End of Life Choice Bill

I move, That the End of Life Choice Bill be now read a second time.

As this bill approaches its second reading, it is already over four years old. Very few bills engage with our lawmaking process as fully as this one does. This House supported the motion that the bill be read a first time by a margin of 76 to 44, and, immediately after that vote, it supported a motion that the Justice Committee would have nine months instead of the usual six to report back. The report back period was extended three more times for a variety of reasons. In total, this bill was at select committee for 16 months. Almost 40,000 New Zealanders made a submission to that committee, which travelled to 14 centres and heard 1,350 submissions in person.

I say all of this for two reasons. Number one: there has been rigorous consultation on this bill. By sheer numbers, it is the most rigorous consultation on any bill in this Parliament’s history. Now, I know I’m opposed to rushed legislation, but this is the opposite. But I also say for another reason that it’s been rigorous, and that is to record the enormous time and effort that has been put in by the Justice Committee chair, Raymond Huo, and the members of the Justice Committee. I want to thank them for their monumental effort. I should include other members of Parliament, who sat in on the various hearings up and down the country, and the officials from the Office of the Clerk, who have been unfailingly professional right throughout this marathon process. I’d also like to thank the committee for hosting me, as a non-voting member of the committee, for the purposes of this bill.

What came out of that? Well, the committee has made a number of changes that improve the bill from its original form. Ministry of Justice and health officials also deserve our thanks for poring over existing legislation and the regulations in the rest of our legal framework to make sure that this bill, coming back to the House, aligns with all other existing legislation and regulation. These include the Burial and Cremation Act, the Health Act, and the Coroners Act. The committee also strengthened the complaints process by making it explicit that the registrar can refer cases to police, the Health and Disability Commissioner, the coroner, or any other authority that it deems relevant. The committee made it explicit that if coercion is suspected at any point in the process, then the person becomes ineligible for assisted dying. The committee made it explicit that life insurance contracts must be valid in the case of an assisted death.

However, I think it’s worth pausing on the fulsomeness and time that’s gone into this process, in comparison with the relatively small amount of change made to the bill. Some have tried to run the argument that it is a poorly drafted bill because it was drafted by a private member. I put it to those people that over 16 months, with many thousands of submissions and expert advice from two Government departments, the committee has returned a workable bill that is very substantially the same as the one that was introduced almost two years ago, and that shouldn’t be surprising. This is a bill that the Attorney-General has said is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is a bill that is consistent with, and modelled on, the Canadian legislation that has worked successfully in Canada now for three years. This is a bill that is remarkably similar to the Victorian legislation adopted by that state of Australia, which came into effect just a few weeks ago. This is a bill which has been endorsed by Matt Vickers, who is here tonight, and he endorses it with the advice of the legal team that pursued Seales v Attorney-General.

I’m mindful that the Standing Orders prevent me from discussing changes that might be anticipated at the committee of the whole House stage in detail. However, I’d like to reflect on some changes that the committee considered, and reports in its report that it decided not to make. At the insistence of some members, the committee restricted itself from making any substantive changes to the bill, and I want to record my disappointment with that approach. We could’ve got much better value out of the considerable time and resource that went into that process if all members of the Justice Committee had been prepared to work more constructively. Nevertheless, issues that were raised, and that might be changed in future stages of this process are whether assisted dying should be limited to those only with a terminal illness, and not those with a grievous and irremediable medical condition; whether the settings are correct for the assessment of the patient’s competence to understand the nature of assisted dying and its consequences; and amending the bill to either allow or prohibit health professionals from raising the option of assisted dying with a patient.

Outside of the select committee process, New Zealand First have raised with me the prospect that the commencement clause should include the condition that the bill comes into effect after being confirmed by a referendum in which every adult New Zealander is eligible to vote. Others have raised the prospect of explicitly deeming that a person cannot be eligible for assisted dying under this bill purely on condition of disability, old age, or a purely psychological condition. Suffice to say, I listened to these concerns and intend to move an amendment that will address such issues. It has been prepared by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, thanks to the facilitation of the Minister of Justice. I believe it’s a high-quality amendment that can give comfort to those members who have concerns about the bill as reported back from the Justice Committee. It is on that basis that I ask members who have such concerns that they vote this bill through the second reading.

In all, we’ve had a lengthy and comprehensive process that has returned a workable bill, not so very different from that which was introduced. Our parliamentary procedure allows for further changes to be made at the committee of the whole House stage that I believe will further improve what is a world-class bill.

Now, let me turn to some of the public debate that has taken place over the past 19 months. I have personally attended over 30 public meetings, literally from Kerikeri to Gore. Some of those meetings were attended by over 300 people, and a range of issues were canvassed. I’ve also privately met with people from the religious community, my fellow MPs, people from the medical profession, across civil society, constituents, and a much greater number of private meetings over that period. The debate has been fulsome, and I’d like to thank those that have engaged constructively. But I’d also like to say that there’s been some disappointing contributions. People have said, for instance, that assisted dying being legalised can lead to suicide contagion. There is no evidence for that claim and those that have hijacked such a sensitive topic in this country with no evidence, I believe, should be seriously considering how they approach political debate in the future.

People from the medical profession have said that they will somehow have their careers or their profession damaged. That is plainly untrue. The only obligation faced by a doctor is that, if they wish to conscientiously object, they merely need to tell the patient so that the patient can get another doctor assigned to them by the Ministry of Health.

People in the disability community have said that somehow legalising assisted dying will devalue them, while others such as Philip Patston have pointed out that this bill does not allow people to have an assisted death purely because they are disabled already—and we’re going to clarify that even further. But, actually, it’s those people who somehow imply that disabled people are not able to make their own choices that are taking the debate around autonomy and dignity back three decades.

I won’t have time to canvass all of the debate and all of the arguments that have been raised and, in so many cases, refuted over the last 19 months. But let me leave members with two thoughts. One is that the opponents like to say that, in many jurisdictions, bills like this have been voted down by legislatures, and they are correct. It is true—to scare members of Parliament in other legislatures away from voting for these bills. But in not one of the now 15 jurisdictions housing 200 million people that have legalised assisted dying have they gone back. That is the difference between the rhetoric and the reality. Finally, I ask what does this House say to the small minority of people who find themselves suffering at the end of their life? Do we require them to suffer on for the morality of others, or do we give them compassion and choice? Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The Hon Amy Adams—a five minute call.

Mr Speaker, thank you. I do want to come down and speak tonight in this debate. It is an incredibly important issue for this Parliament, and not an easy one; one that is complex, difficult, emotional, and one in which all MPs have been actively engaged, thinking, being lobbied, discussing. I want to first of all thank the member who has brought the bill, David Seymour. It is courageous—and I don’t mean that in the Yes Minister sense, but truly courageous—to take a stance on something you know will be so divisive and difficult. But there is clearly a mood in the public of New Zealand for Parliament to have this debate. It’s not the first time it’s come, but it’s certainly the time that I think the public has sent such a clear message that they want to see this Parliament properly consider this issue, and so I thank the member for doing that. As he said himself, he probably had no idea quite what he was getting into when he took it on, but he has been tireless in it.

It’s almost trite to say it’s a complex issue. Of course it’s a complex issue. There is probably almost no more complex issue, but that doesn’t mean we can shy away from it. I want to speak very personally as to how I see this issue, and my position is clear in one sense and not in another—clear in that I absolutely believe there should be a method by which the terminally ill can choose their time and the manner of their death. That is a belief that I hold, but it is not unfettered, and I don’t say that without recognising the challenges around it.

At the same time, though, I find that the bill in its present form is not one that I think is ready to be passed into law. But what I am going to do is vote for it at the second reading because I think the select committee, for a range of reasons—and it’s certainly not a criticism of the members—failed to do what the select committee would normally do and work through the bill’s deficiency. I think the bill deserves that. I think the bill has the kernels in it of what could be a good system, but I don’t think it’s there yet. So I want to be very clear that my support is to see it progressed to the committee stage and to allow there to be an opportunity for the bill to be amended in ways that I think would remedy some of my concerns.

Principally, I do not support at all the extension to grievous and irremediable suffering as is currently in the bill. In my view, there could be a workable scheme devised to allow people for whom death is inevitable and is imminent to, as I say, choose the time and method of their own death. The bill is currently far wider than that, and I think the concerns that have been raised with me by the mental health community and by the disability community in particular are valid. I do have real concerns as to how that could work. But should the bill be constrained to be truly end of life and allowing people, as I say, for whom death is already inevitable and imminent to have some say in how that works, I support that. I do not believe the State has a role in how people choose to experience their last days on earth.

All of us are affected by our own experiences in this issue. For me, it was watching my mother die a gruesome, painful, and dehumanising death, and it wasn’t because there was a lack of palliative care. It wasn’t because there wasn’t every opportunity and every drug available, and if she’d wanted to spend her last days drugged to the eyeballs, feeling nothing, I’m sure that was possible, but that isn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to be able to choose exactly when that end would come in the last few days, and that’s really all we were talking about. This was a woman who was proud, independent, intelligent, who knew what she wanted, and the last thing she wanted was to be able to have the ability to choose the time of her death. Instead, we watched her literally get eaten alive from a vicious melanoma and suffer, as I say, in immeasurable ways. There should be the opportunity to work out if we can devise a scheme in which that sort of suffering doesn’t need to happen.

Now, I’m not blind to the very real challenges around coercion, and they do need to be looked at. I’ve spoken with the member around how we enhance the coercion controls in the bill, and, as I said, I do think there are some significant changes that need to be made. But I strongly am of the view that this Parliament owes it to the people of New Zealand who have said they want this issue properly looked at and debated. We owe it to them to have a chance to get this bill into a workable stage and to allow those, actually, I believe, very few people who will necessarily take up this choice. None the less, it is one that the State should stay out of and let them find a way to choose the time and place of their own death. So I support the bill at second reading and I look forward to its progress.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in opposition to this bill. This bill goes against my core values and everything that I stand for. This is a conscience vote, and it is unconscionable to me that we could allow State-sanctioned killing. I want to give voice to our Pacific community, who have come together. They have petitioned, they have emailed MPs, they have gathered at the front steps of Parliament, they have met in church and community halls up and down the country. They’ve reached out to me and to the Hon Alfred Ngaro and to all our Pacific MPs in this House to convey their strong and heartfelt objection to this bill.

