Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you very much Madam Chair and thank you to the I think almost 11 members who have risen and contributed since I last got up and addressed some of the concerns raised. I'd like now to address some of the accumulated concerns.We had Simeon Brown who suggested that we should support an amendment Supplementary Order Paper 282 to reduce the prognosis period—the prognosis for somebody's illness being terminal—down to one month. I can see his intention but frankly this is a process where people are asked to talk to their doctor at times suitable to their condition. People are asked to talk to friends family and counsellors. Doctors are required to talk to those people. People really should have time to think and reflect about this if they wish for it. To compress the process into a mandatory one month before a person could become a person eligible for assisted dying I think would actually run counter to many of the things that I suspect the member would say he was in favour of.I want to really thank Tim Macindoe for his candour and the way that he got up and talked about his motivations his considerations and how he's been considering the issue. Thank you Tim. I always like a public meeting with 300 people but the one that you put on was particularly good there in Hamilton.I want to also turn to Nick Smith. Nick Smith was critical of the fact that I have previously defended the inclusion of the criterion grievous and irremediable". He seemed to believe that I had somehow resiled from that defence. That is simply not true. The term "grievous and irremediable" is not something that we got from nowhere. It is in the Canadian legislation. It is a very well-defined term that has come out of jurisprudence of no less than the Supreme Court of Canada. I still think and always will believe that it is a good criterion for somebody to access assisted dying.However part of politics as it turns out is about listening. I have listened to the likes of James Shaw from whom we heard a few moments ago. I've heard from people on both sides of the House to my left and my right and I accept that this Parliament does not want to pass a bill with that criterion in it. It's with some regret I have to say. There are people such as my namesake David Seymour from Whangarei who has motor neurone disease is a strong supporter of the bill and bitterly disappointed at it being limited but also as the name would suggest he is a man of great magnanimity and he has accepted that this is the political outcome and he is supporting the bill still as some people will have seen on Newshub tonight.There was a question that came up actually through multiple contributions to the committee about the certainty of a doctor's prognosis. The argument is effectively we all know and I'm very pleased to know people who had terminal prognoses a decade ago who are now walking around living very full lives and are very very happy to still be alive. It is true that if we know somebody like that it's very likely that we think of them. What is true is that the overwhelming majority of people who have a terminal prognosis do not get such miracles and unfortunately I can think of quite a few more people in that camp than people who do have miracles.Now bear in mind it is entirely a choice for somebody who has a terminal prognosis and meets all of the other criteria to seek assisted dying. What those who say "What if you have a miraculous recovery?" are really saying is that they want to condemn every single person to suffering and hoping for a miracle when the reality is for most of us it won't happen. If this bill passes there will still be every choice for people who want nothing to do with this bill or assisted dying to hold on and hope that they have one of those cherished miraculous recoveries but to pass this bill is to give those who want to choose to go on their terms with their timing the choice to have it their way. I believe that that is the nub of the issue bearing in mind that the criterion of having a six-month prognosis then having two doctors independently judge that one is likely to have their life end within six months is but one of a number of criteria the most important of all being that the person makes their own choice.Nick Smith then got up and said that we need to be honest and clear that under this bill people will die. Well I've never denied that—I've never denied that—but I think what he was trying to say in his contribution was something that was echoed by David Carter in his second speech and that was that there might be a case of somebody who was unknowingly coerced into an assisted death. The interesting thing about David Carter's contribution is he started out arguing that it would be impossible for somebody to know or for it ever to be found out that coercion had occurred and then I have to say—and he may need to take another call—I struggled to follow his logic because his proof that coercion occurred was actually citing court cases where coercion had been discovered after the person was deceased. You can't hold these two beliefs simultaneously. If he has shown that there are examples of coercion being discovered posthumously then it would be possible to discover coercion in the case of people who had an assisted death but the difficulty for Mr Carter's argument is that there are not examples of such findings in the case of assisted dying over 20 years in a dozen or more jurisdictions that now have an assisted dying law. So I would put it to him that the evidence is findable but is not found.I'd like to continue my dialogue with Mr Carter because I know that he's a thinking man and I would put it to him that he's put in place a false premise. He said there could possibly somehow be a case of undetectable coercion somewhere and that is enough to say no to this law but remember by voting to oppose this law he is also voting to retain the status quo and he will have—and anyone that opposes this law will have—on his conscience the finding of our own High Court and the findings of the Supreme Court of Canada that a prohibition on assisted dying leaves people with a cruel choice. Some suffer terribly in their final days and not only that others take their own lives through what the