Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Tuatahi māku e tuku mihi ana ahau ki te mema nāna i mau mai tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare Pāremata. Nō reira e taku hoa e Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki tēnei te mihi nui ki a koe e te tuahine e te tuakana i mau mai tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare Pāremata hei tirohanga hei whakaarotanga mā tātou katoa. Tēnei te mihi ki a koe me tō kaha ki te mau mai i tēnei kaupapa ki te kōrero ki tērā atu taha o te Whare kia whiwhi tautoko mō tēnei pire. Ka nui te mihi ki a koe e hoa. Ka huri ahau ki te pire ināianei[Madam Speaker greetings to you. Firstly I give acknowledgment to the member who brought this bill into Parliament. Therefore my friend Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki I congratulate you my sister for bringing this bill into Parliament for us all to examine and to think about. This is an acknowledgment of you and your strength to bring this initiative here to speak to the other side of the House to gain support for this bill. I strongly acknowledge you my friend. I turn now to the bill.]I did want to start my contribution by acknowledging my friend my colleague my tuakana for bringing an issue which—and I said this in earlier contributions. You know as members of Parliament we're here to represent our communities and it really is wonderful when you can bring an issue from the grassroots in your community here to the House of Representatives to Parliament and actually effect some change. Sometimes it feels like that process can take a really long time. Sometimes we are not able to achieve that. But I hope today—and I don't want to jinx it—that we are going to be able to do that alongside of you.I have listened to the contributions so far and it's quite early on in the debate and I am just aware that for those that are listening in the gallery maybe tuning into Parliament TV—and I'm always surprised when I meet somebody and they say Oh! We've seen you. We watch the parliamentary debates." So I thought I might for their benefit give them a little bit of background to yes what is quite a small bill with some quite simple changes. But those that might have been watching from the beginning may have seen the emotion in the member because this is actually about real people and real people's lives. So I referred to the earlier contribution that this issue arose because a lawyer who was acting for a person with disabilities Mr Sione Foliaki came forward to the member with this issue and brought it to her attention. It was a very sad case. I think it highlights the importance of why we have used this House's time why the member put it in as a member's bill to address this issue. And I hope as was the wish of the person who experienced this that it now means that it will not happen to another person. So that is talking about Mr Tanginoa. He was the person whose case in 2016 came to the attention of us through the media. In his case he had accrued rent debt to the amount of $5117 unknown to him. The landlord had taken the debt to court to get recompensed for it and an order was given. Then what happened was that in his case his modified mobility vehicle was seized. First it was clamped and then it was seized. And what happened also in this situation was that his health deteriorated. And as we heard in the first contribution he didn't have the financial means to be able to get himself to the appointment with the medical specialist and in his case he ended up in intensive care and his health was in a very precarious situation. And really it was just fortunate that he survived that ordeal. So we are making changes to the law which in this person's situation was life or death. In other cases it's quality of life and I think that that too is important when we talk about the members of our disability community. I do want to acknowledge that the Minister for Disability Issues has just arrived in the House too this afternoon so e te Minita Carmel Sepuloni tēnā koe. So what then does this bill do? Other speakers prior to me have spoken about that already but I'll just give a brief summary and just a little bit more background and context. I think the reason that we ended up in that situation—and I'll talk about bailiffs as well—is that for the bailiffs the law is not entirely clear. It is too vague currently. But with this bill going through it will be clarified. It required judgment and discretion and I think we have seen through this case that people can get that wrong and that it can have serious consequences. So when it is of such an important nature I don't think that we should leave it to judgment and discretion and if we can provide that clarification and do that by amending the legislation then that's what we should in fact do and that's what we are here doing today. So I wanted to acknowledge the bailiffs and particularly the one in this case. They are just out there earning a living to provide for their families. They are doing what they have been directed to do by the courts. I don't believe they go out there with malicious intent to make somebody's life as difficult or as miserable as possible. That's not what they get up to do when they go out to do their mahi every day. They are simply following a process. So what we have here today is the opportunity to provide more certainty more clarity for them so that they are not put in that really difficult position of having to exercise judgment and discretion. So we are doing that by amending the District Court Act 2016 to protect disabled people who are judgment debtors people who owe money under a court order and it does so by expressly prohibiting the seizure of goods of a judgment debtor with a disability where the item proposed to be seized is necessary for the judgment debtor's care support or independence or to promote their inclusion and participation in society. I do want to acknowledge the Hon Simon Bridges who talked earlier about how he believes and I agree with him that we have a compassionate society. We are a compassionate society here in Aotearoa and we approach this with kindness but it's also the right thing to do. I was a member of the Justice Committee. I often subbed off the committee so that the member responsible for this bill could sit in and be part of that process. I didn't hear all of the evidence but I did hear enough of it to know—and was part of writing up the final report—that there were 21 submissions the majority of which—18—were in support and that there were eight submitters who presented orally. I thank all of those who took the time to be part of this process and I really want to highlight the fact that by being part of a select committee process putting in submissions you can influence the ultimate decision that we make and the final piece of work that we bring back because actually in this case it was through submissions that we as the committee and the member who accepted the recommendations were convinced that we actually needed to broaden those captured by this piece of legislation. So it wasn't originally intended to cover this group of people but through the strength of the submissions and the select committee process the select committee was unanimous and they saw merit in broadening those captured by this Act to include caregivers of those with disabilities.So I'm really grateful to those submitters who are on the ground and work with this community and understand the issues through the strength of their advocacy for being part of the select committee process. Our select committee was able to take on board that feedback in terms of the draft bill and to get unanimous support around the table and include that into our final report. And that has been included here now in the final draft of this bill. So really I just wanted to take this final 30 seconds to once again thank Mr Tanginoa and Mr Foliaki for bringing this issue to their local MP in the hope that she could come to Parliament and change things. She had the benefit of it being drawn from that biscuit tin—some get more luck than others in that case. It has been through the full process of Parliament and today we are here at the third reading celebrating hopefully very shortly its passing and as the person who experienced this his wish shall be granted; it won't happen to somebody else ever again. Kia ora."