I stand with our Pacific communities. It is this community and the values it stands for that has shaped who I am today. As a spokesperson for Pacific peoples, it is the community that I will serve to get better outcomes in health and education, and to be aspirational and support opportunities for our young. Our Pacific voice is a collective one that speaks for our families and our communities and our vulnerable. We are a Pacific community who holds strong to our faith, and we hold the value that life is sacred.

This bill is in conflict with those values and our Pacific culture of care. In Pacific families, it is our duty to look after and care for our elders, be it our parents, our grandparents, aunties and uncles. They are treasured and respected in our culture. We care for them out of love and deep respect for the hard work and the sacrifices they have given to their families. This bill opens the door to the vulnerable being coerced and to feelings of being a burden on their families. This bill erodes the sanctity of life and aspects of social relations that are important for strong, healthy, resilient families and communities. This bill focuses on the individual—my life, my choice—that is in conflict to Pacific values and culture, which sees and interacts with society through a lens of families and communities.

We have a suicide problem in New Zealand. Pacific peoples have one of the second-highest suicide rates overall and one of the highest suicide rates amongst our Pacific youth. We cannot hide from that. At a time when we should be rallying to address suicide, at a time when our message should remain “Suicide is never the answer.”, we are backing off. I’d just like to reflect on a submission made by a general practitioner in South Auckland, and I quote from the submission: “I am concerned about the message sent to our youth about the validity of suicide—we are telling [our] youth that suicide is not the answer and yet, saying to our disabled and terminally ill that it is. Those youth [who] have talked to me about the issue have mentioned the double standard.”

It is no comfort that Mr Seymour says that his carefully crafted bill will only apply to terminally ill patients who have a set period of time to live, because the experience of the Netherlands and Canada shows us that the slippery slope is inevitable. No amount of drafting will stop definitions such as “unbearable suffering” sliding out to mean things such as extreme depression or it being unbearable to live without a loved one who has died.

It has been said that a nation’s greatness can be measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, its weakest members. We cannot risk one wrongful death. This bill will not guarantee that that will not happen. There are people that I’ve met, people in the gallery, who have physical disabilities or what they would describe as grievous and irremediable medical conditions. They have shared their stories, reached out to all members in this House, and implored us to value their life. I value their lives and I oppose this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, in the first instance in this debate, wish to acknowledge the member David Seymour for bringing this issue and this bill to the House. I believe he does so with a high degree of integrity and for reasons that are only good. I acknowledge him for that. At the first reading of this bill, I supported it to the select committee on that basis and on the basis that I believe this is a complex and important ethical issue that New Zealanders and this House deserve the opportunity to properly consider. I did so with doubts in my mind at that time, and at the time of this second reading the conclusion that I have reached is that those doubts have not been sufficiently dealt with by the debate that has occurred, and my vote at this reading will be to not allow the bill to proceed.

There are a couple of important reasons for this that I wish to put on the record. The first is on the impact on vulnerable people within our communities. In this regard, I’ve been particularly persuaded by many of the representations made by New Zealand’s disability community. I wish to especially acknowledge Dr Hūhana Hickey, one of New Zealand’s foremost disability community advocates, and a constituent of mine by the name of Raymond Mok. Raymond, who was approached to meet with me on a number of occasions, is a man around about my age who suffers from a condition known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It is an incurable and progressive disease that means that Raymond is unable to move about by himself. He requires assistance with his breathing and is not able to lead a life in the same way that many of us do. He is a person who has told me that at points in his life he would have, if the option had been available to him, taken up the option of ending his life, but with help and support, with mental health assistance he is a person who has been able to live a meaningful life.

Raymond tells me, when he meets with me, that his concern with this bill is that it creates a situation where people who have, as he does, a grievous and irredeemable medical condition—would be people who would be placed in a category in which the end of their life is legally permissible. And that is not a category that many other New Zealanders are put into. This is a concern that I share. I’m concerned that in many cases the people who would have access to end of life choice under this bill are the old, are the unwell, are people with devastating and difficult diseases. By definition, these people are often in a vulnerable position.

I acknowledge the genuine attempts that have been made to try and ensure that overt pressure is not placed upon people to access the provisions of this bill. But I do not believe that it is possible to design a system in which that occurs in every single occasion. And the evidence from overseas jurisdictions is that there will be cases in which people have pressure put on them to access the provisions of this bill. And while I acknowledge that in most cases the people accessing its provisions would be people who freely make that choice, for me, having even a small number of New Zealanders whose lives are ended through a legal provision and not through their own choice is sufficient reason not to support that legal framework.

I am also deeply concerned on the basis of conversations with people and my knowledge of people, including my own loved ones, approaching an end of life situation that many of those people do not experience overt pressure but they feel the implicit pressure. They feel the burden on their families, they worry about the pain that the final months may put them through, and they may see it simply as a better choice for other people to access the end of life provisions that are included within this bill. I do not believe that is conscionable.

This bill moves us from having a hard line in which there is no legal option to access end of life choice to a soft line. We create the option, and that means that further debates will inevitably occur about where we draw the lines, and that again has been the experience in overseas jurisdictions. And it is my concern that, if the bill proceeds, we will be back in this House and we will be considering further extensions to the bill. That is the international experience.

I’m a social democrat. I believe that individual rights are important but I also believe that when individual rights are afforded, people with power and agency are able to exercise them more and vulnerable people are able to exercise them less. I believe that we also need to consider the broader social context, the need to protect the vulnerable. This is a difficult debate. It is not easy for any member, and I will be voting no.

Can I begin by acknowledging the members of the Justice Committee, who have put in such a long number of hours and have heard arguments from both sides of this particular option that currently sits before the House. I know that, in the environment they had to do that, they had to maintain a high degree of decorum even though emotions at times would most definitely have run high, as people have their particular view on an issue like this. I want to acknowledge the mover of the bill. I know that he does so from a deep belief that this would be something that would be of advantage to many New Zealanders. But it’s not a bill that, having considered it for a long period of time, I can support.

I would acknowledge the comments that were made by the previous speaker, Michael Wood. I think it would be something that we could all do, talk about people we know who have a particular challenge in their life that might lead them to a point where they wanted to no longer live. And I think the way Mr Wood outlined that, in the case of his friend, is a very good example of what many of us will know.

The other issue is on the coercive power that a bill like this could see exercised over elderly and vulnerable New Zealanders. We often have debates in this House about how we should be treating people who are elderly or, for that matter, people who are living in difficult circumstances, perhaps through their finances or their family situation or some other such reason. I think when we do that, there’s always a desire, regardless of the outcome, to ensure that there is the best possible option available to the people who need that particular assistance.

What concerns me here, though, is that as we have an ageing population—we know what the New Zealand population profile starts to look like and we know that the cost of healthcare for all New Zealanders in the later stages of their life can be a huge fraction of the total health bill; a disproportionate fraction, in fact. I think it would be unfortunate if we were to see people starting to think, “Well, I’ve had a good innings, so now maybe I should perhaps opt to make the choice that makes it easy for so many others.” That’s been mentioned by two other speakers already.

I can only think about my own mother, who died a difficult death with her brain cancer. I had to go and tell her what the specialist had discovered when she had the scan, and her options were at that stage no treatment and death perhaps within a month, or to undergo some treatment and life could be extended perhaps as far as 18 months. There was no in-between. It was: choose to live on or choose to go very, very quickly. When I told her that, it was very distressing for me, I have to say, but she just sort of sat up and said, “What, a month?”, and I said “Yep, Mum, it could be a month.” And she said, “Well, bugger that. I’ll have the treatment.” It wasn’t easy; it was awful. But she did it as much from her desire for us to have a farewell, if you like—the last time that we would have with her, the last weeks or months or whatever it was. The treatment that she got, I think, didn’t alleviate all of her pain by any manner or means, but it did give her a degree of comfort, and in the last hours of her life she was not able to experience or was not experiencing that particular pain. I only say that because it is in itself the start of a confusion, because that was her choice.

In this case, I don’t think we should have a bill passed into an Act that makes that choice to end a life so much easier than it is at the moment.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Twenty-five years ago I held my father’s hand as he died, and he died with massive amounts of morphine in his system. He was someone who was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and given a few weeks to live. He lived six weeks, and in that time he held court for his friends from the RSA to come and visit him and he was able to be farewelled by us individually.

When his body collapsed, he went to Matamata Pohlen Hospital and he knew to say, “I have terrible pain. I need morphine.” He got morphine and he got morphine and he got morphine, and one day later he was dead. He died without losing his dignity.

I have always been opposed to euthanasia as of right on the basis that people like my dad got to, essentially, tell everybody when they wanted to go, and I thought that was available to everybody. It’s not available to everybody. It’s not available for people like my dad who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and without a family saying, “You give my dad everything he needs.” That’s the shame of this.

I have always been very concerned about coercion that could be brought upon vulnerable people, and it is something that as a lawyer who has 20 years’ experience before I came to this place—I have seen people try to manipulate parents and others who are vulnerable. So when I spoke with David Seymour about this issue, he assured me and showed me exactly what he wanted to put into the committee stage of this bill to deal with those concerns. I am concerned that the Justice Committee, for whatever reason, was not able to properly amend this bill in the way that I think many submitters would have expected it to do. I don’t know what those reasons were, but it clearly did not do what most people would expect. That is, I think, unfortunate for the submitters.

It’s also very unfortunate for David Seymour, who, in my time politics, has done more than anybody to give up a ministerial career, as he did, an opportunity to be a Minister, to keep this bill going through as a private member. That is a huge commitment and it’s not one that I think many other people in Parliament would do, and that is actually because it’s a genuine belief. Mr Seymour may be occasionally extremely irritating—extremely—but that does not mean to say he does not have very genuinely held beliefs, and he has showed utter commitment on this.

