Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you for this opportunity to take a call on the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill and can I please start my contribution by acknowledging the member Louisa Wall who has brought this bill to the House. I supported the abortion legislation previously and I'm pleased to see that this issue that arose during that debate actually has come before the House and we are able to debate it and hopefully address this issue this morning. I myself haven't personally seen or observed this behaviour. I wasn't on the select committee but I have heard in the speeches this morning and I have heard from colleagues who have seen it firsthand for themselves how awful this must be for those who are trying to access services something that is their right and that is ultimately their decision. As we have heard in the speeches this morning what we are trying to do here is balance one set of rights versus another set of rights. The right that is often used to oppose what is being proposed in this legislation is that right of freedom of expression—freedom of speech—and what had to be weighed up here was the other rights that people have to access medical services to their privacy and to go about their own business. It was a challenge as I can see for the Health Committee to weigh up those. I see that they gave it real consideration as to how that could be balanced in trying to achieve the objectives of this piece of legislation. What the bill does is it actually defines the type of behaviour that is prohibited so I think when anybody is hearing about this or considering it they should actually read what is in the bill and what is being prohibited and it's defined as intimidating interfering with or obstructing a protected person—[either] with the intention of frustrating the purpose for which the protected person is in the safe area; or … in a manner that an ordinary reasonable person would know would cause emotional distress to a protected person:". I think when you read that you read the type of behaviour that's proposed to be prohibited by this bill you would see that it is not an unreasonable restriction on somebody's freedom of expression. Their freedom of expression is going much further than I think is acceptable to us and that's what we are legislating for today. It's also "communicating with or visually recording a person in a manner that an ordinary reasonable person would know would cause emotional distress to a protected person." So it provides a safe area and it provides that it cannot be more than 150 metres from the perimeter of the premises. We heard an excellent explanation from the member Jan Logie about why it's not just a blanket thing but it needs to be applied to each site and I also heard your point about how possibly that could be more streamlined. But it was something that obviously the Health Committee grappled with and tried to figure out if there was a blanket way in which it could be done but what was ultimately landed on was that it would be site-specific and there's a process within the legislation for that. The recommended changes from the Health Committee: I think the one I wanted to focus on mainly was around the Attorney-General's report on the bill to the House in which it concluded that clause 5 of the bill appeared to be inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression as affirmed in section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Attorney-General was concerned that the bill would criminalise communicating in a way that could be distressing. The way in which the Health Committee dealt with this and undertook that balancing act and tried to provide clarification for that was to recommend amending clause 5 by replacing new section 13A and removing the definitions of "prohibited behaviour" and "protected person" and by specifically defining the types of behaviour that would be prohibited in a safe area. That's why I encourage anybody who is thinking about this piece of legislation to actually read what it says in the bill. I saw this last night with the conversion practices prohibition. People were just making a statement and making assumptions but they haven't necessarily read the legislation which is outlining for clarity what it does include and does prohibit and what it doesn't. So the proposed new section 13A(1)(b) would prohibit a person from visually recording another person in a safe area in a certain manner and they could not do so in a way that was likely to cause emotional distress to a person accessing providing or assisting with providing abortion services. I just want everybody in the House to just take a little moment to consider that: somebody going to access these services in what could be a really difficult situation for them and you have somebody with a mobile recording device recording you doing that. I'm really proud that we are putting this in legislation to prohibit that type of behaviour. The new section 13A(1)(c) would also prohibit a person from undertaking certain activities in a safe area and these activities would be ones that "could easily be seen or heard by another person (A) who may be accessing providing or assisting with providing abortion services:". The prohibited activities would be advising or persuading A to refrain from accessing or providing abortion services; informing A about matters relating to the provision of abortion services unless it was when the services were being provided; and engaging in protest about matters relating to the provision of abortion services. To be clear though a person could carry out these activities while accompanying person A with consent. So this would be to avoid it being an offence for a private conversation in a safe area where A was being dissuaded by a person accompanying them from accessing or providing abortion services and I think that's an important point for people to know. Somebody who with the consent of the person going in for the services may be having that private conversation would not be captured by this bill. However somebody who is not there with the consent of person A and who is trying to do that is what is being captured by this bill. So on that basis the Attorney-General provided feedback on those proposed changes and concluded that they considered that "while the revised draft of the Bill would still limit freedom of expression within a safe area under section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act it would do so in a way that was demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society under section 5." So I really want to commend the Health Committee for the work that they did and the recommendations and changes that they made in order to try and achieve that balancing act. I commend the committee on what they arrived at and therefore I feel honoured and privileged to be able to stand up in this House this morning to make this contribution and to support this legislation. Ki a koe Louisa tēnei te mihi nui ki a koe e te wahine toa. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare.[To you Louisa a courageous woman this is a great acknowledgment. Greetings to the Speaker of the House.]"