Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to what is an incredibly serious debate. I firstly want to acknowledge the member David Seymour who has led this particular legislative reform and acknowledge the changes that he has made within his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). I do want to start with some preliminary comments about what I think this bill is about. Some people have said this bill is about life and death. Well the reality of people who have a terminal illness is that this bill is only about death. There is no choice to live. I think that that particular purpose that has now been added from David Seymour I want to highlight because we are here today debating this piece of legislation as it affects people who have a terminal illness.So I think that clarification actually has made it really helpful not only for us as a Parliament but also for New Zealanders. Can I say having recently been through an experience of a family member who had a terminal illness providing choice and providing an opportunity for people who are living with a terminal illness to actually take back some control of their lives when they have none I think is incredibly empowering. So I want to acknowledge that the purpose of this bill is now crystal clear; it will only apply to people with a terminal illness.I do now want to highlight the difference between David Seymour's definition of terminal illness and the one contained in the SOP that I also want to acknowledge was co-written by my colleague Lawrence Yule and in doing so I also have to acknowledge Sir Geoffrey Palmer and also Paul von Dadelszen—I always struggle with his surname—who assisted in us contributing to what is and was a discussion that seemed to be slightly chaotic. I hope that David Seymour and those who are interested in this topic realise that we did so because we are incredibly passionate about giving people the choice.I do want to highlight that our definition of terminal illness means a progressive condition that is reasonably expected to cause the death of a person within 12 months." and I'm going to talk about why 12 months. So 12 months from our perspective is incredibly important based on the mechanism which is the second addition to the purpose of the Act. You need to establish a process. This isn't random. It needs to have the checks and balances. We have to verify that a person has a terminal illness. We have to verify that the available treatments have been provided to the person but fundamentally it was also about recognising that people in the last stages of their life need forms of palliative care that ensure that they die in a manner that means they do not suffer.So when looking at a process that we felt had all the safeguards attached to it we thought that a court consent process would allow that. We felt that 12 months provided the opportunity for people to prepare for death. Death is something that we will all face but some of us actually have a bit of an indication of when that might be based on a medical condition that we may have. So for us 12 months would allow people to apply to the court with their physician. It would enable the court to verify over a 21-day process whether or not the person had a terminal illness whether or not they'd exhausted all possible medical treatments whether or not that person was receiving palliative care. From our perspective it was really important that it was a joint application between the person with a terminal illness and their medical practitioner that was going to assist them in any process. It was also really important that we put within the context of our mechanism an ability for there to be an appeal based on technicalities of law and in doing so we obviously thought that the time frame that we were proposing was sufficient to enable all those matters to be clarified before the person then actually had to deal with the fact that they were going to die.One of the things that I've learnt recently is that people who are facing a terminal illness have lots of decisions to make. They sometimes have insurances that they have to claim for and in highlighting that I want to acknowledge that if we look at the insurance sector they're really clear about who qualifies for a payout: it's someone diagnosed with a terminal illness and they're expected to die within 12 months of diagnosis by a physician who specialises in that illness or condition. Why does the insurance sector have a 12-month time frame? They do it again so that people can apply go through an administrative process and it also enables them to settle any accounts they have pay mortgages obviously setting up funds to pay for the funeral but ultimately it's also about preparing—in my case my brother leaving funds for his children and establishing trust accounts and those types of things.I also want to highlight that Paula Tesoriero is our Disability Commissioner. We know she did not support this piece of legislation fundamentally but one of the things that she highlighted in her submission to the Justice Committee was that she would like to see the definition of terminal increase to "likely death within 12 months" and she thought that was quite essential. I'm putting it out there because I would like David Seymour the architect of this bill to tell us why six months was deemed to be an appropriate time frame.I guess the other aspect I'd like to highlight has been the narrowing of this bill so it won't just apply to you if you're old won't apply to you if you have a disability. Actually it's broader than that. You have to have a terminal diagnosis. One of the conditions that I've been incredibly aware of in terms of the disability sector and their advocacy for this piece of legislation has been the motor neurone disease sector. If you're diagnosed with motor neurone disease and the most common form is ALS—I'm not even going to try and pronounce that Ruth; I know you know how to say it—but essentially a third of you die within a year 50 percent within two years and there's no cure. So having a broader time frame for again people to prepare—that one year means that takes into consideration some of the phases of that particular diagnosis that can happen incredibly quickly. So you can move between phase two three four really quickly. So I think the time frame from my perspective is incredibly important when we think about how and why people need to prepare for death.I just finally want to highlight that the House made I think quite a conclusive discussion about the fact that this piece of legislation is needed. You know we've been discussing this topic now for over 20 years. It's one of its time. Lawrence and I have been looking at all of the SOPs and one of the SOPs that we talked about was Nick Smith's about the concept of unmanageable pain. His proposition is that if the physician says it's unmanageable pain then someone would qualify for help. That's what we're trying to do is to help people and assist people in their final maybe months or days where they're having to cope with some of the consequences of having a particular diagnosis. I do want to highlight some of the cancers: pancreatic cancer some forms of melanoma. People suffer. It's not a nice way to leave this world. I think all of us would agree that the intention of this bill is to ensure that nobody suffers.So from a first principled position I just want to thank everybody. I think we're going to have a constructive discussion. You know everybody here has people that they love that they have journeyed with through those final stages and I know for all of us this is a topic that we will debate and discuss in a very respectful way. I might take a call later but thank you Madam Chair for giving me the call. Kia ora."