I’ve talked to many people about this issue. It’s troubled me for a long time, and this year I have been very troubled by it because I’ve felt that, having been opposed to it, I was on the wrong side. I am on the wrong side of it in opposing it. I’m on the right side now, saying that everybody deserves some dignity in their lives.

I talked to Amy Adams about her mother dying—it is awful to think that people are eaten away by something, losing their face, told that one day they could die when the cancer breaks through to their brain. What a dreadful thing to do, and there are options. Somebody shouldn’t have to say, like my dad did, “I have so much pain, I need morphine.” and to have his children saying, “Please give my father more morphine.” because that’s what he wanted. I would do it again. It’s the right thing to do, and it preserved his dignity, and I am very shocked and saddened to hear that so many people don’t have that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I actually can’t see my notes. I’m crying before I even say anything. It is appropriate that every single member in this House is feeling an incredible weight on our shoulders to get up and speak to this bill, and it is an absolute privilege to get up and speak to this bill on behalf of all of the Green Party MPs. We are supporting this second reading of the End of Life Choice Bill. We are supporting this because our members worked hard and vigorously among ourselves, among our movement, to come up with a policy after assessing and debating views from all along the entire continuum of this debate, with discussions among our activists, our members, our disabled members, and our community networks, including at our MP level. And we decided that we support people with a terminal illness to be able to dictate the circumstances of their passing, to allow for that dignity at the seen end of their life.

This policy as it is currently drafted goes beyond what we, and I, believe we stand for, which limits end of life choice to people with a terminal illness. We are supporting the second reading to go through, because we think this debate is a deserved one for all New Zealanders. We want to see it go through the stages, and we want to see safer and better protections put in place and, indeed, to see a draft bill that ends up aligning with the scope of our Green Party, member-fought-for position. We think that is worthy enough of putting this through passage to continue, to see the debate on strengthening protections against coercion, on ensuring that this bill does not extend end of life choice beyond people with a terminal illness. We believe that that is how we can best honour the rigorous and long-held, robust, and informed discussion of our members.

I also want to acknowledge, as a Māori woman, that there are diverse ranges of opinions held among our Māori community—that there simply is not one particular clear view, from a tikanga Māori perspective, on what is a right decision here. I acknowledge that any decision that I could be standing up for tonight to support would solicit criticism from any number of my own friends and family, and that all that is left is to stand and speak to what I think is the right thing to do. I acknowledge that, in Te Ao Māori, no decisions can be seen as individuals making decisions in isolation of whānau and community, and that we have a preciously held understanding of the importance of relationships and connections when we make decisions about our own person—that they are never about our own person, that all of our individual decisions impact and ripple out to our whānau, our hapū, our iwi, and our community.

I acknowledge also the people who have come to all of us directly with passion and pleading, who sit along the entire spectrum of experience, with fear and anxiety, for all the different opinions and insights that they hold—that I have heard directly and passionately from people who need to have this decision.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Before the dinner break, I stood to clarify that the Greens will be supporting the second reading of the End of Life Choice Bill dependent on good changes to be made further down the track to ensure that we limit the scope to those with a terminal illness, to also ensure that we have got good supports in place to reduce coercion, to not allow for ongoing stigma that disability groups came to us to address directly, and that focusing on terminal illness will be part of the solution to ensure that we not only focus on death with dignity but that we do all we can to focus on quality of life, and for people to ensure—for us here in this House to ensure—that we understand the related environmental factors that we have to be responsible for to allow people to live their lives to the fullest and healthiest extent that they possibly can, to understand that that means that we cannot look at death with dignity in isolation of ensuring that people have access to good systems for good lives.

I want to acknowledge Matt Vickers, whom I was privileged to speak to over the dinner break, and Lecretia Seales and her leading advocacy for wanting people to be able to have that choice, when all is said and done, at the end of their lives, as the last piece of power and dignity that is available to them, as long as we have made sure that we have wrapped supports around people to live good lives, and they have been at the forefront in a very public way, sharing a very intimate story of their fight for this piece of legislation.

The whānau focus that I spoke about before dinner goes further, and I want to, at this point, acknowledge that this bill is very clear on the conscientious objection for physicians to be able to opt out and not have to be part of the process of a terminally ill person making this decision. And the Greens absolutely support that protection for their morality, for their conscientious objection as well.

It has been said over the dinner break by other MPs that tonight the House is full of human emotion, and that is absolutely as it should be. I was saying before the dinner break that the Greens have had—I think most MPs, most of the members in this House will have had—representations from across the board, including from people who desperately want to be able to have this choice; including from people who are validly fearful of what stigma this will create for them living their lives, perhaps with a disability and having fears around the message that will be sent about the value that they give to their communities; including from people who are concerned about our definition of “quality of life”—people who are actually living lives and need to be valued as worthy contributors simply for being who they are, and that that may not be up to current standards of living life with dignity according to the narrative that is dominant at the moment, that we need to understand there are many different ways to live with dignity, and that any legislation needs to not add further stigma to a narrative to deny people the different ways of living.

So I add, and end, again that the Greens are very clear that a focus on allowing this choice for people with a terminal illness will help to address a lot of those valid fears and anxieties that I as an individual MP with my conscientious choice do support the mana motuhake, the sovereignty also, of people to be able to make that choice—that that level of mana motuhake as a person is also a valid, well celebrated aspect of Te Ao Māori as well, that our stories are full of individual achievement, celebrations, and success, and examples of mana motuhake, but that that does not ever have to separate how that impacts on the wider inclusion of whānau and community in being able to be an informed part of these decisions that we make.

It has been an absolute honour and deep anxiety to speak on this bill tonight. Again, I think this debate deserves to go forward. I think we absolutely want to see stronger supports put in place. That is what the Greens’ ongoing support is dependent on. I think that New Zealanders deserve to have this properly informed and robust debate. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand as the first member of the select committee which considered this bill to speak in the House tonight, and it’s been quite some journey getting here. I will be supporting this bill to the committee of the whole House stage, and I implore those members in the House who are undecided to do the same thing.

I stand here very disappointed that we don’t have a bill that went through a process where those of us who travelled the country, heard thousands of submissions, read thousands of submissions, were exposed to people with a vast variety of views weren’t able to take those views and ensure that this bill—this bill that has arrived at this House from a very, very long journey, through those who have brought the subject to the House unsuccessfully; those who, in case of a Lecretia Seales, have taken it through the courts to arrive at this House. There have been many journeys to come to this place, and we, when we come to this House, come for many reasons, but I think everyone here comes to do the right thing.

Now, we all will have an incredible number of pressures on us. I myself am a practising Catholic. You don’t think I get a bit of pressure from my mother when I go home? My father spent six years in the seminary. You don’t think that memory doesn’t fit long? However, what I have been elected to do here is to do the absolute right thing. So, in sitting through the submissions that we did—the thousands of them—as we went around the country, we had everyone who stood before us, who spoke before us, come from a very considered position. They all came from an emotional position, but what they all didn’t have the advantage of is doing what we as a select committee did: to hear the different sides.

I have spent my life before this place as a detective, and one thing you learn as a police officer and as a detective is that there are always two sides. And I implore those who have made up their mind to actually have a look at the other side of the argument, because there has been much disinformation about this out there—so much of that disinformation that, unfortunately, is used to reinforce. But can I ask members of this House, because now it comes down to us, to actually look at the information. Give yourself a chance to actually see beyond much of the rhetoric, much of the downright lies that are being told in relation to this, and the only place we now have to do it, having been denied the opportunity at select committee—the only place we have to do it—is at the committee of the whole House. Now, that will be another process, and there will be those—I understand there is going to be quite a large number of amendments, but we can see through that. We are politicians, we are elected to be here, we can see through those who will come here with an objective, determined to have their way. But sit back and watch and take it all on board, because that’s what we’re here to do.

Can I just share a personal story? I stand here as a cancer survivor—someone who, my surgeon nicely told me after he did give me the sign off, wasn’t expected to make it. He wasn’t quite that blatant with me at the time during my treatment, but I knew I was pretty crook. So I have faced down my own destiny.

Also, I have a disabled son. My son was born very ill, not expected to live, intellectually disabled, and clearly he was going to have a hard road ahead of him. It’s quite something to be standing with your wife when the paediatrician tells you to your face and looks you in the eye and says, “You know there won’t be a post-mortem if this boy dies, don’t you?” Well, there’s only one way you can take that. But there wasn’t a post-mortem, he didn’t die, and any implied option, in that case, wasn’t taken up. However, that same boy, about three months later was—the predicted pneumonia, his inability to breathe by himself, did occur. Against all advice, his paediatrician put him on a respirator. The reason they didn’t want him on a respirator was because at that age it was going to be clear that they would never get him off. At that stage, because of his difficulties breathing, then the fear was that his only option was to remain on a respirator. When he was on the respirator, he was fine. He wasn’t in a comatose state, which often is the case when people are considering removing people from a respirator. He was actually quite a happy boy there, enjoying the world in his ability to do so.

So we attempted to get him off that respirator unsuccessfully twice. The third time was going to be the last chance. Each time we took him off, he stopped breathing and he, essentially, died. So the third time was going to be the last chance. So we made a decision. The decision wasn’t to do nothing; the decision was actually to do something. The decision was, actually, to remove the ventilator, which we did. It was like watching a little diesel engine starting, you know, just with a “poof, poof”; you’re not quite sure if he’s going to make it. He did make it—I’m pleased to say he did make it; in fact, he was in the gallery here when I made my maiden speech.

But I bring that up because what that’s given me is the opportunity to, perhaps, see and get close to death either side of it—my own, my son’s—that many don’t get the opportunity to do. I think that, alongside with my experience at the select committee, considering those that came to see us and hearing how it’s administered overseas has given me the opportunity, I think, to use my life experience to make the right decision. So what I would say is that I’m here today to make the right decision.

