Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. It is my pleasure to speak on this third reading of the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill. I thought I'd take us through a bit of a history lesson. I want to start with a quote from the Kaleidoscope Trust's Speaking Out The rights of LGBTI citizens from across the Commonwealth and it reads: As with the abolition of slavery the decriminalisation of homosexuality in our time must be an act of law." And I want to quote from Sir John Wolfenden when he urged Britain in 1957—and he said "Unless a deliberate attempt is made by society acting through the agency of the law to equate the sphere of crime with that of sin there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is in brief and crude terms not the law's business."This particular publication which was published in 2005 ends with a conclusion by Sir Shridath Ramphal and it says and I quote "That wisdom must now inspire us in the countries of the Commonwealth to rid ourselves of this archaic legal inheritance. We are here to call for that decriminalising act of law and by it an end to the wrong we do to our brothers and sisters—who are like us all members of what Dr Rowan Williams the former Archbishop of Canterbury called 'the commonwealth of God'."I want to reference that because in fact at the moment there are 72 countries in the world where being LGBTIQ means you're a criminal. There are 13 countries in the world currently where if you are LGBTIQ the punishment is death and unfortunately of those 72 countries 36 of those countries are Commonwealth countries. So 50 percent of the countries in the world that criminalise homosexuals are Commonwealth countries.Our experience of the criminalisation of homosexuality started 151 years ago with the 1867 Offences against the Person Act. It was in that year that the punishment ceased to be execution but it actually was imprisonment for life. So 151 years later I think I stand here proudly as a member of this House to end what I am going to label a crime against humanity. I label it a crime against humanity by definition because it's acts that are deliberately committed as part of a widespread or systemic attack or individual attack directed against any civilian or an identifiable part of a civilian population.ILGA which is the International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association released a report last year. It's quite thick and it's titled State-Sponsored Homophobia. So we are here today because we are ending the remnants of State-sponsored homophobia. I would like to thank Wiremu Demchick who in July 2016 with MP Kevin Hague presented a petition to Parliament that has resulted in an apology—and I want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams for that apology. It also called for legislation that expunges convictions for homosexuals doing what homosexuals do which is making love to other homosexuals.Hon Grant Robertson: We do other things.LOUISA WALL: We do do other things but in fact that's what we were criminalised for for loving the person that we chose to be with. Now the definition of expungement is a process by which record of criminal conviction is destroyed or sealed and then we treat this conviction as if it had never occurred. For me that is the beauty of this piece of legislation because we are saying that homosexuality being a crime—people going to jail people being punished—should never have occurred.But this legislative reform actually began with a petition in the UK in 2009 by John Graham-Cumming. John Graham-Cumming wanted an official apology for Alan Turing. We all know who Alan Turing is; he broke the German Enigma code. He was convicted in 1952 for being a homosexual man who engaged in consensual homosexual acts with a 19-year-old man. What happened to Alan Turing? Alan Turing had to choose between going to prison or being chemically castrated. He chose to be chemically castrated and in 1954 at the age of 41 years he committed suicide. So John Graham-Cumming wrote to the Queen and he wanted a posthumous knighthood for Alan Turing and so on 9 September 2009 the Prime Minister of England Gordon Brown apologised to Alan Turing. In 2017 that apology was extended to all homosexuals convicted of consensual homosexual conduct which in the UK is between 50000 and 100000 men.What that set about was a process that actually I'm really proud New Zealand is at the forefront of with Australia. So South Australia New South Wales Victoria ACT Tasmania—they have all enacted expungement legislation and tonight we also join Canada and we join Germany. In every jurisdiction we've issued an apology and the importance of that apology I don't think can be underestimated because as I pointed out earlier we should never have been criminals and we should never have endured I guess the legacy of what that criminality said to ourselves and also said to society.I do want to highlight that in other jurisdictions they have actually compensated people. In Canada they created an $85 million fund to compensate individuals and just recently—I'm not sure if you know this Grant—they've actually settled a class action because people who were in the military and people who were federal employees lost their careers and so Canada has a $100 million fund to compensate those who were criminalised for being themselves. Plus they have a $250000 fund for community projects to combat homophobia and in 2019 in Canada it will be their 50th anniversary of homosexual law reform. In Germany they had 150000 people who were criminalised for being homosexuals—5000 are still living—so they have engaged in a personal compensation process with €3000 as a base payment and €1500 for every year spent in prison.I've actually just come back from Geneva. I was over there as part of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and believe it or not since 1889 we have never had a debate at the IPU about LGBTI rights. So of the 162 member nations we actually had a forum where we were able to talk about LGBTI rights and the outcome of that process in Geneva was a vote—31 for 26 against—and at the next IPU for the first time in its history they will actually have a panel and discuss the rights of LGBTI peoples and the role of Parliaments in ending this abhorrent discrimination perpetrated by the State.I'm incredibly proud to come from a country and a Parliament that after 151 years of colonisation—lest we forget these laws came from our coloniser. This is part of our colonial history and it's incredibly interesting when you go to these IPU forums and you have the African countries and you have the Asian countries and they all talk about this being abnormal behaviour but the reality is the condemnation of this behaviour came from England. I believe that England as a colonising power still has a lot of work to do to help us move from a world that is filled with hate to a world that's filled with love. So I'm incredibly proud of our Parliament because we've stood up for love tonight and I want to thank all those involved in bringing this piece of legislation to the House. Kia ora mai anō tātou.Bill read a third time.[Applause]"