SpeechDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. Tēnā koe e te Māngai tēnā koe o te Whare. Although I've often been in my office over the last few weeks this is my first time speaking in the House; it is lovely to see all of you here.Hon Member: Welcome back.Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Kia ora. Even better we are progressing the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. On the trail of amending the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 2021 in the last week of Parliament last year this is great progress. We're not saying this is perfect but as long as we're progressing that is always a good good thing.Thank you to the Justice Committee for having me join them for the months and months of hearings by four subcommittees. So mihi atu ki a Dr Emily Henderson who very ably and competently chaired subcommittee C and to my colleague Mark Mitchell I think we can safely say that was shared experience we will never forget.As has been stated we received nearly 107000 submissions to this bill. That speaks to the energy around this topic but I know when people were sending messages to us back a year ago when we did our petition people could not believe this was still happening in our country and I think even though our submitters had very wide-ranging views every single one still said they don't support conversion practices. So I think that is a huge indication of where our country has moved to.About—as also has been said—38900 submissions had unique content and those are the ones we engaged with. So about 70 percent of those were positive so that means approximately 68000 voices were actually lost in this process because they were identified as form submissions even if they added unique text to that form. So I think this is a very important lesson for our community organisers: that if you're out there encouraging people to engage in our democratic process absolutely this is critical we need that go for it—go with guidelines not necessarily templates. Always encourage submissions that are unique because three lines of authentic voice have more weight than the most beautifully crafted and carefully articulated submission that was written by someone else. Shout-out to Chargn Keenan who organised our webinars to explain this bill to people and to Rainbow Greens who guided thousands of people to submit in their own words.Several things stood out for me when we were hearing these hundreds of submissions. The first was the willingness of survivors and people who have experienced conversion practices and many who came to me as well who said they'd never thought about what happened to them as being conversion practices but realised through this process that it was and decades later that is still affecting many many people. Many of those stories were heart-rending and that trauma is still there—those people still need to be looked after they still need care because that harm was usually done by trusted people.The second thing that stood out for me was how rainbow communities our whānau and our allies rallied to respond to two bills happening at the same time. It was a lot of work it was hundreds of pages of submissions it was a lot of meetings webinars—that's just in the last five minutes but it represents the culmination of decades of work of people to get to this point.But I'm really sorry for the amount of abuse and misinformation that was directed to members of rainbow communities or was expressed about them. It was awful to listen to and especially—when I was a young activist at the time of the homosexual law reform we were marching down the streets and doing our protests and we were meeting with the local MPs. At that time we were writing strongly worded letters. And we heard many of the same arguments that we heard in these hearings; we heard it back then we heard it in the Civil Union Act and we heard it in the marriage equality. So there's a standard narrative that gets used against our community. It's kind of a distilled version of the discrimination that many parts of our community face.The biggest difference between all of those though and this bill was the way that the anti-trans lobby weaponised it against trans people. That was remarkable to me. And even though it was ultimately unsuccessful they caused a lot of harm and spread a lot of misinformation that exists to this date. So for this record—for this record: puberty blockers cannot be obtained as easily as lollies. No family in this country is going to jail for reacting really badly when their child comes out to them or tells them they want to transition. We want to give all the support that's needed to whānau for them to have really healthy—and sometimes loud—conversations about what's going on and the right of any whānau to look after their children especially.I hope for those people who were brought up in a way that their belief their religion is core to who they are that this was a healing thing because when I was brought up Catholic and back in 1986 and homosexual law reform the Unitarian Church was one of the only churches that supported that law and the Salvation Army led every other church against it. To have the Salvation Army and every other mainstream church come to submit in support of the bill and to be categorical that it did not jeopardise or they did not believe that it affected their expression of belief and religion. The Greens have a principal in our charter of appropriate decision making that the decisions should be made by those who are most affected by it. So for me as someone who doesn't belong to any particular religion that has my Māori spirituality I take their advice then I take their guidance. I'm pleased that we decided not to add something and that we can actually trust that our churches our places of worship will be safe for everybody who goes to them who belongs to them and that those churches can have these conversations without fear—because realistically with a law that says the Attorney-General has to decide whether someone is going to jail or not we can be pretty sure no one is going to jail.One of the things that was added to the bill through the committee process was about the definition of conversion practices" and I think this is really important because lots of people have things in their mind but we need to have the same understanding. However for the first time the words "gender identity" and "gender expression" are also going into law for the first time in this country with no definition. So I think we'll be putting in a Supplementary Order Paper tomorrow to say "That's actually quite important to define so people know what we're talking about in this law."My last point is for people who intersex whether they belong to rainbow communities or not and I am sad that sex characteristics was not added to gender identity and gender expression. We tried to do that. We did get a section added into the committee report that acknowledges what the Government is undertaking to a rights-based approach that focuses on ensuring that intersex people and their whānau have all the relevant information and support they need to make informed decisions and to support health practitioners to provide best-practice healthcare for intersex people. I look forward to the time when I can stand up in this House and support that bill.Clearly we're in support of this bill. We are thankful that this House is moving this forward. Just a final word to all of the people who we know are experiencing this right now—because it has not stopped it's happening right now—this is a stake in the ground it is not acceptable and we will be stopping it. Kia ora."