There were some things that happened along the way—a little serendipitous. The Hon Nick Smith and myself were going to Invercargill, and we were taking a taxi in from the airport. I’m not going to presuppose—I don’t know where Mr Smith is going to sit on this, but we were chatting and the taxi driver asked us what we were there for and we told him and, well, did he start. Mr Smith, I’m sure you’ll distinctly remember this. He told us about his brother—a big, strong, strapping farmer from up in northern Southland who had become ill, seriously ill, with cancer and died a horrible death begging to be able to be put out of his misery. He just simply said, “You guys have just got to do this.” in his good Southland way. The R’s may have rolled in there somewhere. But certainly—that’s my memory of that; Mr Smith may have a different one. But that was, again, one of those moments that we consider.

We then went to, I might say, the hearing where we did have, I think, 95 percent—I think we may have had one person in favour of the bill. Like many of our hearings, we did hear from people who were opposed. If we left it to that, we would think, really, yes, no one in New Zealand wants this. However, we get out there—we are out there at our markets, we’re out there at our cafes, all of us MPs are out there every week. If we’re only looking for people who will agree with us, that’s all we’ll see. If we go looking for reassurance of our position, that’s what we’ll find. But what I’ll challenge everyone in this House is: don’t do that; don’t come in here with what your Pope wants you to do. Don’t come in here with what those—your vicar or anyone else—want you to do. Come in here and do the job that you have been tasked to do. Do the right thing.

Now, I am going to be voting for this bill to go to the next stage, and that’s all I’ll be doing. But what I’ll be doing is making sure it goes to the next stage and we do get to look at the facts; that we don’t come here with the opinions of those things that are actually opinions of others. That we actually make right—just think, in this House how many times have issues been debated here that we hear, “If this goes through, it’s going to be the end of it.” I’ll challenge people now, what about homosexual law reform? Now, I was on the other side of that, as you might imagine with a religious background. That was a terrible thing—people were opposed to that. What was going to happen to the world if it passed? I think of Invercargill again. Wasn’t there an MP down there who said there would be sodomy in the streets? No, it didn’t happen. Now, I would challenge those people who were listening tonight, those that are here. I would say: think about what those who are influencing you said at that time. Ask them now—challenge yourself now—who believes that men engaging in consensual sex should go to jail? Because I would suspect very few of us do. However, those who opposed that bill, that was what they were advocating. Look at the other things that have happened in the meantime—prostitution law reform. I was involved heavily in that in my last profession. Again, the predictions were: it’s going to be the end of time, hell in a handcart; we are all going to be doomed. That’s come and gone, and where are we now? Does anyone even talk about it?

I suspect it will be the same thing with this bill. I suspect that in three or four years’ time, as it has been in other jurisdictions—and, again, I ask you to look at what happens in other jurisdictions. Do not believe the absolute rubbish that much of what we’re hearing is. Have a look for yourself. Put a detective’s hat on, put a politician’s hat on and go and have a look and do not be guided by the absolute gibberish that is much of what is being espoused out there. Do the job we’re here to do, and at least send it to the next stage so we can do the job that the select committee was denied. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It’s a pleasure; it’s a real honour and a privilege to speak on the End of Life Choice Bill in the second reading. This is my first speech on this bill, so I’d like to start out by, certainly, acknowledging my friend and the sponsor of this bill, David Seymour. I’ve known David since university and I know him to be a man of great conviction and a true believer of his values; so I do want to acknowledge you in the House today. I also want to acknowledge everybody on the Justice Committee, who have heard many, many thousands of submissions—in particular Raymond Huo and Maggie Barry. To all the people on the select committee: you’ve done a fantastic job in making sure that their voices have been heard and that we have been well informed on this bill.

I want to take you back to the by-election because that was when I was recorded in my first ever public position on this bill. I want to tell you that if anybody googles my position on this bill during the by-election they will find that I was in favour of the End of Life Choice Bill. When someone comes to you and says, “Do you want the right to choose how you end your life?”, I said, “Yes.” It is with a heavy heart today that I announce that I have changed my mind and I will not be supporting this bill in its second reading. I want to walk you through what has changed since I’ve become an MP, and what’s led me to this decision. Firstly, I’d never even read the bill. So once being elected to the Northcote seat, I sat down and read the bill. Secondly, I took time to sit on the select committee, hearing the many thousands of people—including many from my own electorate of Northcote—who wanted their voice to be heard on this very important and delicate topic that we face today. I held a public meeting, and I read much correspondence from many thousands of people who emailed me and who came into my office, and many from Northcote voters.

So the main reason is really three key reasons that I oppose this bill today. The first is that I am concerned about the lack of safeguards with respect to protecting our most vulnerable in New Zealand. Now, of course, if you asked me: do I want my right to choose? Yes, I want my right to choose to be intact. But it’s our job as MPs to make sure that we think outside the realm of the individual to the wider impacts of this bill on the wider New Zealand society. I especially worry about its impact on the elderly. I will tell you, Mr Speaker, I’ve had several cases in the last year as an electorate MP of elderly people coming into my office and saying, “Dan, I need your help. I need your help because my son or daughter has complete control of my financial affairs and I’m worried about my safety.” It’s brought me almost to tears. So I have very grave concerns about how this bill protects our most vulnerable elderly from coercion.

The second, in what’s been alluded to from previous speeches, is certainly around disabilities, people with disabilities and people with mental health. And most important is just about the lack of safeguards to protect from coercion. We heard from the select committee that it’s very difficult for doctors or lawyers to actually detect coercion. It takes many, many months. I don’t have confidence that this bill, as it’s been written, has adequate safeguards in place to protect our most vulnerable. Now, we could argue that if it goes to select committee or the committee of the whole House that that might change. But again I don’t have full confidence in that process. So that is why I rise and vote against this bill.

The second and equally important issue is around the message that this bill sends to wider New Zealand. We have the worse youth suicide rate in the OECD. How are we to help them and how are we going to make progress on this bill, on this issue, if we’re sending the wrong message that we don’t want people to commit suicide at one end but we’re giving you an option to do so at the other end of life. I believe in a world where we strive to protect life and do whatever is necessary to preserve and value life for New Zealanders. So I do rise in opposition to the bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to begin by acknowledging the thousands of New Zealanders who submitted to our select committee on this bill, both for and also against. The submissions we heard were compelling, they were heartfelt, and some of them were heart breaking. Ninety-two percent, or over 35,000 of those submissions, were opposed. And Parliament needs to be cautious of overriding such strong opposition.

The problem I have with this bill is it’s out of step with a core part of our Kiwi culture: that respect for human life. In many parts of the world, life’s cheap, but here we go to extraordinary lengths to protect human life. It’s actually not that New Zealanders are puritanical or deeply religious. It’s actually a very down to earth, practical caring. It’s why we’ve been a world leader in an area like the Special Olympics and disability rights, in asserting that every life has value. It’s why we were one of the first countries in the world to get rid of the death penalty. We want to err on the side of life. The cold, calculating clauses in this bill allowing the termination of the life of someone who’s unwell or disabled contradicts those basic Kiwi values.

This sort of intuitive view is actually backed up by the experts. The most powerful submissions for me are those palliative care doctors and nurses that, all over New Zealand, every day care for dying Kiwis. No one can doubt their professionalism or their compassion. They were adamant and consistent in their opposition to this bill. You see, the problem with euthanasia is that it’s one of those ideas that superficially sounds quite attractive but the more you look into the detail the more sceptical you become. Hundreds of doctors, backed up by their representative organisations, made submissions opposing this bill. They have absolutely no difficulty with patients rightly making an informed choice to refuse treatment or of using medication for the purposes of pain relief that may in fact bring forward the time of death. Their concern is about legalising the administration of drugs with the deliberate purpose of killing a patient. The deadly flaw in this bill is that it assumes a level of certainty in medical judgments that actually just doesn’t exist in real life. Its clauses require that a doctor certifies that a person is free of mental illness or depression, that they’ve not been unduly influenced by others, or that they have only six months to live. It assumes that those judgments are 100 percent accurate. They are not. It is inevitable, if we pass this bill, that there will be fatal mistakes.

I was also unnerved by the extensive international evidence we heard from jurisdictions that have passed such laws. Advocates say that this bill is about alleviating pain, yet the experience in those jurisdictions is that the most common reason given for requesting assisted suicide is concern of being a burden on their family or a community. I do not want a society in which people feel guilty for living.

We also need to heed the message of disability advocates. They have worked tirelessly over the decades to ensure that our society values people with disabilities. The provisions in this bill that enable people with an irremediable condition to access assisted suicide is the State saying that suicide is OK for these people. It is blatantly saying in law that their lives are of lesser value than others.

I also worry, like others, about the mixed signals we are sending on one of the biggest challenges our country faces: over 600 New Zealanders each year taking their own life. This law change erodes the value that we put on life by saying it’s OK for some to end their life. It blurs the message that, actually, life is precious.

I also reject the ACT Party’s rampant individualism in the detail of this bill that ignores the importance of family. It entitles someone to take their own life without their partner, their children, or other loved ones even knowing about it until after the event. Family is the greatest institution ever invented and, actually, it’s at its most important at the beginning and at the end of life.

It became plain in listening to the submissions on this bill that there is a fear that many deaths involve extensive pain and suffering that will be alleviated by assisted suicide; that’s not supported by the evidence. We heard from palliative care specialists who have cared for thousands of dying patients that it is extremely rare for pain not to be managed. And, of course, the technology and the medication associated with pain relief continues to improve. I acknowledge people, including myself, are fearful of a painful death, but as lawmakers we must legislate on the basis of the facts and not the perceptions.

We should also be concerned about the inherent instability in the legal criteria as to who is eligible for assisted suicide. Mr Seymour was very confident a year ago that he had the criteria, his words, “exactly right”. Now he’s proposing extensive changes. The same has occurred overseas as the criteria have had to change. The problem is that, once we cross the line into the grey zone of assisted suicide being OK, drawing a line is actually fraught with difficulty. If it’s not OK for an 18-year-old to suffer, what about a 17-year-old? If it’s not OK for a person with Parkinson’s disease, what about multiple sclerosis? If it’s OK for the quadriplegic, well, what about the paraplegic?

