Sepuloni Carmel; Mallard TrevorHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's an honour to speak in this debate. It is the first time that I have spoken on this particular bill but I was compelled to this evening. We all come into Parliament with priorities that are important to us with the best intention for New Zealanders and with things that we want to achieve. For me it has been about addressing inequality it has always been about social justice and it has always been about fairness. Within the framework of those priorities I never considered end of life as one of the priorities for me personally. I never considered that this would be an issue that I pushed for or that I could potentially block. But our hand has been forced because the bill was drawn from the ballot and so we have been forced to reflect on our own upbringings our own personal views to take on board all of the advice that we have been given across the course of this debate from the public and from people who genuinely feel passionate about this particular issue.For me as a Samoan-Tongan-Pākehā born and raised in the Anglican Church and then switching later with my family to an evangelical church with Samoan family that belong to the Ekalesia Fa'apotopotoga Kerisiano Samoa Church with Tongan family that belong to the Tongan Wesleyan Methodist Church with a Catholic husband who comes from a staunchly Catholic family there are lots of things to reflect on when we are considering this issue.What I will say is something that's come up for me out of this debate that I think was way more eloquently put by Minister Henare than I could ever put it is that in terms of our decision making in life in terms of the actions that we take across the course of our lives if we were to use all of those decisions that we make those actions that we take as measures to determine where we are lacking in terms of our Christian walk or in terms of our cultural competency and our own ethnic groups and the communities that we belong to then we would all be lacking in so many ways.I can't stand here and say that I am as strongly in support of this bill as people like Maryan Street Ruth Dyson and David Seymour. But I had to make a decision and I have fallen just on the line in favour. I won't stand here tonight and tell anyone what I think they should do because I struggled enough myself with the personal decision that I had to make. I had wonderful people come and talk to me about why I should or shouldn't vote for this—wonderful people; I really want to particularly refer to the disability sector here—people absolutely opposed who have been public with their view people like the amazing Kylee Black from the disability sector people absolutely in support that I respect as well people like Philip Patston that's here in the House tonight. And ultimately the decision for me as a member of Parliament fell with me because the arguments were put either side.We heard earlier from one of the people opposing the bill that they felt that the evidence that has been put by those in support was misinformation and that it lacked integrity in some way. Can I say that across the course of this debate I think that some of the evidence that we've seen on both sides has been lacking has been misinformed in some spaces and has also lacked integrity in some spaces on both sides which made it even harder to try and work our way through the decision that we might make.There's one more issue that has made this particular debate very difficult for me and that is the fact that on so many occasions culture and religion have been conflated into one thing. I don't see them as one thing. As a Pacific person on so many occasions I've heard in this House that this is not the Pacific way. Well it stopped being the Pacific way when Christianity arrived potentially. I will not accept that prior to Christianity during the many battles and wars that we fought when our people were falling ill with terminal illnesses or illnesses that were hurting them at no point did any of our Pacific people turn around and say I want to take my own life. I cannot live like this." It is unacceptable to think that that never happened. So we shouldn't conflate the two. We should talk about both of them in the context of this debate but they are not one and the same. I have come to the decision that I will be supporting this bill.SPEAKER: Members we've come to the last speech in this debate. A couple of members have dropped short and there is about four or five minutes extra available. I intend to call Maggie Barry for the last speech and I seek the leave of the House notwithstanding the earlier decision of the House for that speech to be a 10-minute speech. Is there any objection to that? There is none."