Hayes JoanneJOANNE HAYES (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I stand to take a call opposing the Abortion Legislation Bill tonight. I've sat here on purpose to listen to the contributions in the House tonight and some of the contributions have left me a little bit flummoxed with some of their ideas. I do not support the idea of taking the Abortion Legislation Bill into a referendum. I think this is what our job is here to make a decision and I don't think that it should be anything like inside any referendum like New Zealand First did with the End of Life Choice Bill.This is an important bill. I have heard the discussions around the Crimes Act and having abortion taken out of the Crimes Act etc. The previous speaker my colleague Christopher Penk has eloquently outlined that this bill will not do that. It will not do that. I've also heard in this House tonight that women feel criminalised from having an abortion and we've heard that nowhere in the history of this country has a woman been criminalised or taken to court over having an abortion. That is absolutely misinformation.I want to talk a little bit about the fact—you know I'm a Māori woman. I'm a Christian Māori woman. I come to this House to speak on this bill based on that. I was brought up in a family that loved all children. Mokopuna are our value. They are our future and when I look at my mokopuna and I see their future ahead of them glowing through their eyes I can't think of anything absolutely anything to actually end that opportunity for their life.My family my parents were brought up to oppose abortion as a horrible heinous family crime. They didn't like it. They brought us up the same. They said to us Don't ever ever do that. Come to the whānau. If you fall pregnant and you feel you can't have that baby or look after that baby you come home and we'll look after that baby." That's what Māori do. We look after our babies and that's why the current abortion bill should not be altered. This bill does that and it's wrong.I too read the report from the Abortion Legislation Committee. I read the report that around 2800 submitters who wanted to be heard were not allowed to be heard—only 160 as we've heard in this House. Only 160 were allowed to have their say of 2800. We've had bills pass through this House where we have had thousands of people of submitters be allowed to submit their oral presentations and yet in this particular bill it was stopped. Why was that? Why was the process made to be like that? Only one dissenting voice in that committee maybe two: my colleague Agnes Loheni said we should be hearing everybody. But no it was not the majority decision on the committee.When I look at the 25000-plus submitters and then you see that 23000-plus actually opposed the bill and yet the select committee ignored the opposition from those submitters—they ignored it. What is going on? This is supposed to be a transparent process and yet these people their 23000-plus opposition to this bill have not been heard in this whole process and in this House tonight. Is that fair? Is that fair to them? My second reason for standing tonight is talking about and defending the rights of the unborn child because they don't have a voice. They're not given a voice and in this whole process people are going to do things to them and it's not nice. That is absolutely horrible. It should be a black mark on everybody who thinks like that in this House.I am one of those people that thinks that unborn children need to have their rights heard. That's why I stand here today. I didn't come here to this Parliament to end a baby's life. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here to actually have legislation that advances the wellbeing of people. This bill does not do that.I think one of the speakers tonight from the Government side of the House spoke about this bill being abortion on demand. That's what this bill is actually working towards. It is about abortion on demand. I don't care how you want to pretty it up or whatever you want to say or how you want to soften it down: it is abortion on demand. If a woman wants to have an abortion she can go off and have an abortion and not go through the current processes that they have to go through to be approved for an abortion by practitioners. Then we hear from Anahila from the Labour Party who said that—SPEAKER: Order!JOANNE HAYES: —it is the health—sorry—practitioner that makes the final decision on who gets the abortion. Well I don't know about that. If the legislation is loose enough to allow somebody to get an abortion on demand then that is what this bill will actually come up with.I don't want us to when it comes to fetal abnormality—and as I said I read the report. In the report—this is the select committee report—it talked in one area around the Denmark example whereby 98 percent of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in Denmark are aborted. I also read that in Iceland there have been no children born in the last five years with Down syndrome. I do not want New Zealand to be part and parcel of all of that history that those countries are actually doing to their babies. I don't want us to be the third country in there and I think that this bill is a dangerous bill. I think that it has the potential to go that way if there are no checks and balances in place.I heard tonight that it is a woman's right it's her body and she should be trusted. But what about the women and the girls that don't get a right to have informed consent—where that is taken out of their hands by other people by family members maybe by people who believe that they do not have the ability to make that decision for themselves and want to keep their baby? I am worried about those people those women and girls that are not afforded the right to be able to say no.We've talked about in this House tonight the post - 20 week abortions and to be honest with this bill it's a dangerous bill because it will allow post - 20 week abortions right up to birth. I say to everybody in here that says "No no she doesn't know what she's talking about." that it's written in the bill. Read the bill because that's where it is. To be honest there is very little appetite for that from where I come from; really no appetite for it whatsoever. Abortion on demand should be illegal. There were also issues around the upper limit of the number of abortions that women can get and there was no upper limit put on this bill. So as I sat and I read this report from the select committee I noted that those voices those dissenting voices the 23558 that oppose this bill have not had their voices heard in this bill. It has been trodden all over. I can say that what happens is that we have a current abortion bill—people say we don't have one we do have one—and there has been no woman that has been criminalised under it.This abortion bill is a licence to kill the unborn; that's what it is. It's a dangerous piece of legislation. Whilst there will be people in here that are supporting this bill that will say "No no no that's not what happens." in reality that is what will happen. That's what concerns me most; the reality of it hitting the ground hitting the women out there in the community and the families that this will be a licence to kill unborn children. It ignores absolutely everybody's opposition. I'm really really sad to be standing here on a day on an evening like this evening to be able to say to my colleagues who are supporting this bill it is the wrong thing to do. I oppose this bill."