This bill uses the phrase “unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that the person considers tolerable”. Every person will have a different view of what is tolerable. The problem with the ideology of individual choice on this issue is that we end up drifting to a point where anybody can request assisted suicide.

Now, we’ve all had our own experiences with the death of loved ones. I had a dying friend. When I sat beside him, he was unconscious. I held his hand and actually reflected and said to myself, “I wonder whether Dave is all right?”, because he was in such an awful, emancipated state. He woke up and we had a most wonderful 10 minutes of laughs and remembrance that I will remember for the rest of my life, and, for me, it was my being uncomfortable with his state rather than actually being focused on the needs of the dying.

My point on this issue is that the answer is to focus on ensuring quality care, as with hospices. Last month, I was with the Prime Minister, and we opened a wonderful new hospice in my community that is supported by hundreds of volunteers. The hospices’ sound philosophy of making people’s last days as comfortable and fulfilling as possible is actually the right answer to this issue.

My plea to Parliament is to reject this bill. I do not doubt it is motivated by genuine compassion, but it is mistaken. It might make death more convenient, but it will not make New Zealand more caring. It will make our job of tackling suicide more difficult. It will make our most vulnerable citizens like our elderly and our disabled more vulnerable. We should leave the lid of this Pandora’s box of legalising assisted suicide firmly closed. This is the truly caring and compassionate society I want New Zealand to be. Focus on quality hospice care and reject this notion of assisted suicide.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish to take a call in my capacity as the chair of the Justice Committee to reflect, among other things, on the nature and the shape of the committee’s report. First of all, I want to thank all the submitters who have taken the time to be part of this very important legislative process.

The Justice Committee received and considered 39,159 submissions, and we heard oral evidence from as many individuals and organisations as possible at 42 public hearings in 14 cities and regional centres across the country. It took lots of time and energy for us to organise such meetings—a big thankyou to both the Clerk of the House and the clerk of the committee and their respective teams for making the admin side of the Justice Committee possible. We received advice from both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, as well as from the Parliamentary Counsel Office. I thank our officials and advisers and all the relevant parties.

I want to pay tribute to the member who sponsored this bill, Mr David Seymour, and also the Hon Maryan Street, who is in the debating chamber. She organised the petition under her name which was considered by the Health Committee of the last Parliament. The same applies to the Hon Maggie Barry, who fought tirelessly and fiercely against this bill. I thank her for her passion, conviction, and her true belief in palliative care.

I thank the many others who have been directly or otherwise involved in this very important legislative process on this bill, which is one of the most socially and legally challenging bills that this select committee and, indeed, this Parliament have ever considered. The Justice Committee’s report contains a summary of the 39,159 submissions, as well as a number of recommended amendments to improve the workability of this bill.

This is a member’s bill that involves conscience issues. The committee was unable to agree that the bill be passed. This was a conscious decision in keeping with the established practice of select committees dealing with such bills. By convention, select committees focus on improving the technical workability of these bills without forming a view on whether they should be passed. This reflects the principle that it is up to all members of the Parliament individually to judge, based on their conscience and assisted by the select committee’s report, to decide whether or not the bill should proceed. Consistent with that approach, the committee did not recommend amendments of a substantive nature, such as changes to who would be eligible for assisted dying. The definition of that term itself may be of a substantive nature, and we have since learnt that, by calling it “assisted dying”, it may be misleading to some and may be not misleading to others.

Substantive policy issues raised by submitters are listed in Appendix C of the Justice Committee’s report. The committee, however, unanimously recommended technical amendments to make the bill more workable, regardless. The report follows over 15 months of work on the bill. This was the No. 16 bill when we reported the bill back to the House. The Justice Committee has so far considered 22 bills, and we have sent 19 bills to the House. In 2018 alone, we had 340 hours—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m rising to speak in support of the End of Life Choice Bill. I want to outline why my conscience and the evidence I have heard compels me to support the bill. I believe the law should allow for a dignified death. I believe palliative care is a wonderful thing, but it cannot end all pain and suffering. The status quo actively denies terminally ill people the choice of dying at a time of their choosing with their autonomy recognised and dignity affirmed, and instead gives them an invidious choice: take their own life—often dangerously—or suffer needlessly. I believe we can and must do better.

I had the pleasure of sitting on the Justice Committee for the consideration of the bill. We heard excellent arguments for and against the bill. We also heard some poor arguments, and I intend to discuss those in my contribution tonight, but first, I’d like to make a comment on process.

As members have mentioned, we undertook an exhausting process of meetings around the country to hear from as many people as possible. We went around the country, and I know that that was actually welcomed by the communities we visited. I visited Napier, New Plymouth, Whanganui—along with my colleague Ginny Andersen from the Hutt—Christchurch, and Auckland, and a frequent comment in the regional centres we visited was how good it was to see MPs making the effort to get out of Wellington and engage with the communities in, frequently, the hotels where we held the meetings.

I want to pay tribute, like the chair of the committee did, to the Justice Committee staff who worked on the bill alongside the officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health. It was a long process. Some have criticised the length of time we took. I think that criticism is misplaced. For a bill as contentious as this and as politically charged as this, to not take our time and to report it back without proper consideration would, I believe, have been a dereliction of our duty.

We took our job seriously. I took notes on my laptop during the hearings. Sometimes, they were detailed; sometimes they were just a few sentences. I wanted to record every person who was in front of us. I have 150 pages of notes in 11-point font. I have 30,000 words recorded. The committee alone had over 38,000 submissions—a record. If this bill passes—and I hope that it does—nobody will be able to say that it wasn’t considered thoroughly and that there was no mandate for the bill.

So let me return to where I started. The Canadian author, academic, and former MP Michael Ignatieff has said, “There are few presumptions in human relations more dangerous than the idea that one knows what another human being needs better than they do themselves.”, and as a liberal, the starting point for my consideration of the bill is that individuals make better decisions about their lives than Governments do. End of life choice is fundamentally grounded in human agency and autonomy. It affirms and upholds human dignity. It places primacy on the individual and their choice to end their life.

My other starting point is a practical one. I want to make three particular practical points. First, the best palliative care cannot provide relief from physical suffering in all cases. During the committee process, many doctors and palliative care experts appeared before us, and so did many nurses. Some were in favour of the bill, some were not—some were vehemently not—but most agreed that there were rare circumstances when palliative care could not ease all suffering, when people died horrible, painful deaths. Some doctors were at pains to emphasise that they are a minority of cases, but a minority is still a collection of individuals for whom we should have compassion. That was the evidence we heard, that was led also in Seales v Attorney-General, and actually accepted by both side of the argument in the court case of Seales v Attorney-General, accepted by palliative care experts: that no matter how good palliative care can and should be, there are some people for whom it just cannot end all suffering.

The second point is that people take matters into their own hands. Justice Collins in Seales v Attorney-General drew on the evidence provided by Drs Weaver and Munro, who conducted research into suicides in New Zealand from 1900 to 2000—a comprehensive study. It suggests that between 3 percent and 8 percent of suicides in the last century were committed by people who were rational, competent, and suffering a terminal illness. In a substantial number of those cases, it was expressly found that the deceased had ended their lives because they still retained the ability to do that but believed they would not be able to do so if they waited any longer. The Supreme Court of Canada has considered this issue extensively and has summarised it in this way: “A person facing this prospect has two options: [they] can take their life prematurely, often by violent or dangerous means, or [they] can suffer until [they] die from natural causes.” The choice is cruel—and I want to repeat that: the choice is a cruel and invidious one.

The third point that I want to make, in a practical sense, is that medically assisted dying happens already. A 2017 study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal found that nearly one in 10 doctors who responded to the question had at some time provided or administered a lethal dose of medicine intentionally to help someone have a hastened death. Nearly 1 percent of doctors had done so several or many times. This happens now; it’s just unregulated. Now we have the opportunity to regulate it properly.

During the select committee process, we heard, I believe, poor and good arguments against the bill. Let me start with the good arguments. The first is that end of life choice would result in coercion and inappropriate pressure towards vulnerable people. I believe that is a good argument; many submitters were concerned about this. Ultimately, though, the bill has clear safeguards based on international best practice. Moreover, the expert opinion from people who’ve done research into this is that, in Oregon and the Netherlands, the predicted abuse and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations has not materialised.

The second argument that I believe has merit is to do with people with disabilities. There was fierce debate on this in the Justice Committee. We heard from the Disability Rights Commissioner. We heard from the Disabled Persons Assembly. We heard from disability advocates. Some argued that assisted dying diminishes the value of life for disabled people; others said that disabled people should have the same rights as other individuals. Let’s be very clear: the eligibility criteria in the bill would not include a person on the basis of disability or mental illness only; all the criteria in the bill must be met—and people often conflate them. The issue was recently considered in Victoria, which has become the most recent jurisdiction to legalise end of life choice. The Ministerial Advisory Panel considered the impact that the law change would have on people with disabilities and concluded that disability does not satisfy the eligibility criteria for access to voluntary assisted dying, nor does disability exclude a person from eligibility to access voluntary assisted dying. In other words, all people should have the same rights and protections under the law.

A lot of people came before us and talked about youth suicide. They told us that end of life choice was suicide and asked what sort of message it sends to young people, when youth suicide is a national tragedy—and I agree. But I think, when most people think about it, they quite rightly draw a distinction between a young person with their life ahead of them who suffers from depression ending their life irrationally, and a person suffering at the end of their life facing a potentially horrific and painful death, bringing forward their death in some cases by only a few days—because that’s what it’s about, it’s about terminal illnesses; these people are going to die anyway. It’s about the manner in which they die. On the Justice Committee, we considered the issue of youth suicide very closely—so did, by the way, the petition of the Hon Maryan Street in the committee in the last Parliament, and they sought advice on whether suicide rates are higher in jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal. The select committee report in the last Parliament said, “The Ministry of Health told us there does not appear to be any connection between assisted dying or euthanasia and rates of suicide. Causes of suicide are complex, increases in suicide rates are unlikely to be caused by one single factor. The certainty in the area is very difficult.”

