Kerekere ElizabethDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia orana koutou katoatoa i te 'Epetoma o te reo Māori Kūki 'Āirani. It is with great pleasure I stand to speak on behalf of the Green Party on this kaupapa. E tuku muhi ki te Minita Kris Faafoi mō tēnei mahi hōhonu. Also we acknowledge the staff here the staff of the ministry and the Human Rights Commission who have all worked so hard to make this happen and of course all of our community leaders who largely volunteer yet again are available for consultation and advice. I also want to acknowledge the Young Greens Young Labour and Young Nats who I also had the opportunity to meet with through this process.In February we launched our Māori priorities at Waitangi and we identified takatāpui rights as a Treaty issue. We did this because we understand a colonial history that brought missionaries to our country who immediately told us our enjoyment of sex was wrong that any kind of sexual fluidity was wrong any fluidity in gender identity was wrong. Along with trying to take away all of our language all of our land all of our resources they also tried to steal that story and whakapapa from us. The fact that we are here today and every time that I get to use the word takatāpui in this House says that all of us since then continue to honour all of them.A week after Waitangi we launched a petition at Big Gay Out. We had a huge massive response from this country: nearly 160000 people signed that petition within a week. Many people did not know that this still existed in our country and it was people across the political spectrum. I got letters from people saying We signed your petition but we want you to know we do not like the Greens otherwise." and I would just reply back going "Kia ora."Rawiri Waititi: They must be Māori Party supporters.Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Ha ha! Probably. I want to point out that that petition was the largest verified petition ever held in this country because on the record the two unverified petitions are the two that were presented for the homosexual law reform. I'm very very proud that our country and this Parliament is a place where we can present the real views of actual real people.The hard thing about when this topic comes up of course is all of the letters we received from survivors from here and from around the world who were so pleased we were doing this work in our Parliament. Others have acknowledged there are those who are still surviving and living amongst our communities and dealing with the harm and the emotional impact that has had on their whole life but of course we have lost so many—so many—even within the last few years who have felt that they could not go on in the environment of this country.I want to reiterate: in terms of whakapapa if we're looking right back to colonisation this is hundreds of years of discrimination against our community and conversion therapy is only one topic of the special ways that people have tried to harm rainbow communities. It was those original missionaries those original churches that set up really started conversion therapy and over the years over the decades it's been refined to an art. However years after homosexual law reform which was led by most of the mainstream—the protest was led by most of the mainstream—churches of this country many of those churches would now look back in horror at what was done. Some of them have apologised for their part in it and would have no truck with it. We have only to look at what are the particular types of churches who are still offering this service as they like to see and think of it to see how much further we still have to go in this country.For me an important part of this whole kaupapa is wairua it's our spirituality. It is my belief that our drive to be who we are our sexuality our gender is part of our wairua our spirituality that comes to us from our ancestors from our gods the way that we experience them. For takatāpui we know that our sexuality and our cultural connection is as important to us as our sexuality as our gender identity as our sex characteristics. The real issue around conversion therapies is (a) it's not good to tell someone that who they are is wrong ever in any context. What it does though is it takes something else that is a part of someone their commitment to their religion their spirituality the way they experience that and uses that against another part of themselves. That is the thing that our mental health system currently is nowhere close to being set up to help resolve. A shout-out to groups like OutLine like all of the leading groups within our rainbow communities: Intersex Awareness New Zealand Gender Minorities Aotearoa InsideOUT RainbowYOUTH of course. It's left to the community to try and untangle those things those hurts and try and give healing.Others have talked about the many lives we have lost. We don't have exact data on conversion therapies. We know that in the Counting Ourselves research they had some figures that were particularly for trans and non-binary people but we don't have a true picture and I think that somewhere along the line some funding needs to be allocated to actually doing that proper research.But the main thing I want to finish on is about whānau because the one thing I do agree with our National colleagues on here is that whānau should be able to make good decisions on behalf of their children. So to hold up this: this is a resource that we did with RainbowYOUTH "Growing Up Takatāpui: Whānau Journeys." We interviewed young takatāpui their parents and their grandparents. We wanted to understand what was going on inside whānau. Young people they talked about their fears about talking about who they were in talking to their whānau. They said they experienced embarrassment fear isolation guilt depression anger and hopelessness. The whānau themselves weren't dealing well with their child coming out or wanting to transition. They talked about also shock and embarrassment denial a justified fear for their child's safety. They had grief: the future they had seen for their child had disappeared.Now in an inclusive society that whānau would be looked after. There would be wrapped around with support. They would have people—those young people could go and talk to other young people and say what is going on for them. Those whānau could have people with good quality information that would say this is what's happening together. That whānau could move forward and make decisions about whatever types of groups they might want to join ways that they could work inside their churches and places of worship. They might make some sorts of arrangements around surgical healthcare and they would do that as a whānau. They would make those decisions together with clarity based on knowing that what was most important was being able to uphold the mana of who someone was and that as the parents the whānau of this child this young person—this adult even—they would help make that together. That is not the world we live in.So do we want to criminalise whānau? Of course not. Do we want to put an entire congregation who all colluded in conversion therapy of members of their congregation? Of course not. Do we want to see things put in place though where people are held accountable for their actions? Absolutely—absolutely. People who have had this happen to them deserve some justice should we get more to a point where those congregations decide to learn from their mistakes that they apologise for the harm they have caused and they beg forgiveness from their god and their communities for what they have done. We can pass this through and we will. It's happening people. Let us make sure it includes all people this happens to. I want to do a final shout-out for people with disabilities—it's not just rainbow communities. Kia ora."