Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. I too want to speak to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 479 and I'd like to acknowledge my colleague Melissa Lee for her advocacy for people with disabilities. I genuinely want to thank her for sharing her experience with us earlier tonight. I mean this is an incredibly emotional discussion and some of us are sharing things that we probably haven't shared before. We need to think about what we're actually asking for if we want this SOP to be successful because essentially the rights of parents to choose whether or not to have a child when they know that child has a particular condition has been something that we have as a country publicly funded since 2004.We brought in a screening programme that tests for trisomy-21 trisomy-18 and trisomy-13. But what I've neglected to do is actually talk about what those conditions are. And I actually think it's really important people know what we're talking about. So trisomy-13 was discovered by Dr Klaus Patau in 1960 and essentially it means that the fetus has extra genetic material. They have disrupted normal development causing multiple and complex organ defects. Ninety percent of the children born with Patau syndrome die within the first year. They have intellectual disabilities they have seizures and they require surgical intervention. So our publicly funded screening programme at 14 weeks and 20 weeks provides information like this to parents. Trisomy-18 which is Edwards syndrome was discovered by John H Edwards in 1960. Again babies are born small. They have a small head they have heart defects there are severe intellectual disabilities and 90 to 95 percent die within the first year. I looked at a study that said the average length of life is 12½ days. That does speak to Melissa Lee's Supplementary Order Paper because she is saying that if a doctor can determine that the likely death of the child is within 28 days of birth then that's OK. But actually that's not what happens all the time.Then trisomy-21—it was actually discovered by John Langdon Down in 1862 and it's an interesting condition actually because people have physical and growth delays. They have mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. They have a mental age—and this is just generally—of a nine to 10-year-old but they can live for 50 to 60 years. And with good education care and support to the parents and to those children they can actually live amazingly good productive lives—20 percent of them can go on to employment. And therein lies the distinctions I think with some of the groups that have been advocating to us and in the committee tonight. People with Down syndrome can live full productive lives. That's not the point of the testing and the screening though. The point of the testing and the screening is to give parents information. Firstly do they want to undergo the testing the screening? And then once they do know how can we help them prepare to deliver a child that may need specialist surgical medical care? They do necessarily have to talk about the consideration of termination. And the other thing they have to talk about is palliative care in that newborn period because babies may be born but actually they're not going to live very long. And how do we help parents prepare for a life of a child with these trisomy conditions? That's the whole point of having a screening programme.So if the people opposed to terminating children who have these trisomy conditions really want to get to the nub of the issue what they're saying is we shouldn't have an antenatal screening programme in the first place because fundamental to the screening programme is giving parents information so that they can make decisions that best fit with their lives. It's not about anyone judging them. It's about how we can care support and help them through what is an incredibly emotional time which is what everyone has talked about. So I can't support Melissa Lee's Supplementary Order Paper. It's way too restrictive and also I believe that it takes away the rights of parents to choose.