Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Te Heamana o te komiti. Tēnā koutou katoa. Kia mihi mō te karanga i runga i tēnei wāhanga tino pai o te whiringa ora.[Thank you Madam Chairperson. Thank you all. Thank for the call on this very good part of the End of Life Choice Bill.]Essentially I want to acknowledge how incredibly important this kaupapa is and I want to acknowledge all the emotion in the committee tonight because we are discussing a very important topic. Ending someone's life when they choose to when they find themselves in a situation where they have a terminal illness means we do have to respect this process and I'm standing up because I do respect this process. I respect all the people that have chosen to make submissions tonight via our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) process and I particularly will address two SOPs. But before I do that I thought it was incredibly important to talk about the SCENZ Group—the Support and Consultation for End of Life in New Zealand Group—because essentially it is this group that ensures the accountability of the system and that's why Part 3 is entitled Accountability". I just want to walk us through the process because I think that in understanding the process we will then understand how important this SCENZ group is. Essentially the proposition of this bill is that if you're a terminally ill person and you wish to exercise end of life choice in the first instance you must initiate that process with your medical practitioner. So you choose that—you choose to have that dialogue; you choose to have that discussion—and what we want to see within that process is that medical practitioner then talking through all the options with the person who has a terminal illness which also includes options for end of life care and any other matters such as asking "Is there anyone else you would like involved in this process?"—like your family. After that has been ascertained then essentially through that informed consent process their medical practitioner then needs to seek an independent medical practitioner. That person has to go through the same process. They have to kōrero with the person they have to ensure that they understand all the options that are available to them and if they actually qualify for end of life choice. Again if there is any issue about whether informed consent exists they then need a third opinion and it is the third opinion of an independent specialist that the SCENZ Group then have to provide so that we provide accountability in the system. That's why this part is so incredibly important. So this independent medical practitioner—where are they supposed to come from? Well I just want to outline clause 19(2)(b) on David Seymour's Supplementary Order Paper 259. This SCENZ Group ensures that—and I quote—"the attending medical practitioner does not choose the replacement medical practitioner or independent medical practitioner:" so what we're ensuring is a separation from that person's medical practitioner and the subsequent medical practitioners involved in the process. There is no coercion. There is no collusion. Actually we have an independent group and this group will comprise those medical practitioners—and this is where it gets really interesting—who are willing to be involved in the end of life choice process. So I do want to acknowledge SOP 212 in the name of Chris Penk because I actually hope that what he's outlined will comprise the SCENZ Group and they are a mixture of medical practitioners who are gender-diverse they will ensure that those medical practitioners are culturally diverse they will ensure that those medical practitioners are ethnically diverse and they will also ensure that they don't have a fixed view about end of life choice—that isn't their role. Their role is to ascertain whether the person who seeks end of life choice can give informed consent and has been given all the information they need to therefore qualify for end of life choice support. Within that assumption they would therefore have to understand the palliative care options because that is critical for that third practitioner—that independent practitioner—to give effect which is essentially why this Part 3 is about an accountability in the system. I also want to highlight Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of Mr Paulo Garcia—Hon Members: "Pau-lo".LOUISA WALL: Paulo—apologies. I didn't mean to mispronounce your name. What you've highlighted in your SOP is that the people that end up being part of the SCENZ Group have to have some medical ethical qualification they have to have some relevance in terms of their knowledge of the disability sector and geriatric care needs to be an area that they have expertise in as well as palliative care. One of the other aspects you've highlighted is this barrister and solicitor of not more than seven years aspect. I know Chris Penk particularly has talked about the overlapping interests between the health and the justice systems and he's referenced other jurisdictions where that is more formally acknowledged.So I want to acknowledge that the Supplementary Order Papers that have been presented tonight are valid and they are good Supplementary Order Papers but they are also constrained by the willingness of those specialists to put themselves forward to be part of this process which is why I hope everyone we've talked about—gender diversity ethnic diversity cultural diversity having knowledge of the disability sector the palliative care sector. I want all of those sectors involved but obviously we're needing people to put themselves forward to therefore qualify to be on a list to be these independent practitioners. What I will say about that process is that the director-general (D-G) therefore needs to encourage and support people from those communities to specifically put themselves forward.That's what the contribution of these SOPs for me in the House tonight will ensure because we're discussing and talking about how the ministry and how the people who are going to be formally involved in putting the SCENZ Group together and the register are going to engage with those specific communities to ensure that if there are members of those communities who do want end of life choice options then we have the clinicians who are culturally ethnically and—I'm going to say it—religiously competent enough to engage in a manner where they can determine that yes informed consent exists for this person and we are happy therefore to say in our opinions they know what they're asking for and our part in the process is just to determine that there is no coercion and people are exercising free will and we are going to assist them in that end of life choice option because it's something that they want to do.The only other thing I wanted to do—and I know David Seymour outlined and addressed quite a lot of the SOPs and I have looked at them. I have looked at the limit of two years and only two terms membership based on diversity that the D-G should appoint in consultation with the Solicitor-General that the numbers should be between seven and 13. I mean there's a whole range I guess of the contributions that I have read and I guess the reason I'm listing them all was just to say I did read SOPs 212 327 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 and 336. I'm really just focusing on clause 19 because how I looked at this was I looked at all the SOPs related to clause 19 all of those related to clause 20 all of those related to clause 21 but I thought it was really important in making my contribution that we understand where this part fits in the whole system of the End of Life Choice Bill.That's the reality of the discussion tonight. We're talking specifically about Part 3 of the End of Life Choice Bill which assumes that it is an option for people who have a terminal illness who are over the age of 18 who have asked—they haven't been coerced to ask but they have asked their medical practitioner for the ability to exercise their rights to end of life choice. I just wanted to highlight that this SCENZ Group and the composition of that group and their role in that process as independent specialists is incredibly important. I also wanted to bring us back to what this is all about which for me is about giving people who have a terminal illness who can't control whether they're going to live or die—they're going to die but empowering them to die in a manner that they choose. Kia ora."