There were quite a few poor arguments made against the bill. Let me quickly run through them, to conclude. The first is that it’s poorly drafted, therefore we should oppose it. The problem with this argument is that it isn’t true. The bill is based on international best practice, it’s been drafted by legal experts, it’s going to be improved later, I hope, as well. The second problem is that that is an argument for improving the bill; it’s not an argument for voting it down. Often it was made by people fundamentally opposed to end of life choice, generally, but they were using the words in the bill—it’s an argument for improving it, not for voting against it.

Another argument we heard is that the majority of submitters are opposed to the bill, therefore Parliament should vote it down. Well, that might be true of the majority of the submitters to the Justice Committee, except the polls of New Zealanders show that a clear majority of the New Zealanders support end of life choice. At the end of the day, I think the argument goes, really, nowhere. We should do what my colleague Greg O’Connor said, which is do the right thing and act on our conscience.

We heard that doctors don’t support it, but a survey in 2017 found that 37 percent of doctors and two-thirds of nurses were supportive of legalising assisted dying. So some may oppose it; some support it. We heard from doctors who came before us say that they were very comfortable to participate; we heard from some who said they weren’t—that’s fine. A supplement to the argument was that people would be having to go against their conscience—but the bill contains extensive conscientious objection provisions.

We heard that many countries have not legalised end of life choice. That’s true, but many have—over 120 million people live in a country where it is legal. Just recently, the Australian state of Victoria legalised end of life choice.

There were many poor arguments made, there were many good arguments made against the bill, but, ultimately, this is about individual dignity and alleviating human suffering. I commend the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is no ordinary run-of-the-mill decision that we are charged with making here tonight. Perhaps, not since our parliamentary predecessors voted in this place in 1961 to abolish the death penalty have members of Parliament had to make such a serious life and death decision that will impact on the lives of so many. When Parliament threw out the death penalty some 60 years ago, one of the most persuasive arguments against it was the fear that an innocent life might be taken. That same level of serious consideration needs to be at the heart of our decision here tonight

Of course, there are very strongly held views—we’ve heard some of them already. That’s as it should be when we are debating a bill that would legalise—for the first time since we abolished the death penalty—the State-sanctioned killing of one person by another. This bill, which only ever refers to “assisted dying”, which to many people means turning off life-support, refusing medical treatment, refusing food and drink—these are not going to be changed by this bill. The patient’s right to choose to refuse will remain intact. But let’s not sanitise. We need to be very clear what this bill is trying to do, which is to change the Crimes Act to legalise culpable homicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. That’s it in a nutshell. Pro-euthanasia advocates would have us believe that this bill is narrowly focused and will affect only a very few individuals. That is an incorrect misrepresentation, because, as lawyers and doctors have repeatedly told us, this bill signifies the most seismic shift in New Zealand law and medical practice in our country’s history.

We need to decide here tonight, according to our own individual consciences, if there is any point at all in persevering with this fundamentally flawed bill or to just vote it down now and be rid of it once and for all. It has already taken up thousands of hours of parliamentary time and was returned from the Justice Committee with only minor and technical changes and deemed to be unfit to be passed into law.

This particular bill has been one that has weighed more heavily on me than any other bill has in my eight years in this House. That’s partly because it is the most poorly drafted bill I’ve ever seen, and also partly because, as the deputy chair and one of eight permanent members of the Justice Committee, I spent some 28 days chairing and hearing submissions. I heard a lot about hope and I learnt a lot about courage, and I commend everybody who wrote submissions and who came in front of a group of strangers to tell their often very personal and very harrowing stories.

This issue is intensely personal to all of us and, as we’ve heard here already tonight, it is our own experiences that have moved and shaped us. My father introduced me to hospice and, at that time, I met a lot of lonely older people. They didn’t have friends and family to protect and advocate for them. That was in my mother’s experience, too, with dementia. I think about those people when I object strongly and reject this bill. Why would we risk the lives of the vulnerable by voting in favour of this? There are no genuine protections against coercion and abuse. Some 10 percent of New Zealanders over the age of 65 have been abused, either physically, mentally, psychologically, or by neglect. These are the people that we need to protect. These are the people that we can imagine it would not be too much of a jump for the abusers, three-quarters of whom are in their own family ranks, to then encourage them to take their lives early.

Who would have to decide on whether someone with dementia has the capacity to understand the decision they’re being asked to make? It would be the doctors. One 10- to 15-minute consultation with a doctor a patient may not even know. The second consultation doesn’t even have to be face to face. The select committee did make the change that it could be done electronically through Skype or through messaging, which, personally, I think further undermines the credibility of the processes. Doctors are required to do too much, and they don’t want a bar of it. The Doctors Say No open letter, which was signed by more than a thousand doctors, and 93 percent of the 1,800 medical professionals who made submissions pleaded with us that instead of trying to borrow the respectability of medical professionals and to sanitise euthanasia under a cloak of medical legitimacy, let us allow them to follow their consciences and to focus on caring for their patients and not killing them.

One of the biggest myths that the bill’s supporters have peddled very hard is that eligibility criteria will never change; it will stay exactly the same. We in this Chamber, where legislation is passed every single sitting day, know full well that laws are altered all the time. Judging by what’s happened in other countries, once euthanasia is legalised, it sets in motion an inevitable loosening of the eligibility. This is a bill that’s very similar to the Dutch laws, so it’s worth looking at for a moment. What began in Holland as a response to the suffering of a small number of terminally ill people in 2002 has rapidly escalated to cover those who are tired of life. By 2010, euthanasia expanded to include mental illness, eating disorders, and tinnitus. Without having once to go back to their equivalent of this place, in Parliament, the Dutch made some 17 changes to the criteria through regulations, Order in Council, and protocols.

Dr Theo Boer, one of the architects of the Dutch law for 30 years, has had a complete change of heart. He’s read this New Zealand bill, and he strongly advises us not to change our laws, because, as he says, once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s no going back. In Holland, he says it has had far more consequences than they had ever imagined, and he wishes they had never ever done it. For increasing numbers of people, he says, euthanasia becomes the default way to die. The availability of euthanasia promotes despair rather than hope, and what he describes as a culture of death. Is that really what we want in this kind and compassionate New Zealand? As Dame Tariana Turia says, how does this contribute to the wellbeing of our whānau and our vulnerable communities?

Our current laws are straightforward the way they are. They protect all human life equally. No one person’s life is treated differently from anyone else’s, not based on wealth, ethnicity, or any other points of difference. As so many submitters have told us, the lives of the sick, the disabled, and the elderly will be defined by their medical conditions. As the Disability Rights Commissioner, Paula Tesoriero, told the committee, this bill undermines the position of the disabled and the vulnerable. It devalues their lives and poses significant risks. The so-called right to die for some would all too easily become a duty to die for others. For many submitters, their biggest worry was the risk that legalising assisted suicide would normalise it and our already high rates would increase. At best, it would send mixed and confusing messages. The burden of proof is with the bill’s advocates, and they have never proved there is no link.

The bill’s supporters have told us that New Zealand’s apparently behind the times and that a law change allowing euthanasia is inevitable. That is simply not so. The reality is that 5 percent of the world’s population have legalised the intentional killing of one citizen by another. So the rest of the world—that’s around 6.65 billion people—are living and dying without it. The current New Zealand law is not broken, and our courts are able to take a compassionate overview while still sending out the strongest possible message about the importance of caring for and protecting the most vulnerable.

Before we push the nuclear button of legalising euthanasia, I think we need to acknowledge that, in some parts of New Zealand, the level and quality of end of life care is just not good enough and we need to do better—better funded care for people who are dying, and to commit to delivering holistic, wraparound palliative care. It is effective, and more palliative care will be more effective. I’ve drafted a member’s bill currently in the ballot to guarantee access wherever people are in New Zealand so that they can get the best quality and, with ministerial overview, end of life care. That’s what we owe our vulnerable, and that’s what we owe future generations of New Zealanders.

Public safety and protection of the most vulnerable, rather than an individual’s personal choice, must be the overriding concern of any Parliament. Our role as lawmakers must be to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number, and we have a duty to ensure that the degree of safety built into legislation matches the gravity of the risk. The stakes are very high, and we each have to ask ourselves the question and then be able to live with the answer: how many unintended deaths are too many? Can anyone here put a number on it? As with voting down the death penalty 60 years ago, we have to ask ourselves whether one innocent life lost is OK and can be treated as collateral damage and something we can live with. I know I can’t, and that’s why I am opposed to this bill and that is why here tonight in this Chamber I am voting against this fatally flawed “End of Life as we Know It Bill”.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to say that I will be voting for this bill for a number of reasons that have already been canvassed by this House. I want to begin by acknowledging the sponsor of the bill, David Seymour. I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee, and I don’t think there will have been a piece of legislation that has exercised the time and effort and energy of a select committee in this House for some considerable time; so thank you to the committee members for that. Can I also acknowledge a former member of this House, Maryan Street, who was the first to champion this cause and champion legislation for this cause when she was in this House previously.

This debate about this bill is not about alternatives to or substitutes for palliative care. I think we have to be very careful in this debate that we don’t set up these false alternatives. Of course palliative care has a place and will continue to have a place in the healthcare of those who are suffering and dying in this country. So it is not about an alternative to or a substitute for palliative care. This is not a debate about suicide, in the sense that we understand that those who are in a state of despair or depression or who have just given up because of the circumstances of their life and who can see no further way forward—that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about those people whose health condition is such that they have no future. They are terminal but, more than that, the quality of their life has gone. They have their faculties, they are capable of making up their mind, they are capable of making a decision, and the question is whether we should allow the law as it is at the moment to stand in their way to make a decision of their choice about how they wish to meet their inevitable end. That’s what this bill provides for.

Some say it doesn’t provide safeguards or enough safeguards. When Maryan Street first had a draft bill, the reason why I was supportive of it and why I have been supportive of David Seymour’s bill is exactly because I looked at the safeguards and I was satisfied that the safeguards are there. It requires the person who is making the choice to meet a number of criteria: first of all, that they are capable of making a decision. Someone in a state of despair is not capable of making that decision. So they have to be capable of making a decision. That they consult their medical practitioner—and not just one medical practitioner but two and possibly three, and not just once but throughout the time it takes when they make their decision, up to the time that it is carried out. The medical practitioner or practitioners are required to regularly review with the person the decision they have said they wish to make.

