referendum for it to be so. What that would mean is that most likely at the next election there would be an option for New Zealanders to say either I support the End of Life Choice Act coming into force." or "I do not support the End of Life Choice Act coming into force." and if a majority of those electors in that referendum support it then one year after that the bill comes into force. It's not particularly complex legal drafting but I would just make a couple of comments.I have reflected on the possibility of a referendum for quite some time—whether it was desirable—and I've come to the conclusion that I don't actually have an especially strong moral view on whether or not referenda or representative democracy are the right way to make laws. I know some people have staked a position on this but if we sweep through the broad history of our democracy right back to the Council of 500 in Athens 2500 years ago we actually have had at various times in our history many forms of democracy—some of them direct some of them representative. We've had a referendum in our own history where the public effectively ratified the current Electoral Act by which all of us are elected to this House. We have seen countries such as Switzerland and we've seen various states of America where direct democracy plays quite a significant role in their legislation and in their public policy formation and I don't think there is an absolute position on whether one is better than the other.What I do know is that the pathway to the passage of this legislation is that this referendum clause is critical to keeping a coalition of MPs who will give New Zealanders the choice to be able to decide if they are ill at the end of their lives how they go and when they go—that is the objective of this bill. That is what a compassionate society would offer. So I commend those two Jenny Marcroft amendments to the committee and I'll be happy to take questions or entertain further debate if people can come up with original arguments around these two sections."