SpeechASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members before I take the next call—David Seymour: Mr Speaker—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Oh well you've actually done what I want to ask for; before I take the next call I wanted to say this debate is limited to 12 10-minute speeches and because we're taking calls all over the place it's very useful if I knew who wished to take the call. I now know who wishes to take a call in the House but I'm going to go to Sarah Pallett who's been waiting remotely for a call for a while. So thank you you two David Seymour and Simon O'Connor. I take it no one else wants a call?SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's with great pleasure that I rise to speak for the third time on the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill. I want to take a couple of seconds just to add my thanks to those of previous speakers to Louisa Wall who brought this amendment bill to the House but also to my colleagues on the Health Committee chaired really ably by Dr Liz Craig and to the clerks and officials. Because actually as you've probably heard this piece of work was indeed a piece of work. Because we all wanted to create the very best piece of legislation that we could we did need to do a decent amount of work on it. As other members have mentioned we had issues with the first draft with New Zealand Bill of Rights Act compliance which we worked extremely hard to make sure that we had actually covered. So I'm really proud to be able to stand—in a seated position remotely—to support this bill and to bring it forward. We had 890 submitters as we've heard in previous speeches and 97 of those submitted orally. But what we're really doing here is this bill aims to protect as we've heard the safety and wellbeing and respect the privacy and dignity of women accessing abortion facilities as well as for those practitioners providing and helping with abortion services. We're not here to relitigate the provision of abortion as lawful healthcare. We've had and heard many many speeches over an extremely long period of time before we passed the primary legislation. I really want to emphasise that we do often have differing views about the provision of abortion services. My position is obviously that it is lawful healthcare and it's one that's vital and often lifesaving for the pregnant person or woman who is pregnant. Often it's necessary for complex medical reasons. But again we're not here to relitigate. What I think is really important is that this is not about that. What this is about is about allowing people who are accessing lawful healthcare to do so without intimidation threats and harassment. And you can support that and not actually be personally in favour of abortion yourself. You may choose yourself to not support it but you can still respect the rights of people and healthcare providers to access this healthcare without being threatened or harassed. Now one of the earlier speakers Mr O'Connor was describing this harassment as an isolation of views that we disagree with. I fundamentally disagree with this assertion. This is not an isolation of views that we disagree with; this is about people who are literally going about the business of accessing lawful healthcare. As Jan Logie said just now you can do that from a maximum of 150 metres away. The safe area provision is literally a maximum of 150 metres and so those banners can be held those chants can be chanted and the very loud prayers can be prayed but 150 metres maximum away. The safe area isn't going to be applied automatically. The individual providers will need to apply for a safe area and there'll have to be a good reason for it although previous harm or threat will not be one of those contingencies. I think we need to ask ourselves if you disagree with this and you feel that the rights—the need to bring those banners into the faces of people accessing healthcare some of whom are going through extremely difficult and challenging times—if you feel the need to be allowed to have overt and often fact-bereft banners in people's faces I think you need to ask yourself why. Why do you need to do that in the faces of people that are providing healthcare? Why do you need to do something that you know because you've been told is threatening is harassment is challenging and does cause trauma. It's not about hurt feelings or feeling offended; it's about actually literally causing trauma and pain to somebody who may already be in a great deal of it although sometimes not. So we're not here to relitigate and we're not here to stop peaceful protest. We're not here to stop a nun standing with a rosary Mr O'Connor because that won't be prohibited under this piece of legislation and it's a shame that you didn't read it thoroughly enough to realise that peaceful prayer that doesn't involve the carrying of banners is not something that's going to be prohibited. It won't fall into the legislation because we don't intend to do that. We really tried hard as a committee—and bearing in mind that the committee did hold differing views on the provision of abortion itself—to make sure that the rights of people to peacefully protest were upheld. Peaceful protest is something I think you'll find that we're all strongly in favour of. But we're all really aware that sometimes peaceful protest is not necessarily what all protesters intend. We've seen a really solid example of that recently outside our House our place of work. We've seen people being threatened and harassed with violence. The nooses came out on day one for journalists and politicians and they didn't go away until the protesters went away. Those protesters did interfere with people going about their business. They stopped schools running. They made businesses closed. We're really clear that there was a line that was crossed where all the namastes and yoga tents in the world are not going to persuade you that these were people who had peace in their hearts and minds and so we need to move that elsewhere. And it's 150 metres away maximum. Your right to protest peacefully I would say is one that we upheld. It's a bit like your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. So what we're doing here is prohibiting actions and behaviours that cause extreme distress as described by some of the people who presented to us. It's worth noting that all of the healthcare providers were supportive of this legislation. We have no intention of restricting people's rights to protest peacefully or pray quietly but we do want to protect people who are accessing lawful healthcare and their healthcare providers. And as one myself I can say that I directly experience some of the threats coming to me. I was vocal in my support of the provision of abortion as lawful healthcare and so I've experienced personally threats from somebody who was quite cheerily doing that in front of my children. It was not an enjoyable experience as I would encourage people to look into their hearts and ask themselves what it is they would want to achieve. What's their goal? What do they want by actually going into that 150-metre zone and ask themselves if it's something that they want to support or not. I would encourage those who've previously maybe voted against this bill to change their minds and realise that all we're trying to do is to keep people safe just in a really small and restricted area and not interfere with their broader rights as has been confirmed by the Attorney-General. And with that I commend this bill to the House.