Supreme Court called "violent amateur suicide". Our own court in Seales v Attorney-General accepted that actually people's lives are shortened through that practice shortened in effect by the prohibition on assisted dying under the law that he continues to support.So I'd put it to Mr Carter that he is supporting a status quo where people do die badly and do die wrongly in order to oppose a proposal on the speculation that there might be undetectable coercion when he's argued himself it could be detected if it existed but accepted that it cannot be found anywhere in the cases where assisted dying has been legalised. I see Marja Lubeck whose ancestry goes back to the Netherlands. She's very familiar with the experience of that country and she's nodding as I say it. So I put it to Mr Carter that he should think again and I look forward to continuing this dialogue.Brett Hudson—I want to thank him for his support and I'm glad that we've satisfied one of his three key objections. I hope that we can go three for three on this.Michael Woodhouse made a very interesting contribution where he said that palliative care does not hasten death. I say it's interesting because he needs to talk to Chris Penk who has a Supplementary Order Paper which says that we should change the wording in this bill to say that assisted dying is hastening death. On the other hand we hear from his colleague that in actual fact there is never any hastening of death in the case of palliative care. There's going to be a contradiction between the two there that they may want to think about.Then we come to Kiritapu Allan. Now Kiritapu Allan made I think one of the most fulsome contributions so far. She asked about the consideration that had been given to the amendment proposed by Louisa Wall that she had worked on with Lawrence Yule. She asked you know had I thought about it and had I given a lot of consideration to it and I can assure Kiritapu Allan that I most certainly have. I've had considerable legal advice from within the machinery of Government from lawyers outside in the private sector from people from Lecretia Seales' legal team who are familiar with the laws from around the world and come to the conclusion that it is not something that we can support for a number of reasons. I hear what Kiritapu Allan has said about the fact that there is a process and a compulsory assessment and treatment where the courts are involved but I think that is a mistake. It's important to recognise that it is quite different for the State to impose something on somebody as opposed to an individual making a choice for themselves. So that's the first really significant difference that needs to be considered in regard to whether or not the courts should be involved in making this decision.The next thing I would say is that I don't believe it introduces new information. Actually instead of two doctors it's the testimony of only one doctor that's relied upon in that amendment. So in terms of the amounts of clinical information available to be processed it's actually less than under the status quo. Then you come to the fact that in a sense the judiciary has been I guess in a way involved in the decision. So if there was ever to be a suspicion of foul play or a complaint one of the defences that the people involved are going to have is "Your Honour a judicial officer was involved in this decision." but of course the judicial officer only had the information to go on that was provided to them by the doctor. So it's very difficult to see how it helps to bring the judiciary into something that the judiciary is also the backup for judging at a later date if necessary. I could go further and say that there is some difficulty with process and procedure here which is that we've introduced effectively a new bill at the committee stage. I think that that presents some real difficulties. There are other issues that I think we can argue about: the stress and whether or not it is too confrontational.I think an argument can be made that the Family Court is actually quite different from most courts in the way it operates. Nevertheless I would also raise a couple of other questions around what Kiritapu Allan actually said—that this is not in the nature or in the essence of a doctor to be involved in assisted dying. I would argue first of all that in any groups of humans there's a wide variety. There will be doctors and lawyers who are both opposed and not against. So I'm not sure when you apply it to any particular individual bearing in mind that they have the right to conscientiously object that their particular characteristic is what is important here because there will be individuals in both camps that have different views.I would also say that as far as the Hippocratic oath goes that the Hippocratic oath for example said that only men should practise medicine. It also said palliative care was a waste of time. People should be very careful quoting the Hippocratic oath.Kiritapu Allan: I said it was Old Testament.DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah. And I'd also add that we view this as a doctor alleviating suffering very much something that a doctor is supposed to do. It's difficult to see where people really draw the distinction between the various forms of palliative care and assisted dying particularly when you get as far as things like palliative sedation. So I think the point is made. I'm happy to further dialogue in any context but we really have looked into this pretty hard and I think if the members are of a mind to support that amendment they should be of an even stronger mind to support the amendments I've put up in the final version of that bill.I want to thank James Shaw for his engagement. That has been very sound and very enjoyable. Sometimes I agree with the Green Party sometimes with Simon O'Connor but both at once is far too much for me. So I won't be supporting those amendments for reasons I'll hopefully get into a bit later. I completely agree with Louisa Wall. Some of the trivialisation of suicide in this debate is frankly disgusting. I won't say any more about that. Maggie Barry I won't get to the things that she raised in the time that I have remaining but I want to thank the chair for her indulgence over three calls. Thank you."