Those safeguards are there but, more than that, as a result of the debate that was carried out in front of select committee members as they traversed the country and heard the submissions, new ideas were put up about strengthening the safeguards. Had the select committee—and I cast no blame when I say this—been in a position to propose improvements and amendments to the bill, maybe some of those strengthened parts of the safeguards would be in the bill now, but they’re not.

The sponsor of the bill, David Seymour, has already foreshadowed improvements that he sees he can make in the bill. In the absence of the committee itself being able to make those decisions and put in front of us those improvements, let this House, in the committee of the whole House stage, have the chance to have the fulsome debate—clause by clause, line by line—draw on the submissions that the select committee has heard, and see if we can agree on improvements to the bill even as it is at the moment, because I’m confident that, with all of the wisdom of this House, we will be able to do so.

As I said, it is clear that this bill could be improved. That is not an impediment to this House, at this second reading stage, voting down this bill. This bill represents the opportunity for that small number of people who are in a position to reflect on themselves, their health when it is at a terminal stage, their loss of quality of life, to make a decision about how they bring that to an end.

We’ve heard some wonderful, moving, and touching stories of personal experiences of members. I remember my father when he died, 17 years ago. He was an Englishman. He was a former officer in the British army, so nothing was going to stop him seeing himself through to the end of his days. He had a terminal illness, and the last years of his life were, frankly, a misery for him and my mother, and for me and my siblings. Every time we went home, we did our bit to support Dad, but I knew he was suffering. He knew he was suffering, but his spirit was such that he would not give up. He was the sort of man who was there, literally, for the last breath, and as I saw him in his dying hours on his bed in the hospice, struggling to take those last breaths, clearly in pain, he was not going to give up.

His story is, when we were all gathered around, hour after hour, late at night—and he was still there, still struggling for those last breaths—the nurse came in and said, “Oh, look, he’s got a wee way to go yet. If you want to go home and get some sleep, do that.” So we all toddled off and went home, and within an hour we got the phone call: “He’s passed.” But that was dad. You see, he was proud—he was proud—and I see now that he did not want to take his final breath in front of all of us. But he made that decision. We knew that that was how he felt.

But I’ve also seen others, and I am good friends with others who have seen their parents in, frankly, diabolical situations, where their parents have said, “It’s terminal. I can’t move my body. I can’t move my legs. I can’t do anything to take care of myself. This is not who I am. I am totally rational and I’m not angry, I’m not in despair, but this is not who I am. I am close to the end and I would like to control that end.” The law we have on our statute book today prevents someone in that situation from taking that step, from making that decision, and I don’t think that is right.

In a country like ours that respects the dignity of the person, the dignity of the individual, why would we allow our law to deprive somebody of that final decision, of that control of their life? That is why I will be voting for this bill, and I will work hard with others, if we get to the committee of the whole House stage, to strengthen the protections in the bill, to make the best bill and create the best framework that we possibly can around this very sensitive, very delicate issue.

I end on this point. As we come to this debate, as all those who came to the select committee did with their submissions, we bring our values, we bring our faith, and we bring our experiences and our various perspectives to it. This is a debate that clearly ignites a great deal of passion, as it should, but in the way that we all bring those values and our respective faiths to this debate because of what we foresee will be decisions—or might be decisions—that people will want to take, so it is that somebody in the position of wanting to exercise that choice to bring their life to an end will bring their values and their faith and their experiences and their perspectives to that decision too. We should not be preventing them or creating a constraint or a restriction on anybody from seeing through their values, their views, and their faith, however they choose to profess it, to express it, or to practise it in making a decision of this magnitude. So, on that basis, I think it is time for us to support the right for those to make a decision.

I rise to support this legislation. Can I acknowledge, David Seymour, your courage, your endurance, your commitment. Members of the select committee—39,000 submissions. More New Zealanders have engaged with this legislation than any other in our nation’s history. Can I acknowledge Maryan Street, who is in the gallery this evening.

The reality is this is not just about several years of process. We are 16 years that members of Parliament have been considering this issue. In my view, New Zealanders have consistently said that they support change in the law, and I support change because I respect those New Zealanders’ views. This is hard, and I want to set out why I believe this is one of the hardest ever pieces of legislation to come before this House.

It is hard because it deals with the sanctity of life. It is hard because it traverses human rights. It is hard because some see this as a collision and a conflict of cultures: those who believe in collective decision-making and those who believe in fundamental human rights. It is hard because it tests the very foundation and bedrock of some people’s religious beliefs. It is hard because, as anyone who has had or has a serious illness knows—can I acknowledge Bobbie Carroll, who is in the gallery, and the other people here who have got life-threatening illnesses—there is grey. The reality is that no member of Parliament in this House can argue for a perfect decision-making process. We live in a world where there are more drugs and treatment options for people, and the reality is some people’s circumstances will change.

But the fundamental reasons why I support this bill are around compassion. Ultimately, what this is about is that the overwhelming evidence shows there is a group of people who suffer. There is, fundamentally, a group of people which suffer; they’re in pain. The overwhelming evidence shows there is also a group of people who commit suicide in a very violent way because they do not believe in the current law and the process that is in front of them.

I do not agree with some of the opponents of this bill, that somehow we are at all condoning suicide, and I think some people would find that very offensive, actually. I do not agree with the opponents in terms of this bill that there are no safeguards. The reality is—and I acknowledge some of the most brilliant legal minds in New Zealand that have worked on this law: Catherine Marks, Andrew Butler—this has been one of the most considered pieces of legislation; so this has been 16 years in the making. But, ultimately, what I come back to is an extraordinary woman, Lecretia Seales—and I acknowledge Matt Vickers, and other family members that may be watching this evening. This was a bright, smart woman who understood law, she understood public policy, she had served her country. What she asked for was not a wide bill, in my view.

What she asked for—and I want to quote her—she said, “I have accepted my terminal illness and manage it in hugely good spirits considering that it’s robbing me of a full life. I can deal with that, and deal with the fact that I am going to die, but I can’t deal with the thought that I may have to suffer in a way that is unbearable and mortifying for me.” Ultimately, what Lecretia articulated, I think, has been articulated by members of this House in terms of their stories—their personal stories. I too have a story in terms of a family member who would not be helped by this piece of legislation. I realise that what this Parliament will very likely do is pass a very narrow law, that will affect a very small group of people, that will—and the overwhelming evidence is that a whole lot of people don’t take this up; they may take the choice but they never go through with it—but a small group of people will not be in pain and suffering.

I believe that that is the conscience of this Parliament. We say we are one of the most progressive nations in the world, but other jurisdictions have moved, and we have failed—we have failed for 16 years, and I would argue for every member of Parliament to consider with their conscience what the overwhelming group of New Zealanders want us to do. I support this bill to the House.

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karanga maha o te wā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Mr Speaker, like everyone represented in this House, I have taken this conscience vote very seriously, because I do see this as a significant decision that we are forced to confront as a part of our responsibility as members of Parliament, and I expect that the public watching at home will see how full the Chamber is today, because people on both sides of this debate are taking this issue incredibly seriously, and they’re taking their responsibilities in this House seriously.

My personal experiences, like I think everyone in this House, have shaped my view. During my childhood, my grandmother attempted to take her own life many times because she felt a burden on society as someone who struggled at times with a mental illness. My most fundamental concern with this legislation is that sanctioning euthanasia makes it easier for vulnerable people to feel that the most appropriate option is to take their own life, and that it is very difficult to ensure protection sufficient to preclude this ever happening. In Opposition, I sat for a period on a select committee that considered euthanasia and heard many harrowing stories from both sides of this debate, and I came to the conclusion that improved palliative care practices will address many but not all of the concerns raised by proponents of assisted dying.

The committee also reinforced to me the near unanimity of opposition from those in the medical professions with the most information and experience of dying, as well as those who work with those who are dying and their families. I retain a concern about the increasing desire across society to favour a sanitised experience of death, and that view of mine is shaped by my own experiences as a funeral celebrant, where I heard a great deal of euphemistic language around the topic of death. I’ve also heard a lot of talk about dignity in death, and too often it seems to me—not always but too often—that is about the sensitivities of those who surround the dying person, rather than the person who themselves is confronting death.

I do believe that we stand to learn a lot about what is important in life, about relationships within families and communities, by sharing the experiences of those who are dying. Our experience of humanity risks being diminished if we push for shorter, more succinct death experiences. As I say that, please do not think I argue in favour of glorification of suffering, but rather a turning toward rather than a turning away from the dying process, which I see as a natural process. This decision is not perfectly straightforward, as I am particularly aware of those who suffer from degenerative diseases. None the less, on balance, I find myself returning to the same conclusion, born of personal experience, as with many in this House.

I revisited the bill ahead of its reading in the Parliament in December 2017 and decided not to support it, because of my previously documented concerns. I do want to thank, of course, everybody who committed to the process, who made submissions, the public as a whole. But, as I conclude, I do want to say that I believe, whether this vote is carried or not, people in this House carry a responsibility. If it goes down, those who vote it down have a responsibility for making sure we have improved palliative care. Those who vote it up, if it goes up, have a responsibility to ensure they do everything in their power to protect our most vulnerable.

Let me be clear: I do oppose the bill, but I do not think the world will end if it passes either. It is my view that if it passes, it will be but one more step toward a more atomised and individualised experience of life and death, and a step away from a commitment to a common journey through life and death, shared with friends and loved ones. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity. I find myself tonight, I suppose, in an unbelievable position, and that is that I’ll be supporting this bill, and I never thought in my life that I would support such a bill. I have heard so much kōrero tonight about individual rights. I was brought up in a traditional Māori way, where the individual had no rights—no rights whatsoever. Brought up in a collective, whānau decided everything. Marama Davidson talked about it. We had no choice when we came into this world, and we have no choice when we go out. You can say you want to be buried somewhere; I’ve been to so many tangi where people were buried in the wrong place it’s not funny—it’s not funny. My father always said, “Dead people have no rights. The whānau decides.”

Whānau decides the names of the kids. I named my son—I gave him one name, Dad gave him another name the next week, and he’s had two names all his life. The collective is everything. Whānau, hapū, iwi is everything. Tikanga is everything. That’s how I was brought up. That’s how many of our Māori members have been brought up.

Tariana Turia is someone close to me. Others like her have lobbied myself. We got a tweet tonight from one of the whanaungas saying, “Here you are, won over by the white, liberal vote in Parliament.” That is what Māori members face sometimes, and I understand it, because I understand the background, the upbringing, the history, and the mistrust in terms of the House system, and the way that some of our people have been treated. Who will ever forget Rau Williams in 1997? Who will ever forget the health support that he was denied? Our people, whether they’re Māori, working class, poor, disabled, don’t trust the system. They don’t trust the system. I’ve heard so much kōrero tonight that I respect from both sides—from both sides—but my experience tells me that our people are nervous; our people are scared. Despite all the great work done by the select committee—and I acknowledge you all—there is still a lot of distrust out there. That comes through experience, and it comes through history. So I always thought I’d vote against this this bill.

But then, of course, we have personal experiences, and my personal experience is that my mother is dying. When you watch my mother, if you’ve watched her—and some people in the House know her—you will understand how tough that is. My mother was a speaker for our people and a leader for our people—a total mana wahine—a leader in South Auckland for women. She led our marae—our women led our marae, and Mum was at the forefront—threw all us males on the side, threw us on the side and led the way. Vibrant. Passionate. A leader—an absolute leader. No one would shut her up. Twenty years on the Parole Board, appointed by the National Party—thank you, National. National also gave her a damehood. I don’t agree with damehoods, but Mum still took it. Thank you, again, National—we had a great day. But my mum is just one of the greatest advocates, and I know people like Gerry Brownlee and others—Maggie Barry—have all acknowledged her. People in the Labour Party—Ruth Dyson and others here; Marama—you know, you’ve all acknowledged Mum. But Mum’s not that person any more, and as a whānau we’re watching her. And I know that she would never have believed in euthanasia—I know that—but then I think Mum, if she saw herself today, she may well change her view.

So I’m saying today that this kaupapa deserves another kōrero. I’m not saying I’m going to vote for it in the end, but there’s been some valid kōrero put up. Some expert people have gone through this, and rather than just condemn it, maybe it’s worth another kōrero. As a Māori caucus—I don’t speak for our Māori caucus; I’m a co-chair along with Meka Whaitiri—we split right down the middle. There is no one view. There is no one tikanga. No one has the Māori view. We can only reflect our personal experiences, and I hope that the House has got something from my kōrero tonight. Kia ora anō tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think of anyone who’s been watching this debate, and of the 39,000 people that submitted on this legislation, I don’t think that anyone could argue that this wasn’t a thoughtful, respectful debate on what is a particularly challenging issue. I do want to acknowledge David Seymour for bringing this member’s bill to the Parliament. One of the things that I undertook when I became a member of Parliament—because you’re always asked beforehand, “What will you do when it comes to a conscience vote?” It’s easy to think about our own life experiences and to say, “That will be the basis of my conscience vote.” But I decided before becoming a member of Parliament that, actually, my responsibility in undertaking this role would be to hear both sides of the argument, to listen, to learn, and to respect the wide range of views that were held. That’s exactly what I’ve done on this end of life bill, having attended functions in Parliament with those who were advocating for the bill and those who were advocating against the bill.

I’ve met with constituents, as I’m sure every member of this House has, but I also took the step of asking my own questions, contacting experts, contacting people who deal with this issue every day—because, clearly, I don’t—listening to families, but, more importantly, listening to those that had terminal illnesses. As the bill as introduced includes a much broader group of people than those with terminal illnesses, I listened to them very carefully. So I have approached this issue with an open mind, but I think, at the end of the day—you know, I have been conflicted because, at the core of me, I do believe in the value of individual choice, but I also believe, fundamentally, that we have a responsibility as members of Parliament to represent those that don’t have a voice, that don’t have a strong voice or a loud voice or a powerful voice. We have a responsibility to represent those that may have a disability, that may be unwell, whether unwell of body or of mind or of soul, and we have a responsibility to represent those older New Zealanders.

I think part of the conflict, very clearly, for me has been that I’d love to say I live in a country where we look after our own. I would love to stand here and say that we have a wonderful, proud record as a country of families looking after their precious family members. The reality is we don’t. We have a terrible track record of abusing those in our own families that we should be taking care of. Others have talked about, you know, the 10 percent record of elder abuse, and so I take that as a context into this decision, because it is a significant one.

It’s hard not to have any influence of our own personal experiences. I remember looking in my mother’s face hours before she died, and I remember seeing fear in her face. And it’s not of a deep religious view, but I also thought that night, and I thought as I encouraged my brother to not resuscitate her anymore and to let her go, that, actually, there is something dignified in every death, and I don’t think as human beings we should be afraid of it. So it has been a very tough decision, and I will be voting against this bill.

Like many members of this House, I have spent a great deal of time thinking hard about this bill. I voted yes at the first reading, and yes with the objective of spending time reflecting on the issues very, very carefully indeed. I took the opportunity to go and sit on the Justice Committee from time to time so that I could hear at least some of the submissions for myself, to hear from a range of people, and especially to do what the previous speaker has just suggested we do: to seek out expertise and to seek out, I guess, information on which we could rely. It has been a difficult process. As some of the earlier speakers have referred to, we have been lobbied intensively, and a lot of the time the arguments from both sides have been, at best, disingenuous, but often, frankly, misleading and twisting data to suit themselves. So it became an issue of whose opinion I was going to rely on and whose information I was going to rely on to make a call on what I should do.

Like Mr Bishop, like many of the speakers in this House, I value autonomy and I value agency, and I think we must respect those individuals. But for me, it is precisely the individuals whose autonomy is compromised, the individuals whose agency is compromised, that we need to have concern for. Ultimately, that is why I am changing my vote from a yes to a no. I thought in particular of people with disabilities and I felt, in particular on older people and on young people.

In terms of people with disabilities, I listened very, very carefully to people like Dr Hūhana Hickey, but more recently I spent a lot of time reflecting on an article written by Chris Ford and published on the Newsroom site, where Mr Ford talked about the issues that people with disabilities face, in particular the social construction of disability so that people are not necessarily disabled by their bodies but they are disabled by the society which structures itself only around the able bodied. It is a society in which people with disabilities can find it hard to access medical care. It is a society in which people with disabilities can find it hard to access reasonable accommodation. It is a society in which people with disabilities can find it hard just to navigate the ordinary passages of human life. And as a society we do not support people with disabilities sufficiently. In particular, we make people with disabilities feel that their lives are not worth living. How often does someone who is able bodied say, “I could not tolerate living if I ended up in a wheelchair.”? But people with disabilities do that happily every day.

This is what worries me in terms of people with disability, and it is the information that Mr Chris Ford reported that already people with disabilities feel pressured to give up, feel pressured that they must go away. I believe that we have a responsibility to support people with disabilities, and until we have decent medical care, until we have decent living standards, until we have a society that structures itself around all bodies, then it is dangerous to allow this type of bill to go through, because of the impact on people with disabilities.

One of the submissions I heard and that meant a great deal to me was the submission from the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners. They did not have an opinion on the bill itself. They declined to say whether they supported or opposed the bill. However, what they did do was draw on the knowledge of their members to give those of us listening to them some ideas about this bill, and they drew our attention to the incidence of elder abuse and the extent of it in this society. This is the second of my concerns: around elderly people who would feel pressured to give up their lives because they are subject to financial abuse, they are subject to physical abuse, they are subject to the abuse of lack of care. So when the Royal College of General Practitioners says that that is what they have noticed, that is an opinion that I think is worth listening to.

They also spoke of young people. It is something that others might not have noticed, but in their considered wisdom they said, “This is what should happen if this bill should go through.” They said, “If this bill should go through, then the minimum age of eligibility for euthanasia should be set at 25 years.” They felt that younger people did not have the capacity to make good decisions in these sorts of cases. They were worried about the capacity of young people’s thinking. Now, of course, our human rights legislation won’t allow that. But it did draw something else to my attention—this is a third of the groups of young people that I’m worried about—and it is the link to suicide.

Now, let us be very clear. Euthanasia is not suicide. I think it is specious to conflate the two. But here again I heard information from people who are experienced in dealing with this that worried me. And it was from submissions that I heard from school counsellors when I was sitting on the select committee. Their big concern was this: school councils say that, in their experience of dealing with young people, young people would see euthanasia as permission to commit suicide. Yes, the two things are different, but on the one hand with euthanasia we would be saying that it was permissible to end a life, and the young people would see that as permission themselves. And we know that we have a problem with youth suicide in this country. I have to say that this one is particularly personal to me. It worries me intensely with respect to youth suicide.

We have heard many speeches this evening—all of us, I think, speaking from personal and lived experience. I suppose there is not a member in this House who has not sat at the bedside of a dearly loved relative holding their hand as they leave this world. There is not a single one of us who has not thought carefully about this, and I suspect that everyone is casting their vote very, very carefully. It is for this reason that I wish to end not on the bill itself but on the process by which we got to this stage. It is something that I mentioned earlier on. This is a huge decision for us and we need good information on which to base it.

When we have people giving us data but it’s skewed in one direction—we got data telling us that a particular ethnic group supported the bill after all, but it was based on 17 members of that group—that is not good data. How can we make a good decision if we are not given good data? We had—and I really regret this because I have personal friends who are involved in the Care Alliance, but the Care Alliance sat there and told us that many of the submissions to the bill were not religious. But I sat in that select committee room and the written submissions were not religious, but it was very clear from the actual spoken ones that many people were motivated by religious views but it was not in their written submissions. My plea is for some honesty. If a submission is motivated by religion, brilliant—go for it—but don’t disguise that. Be upfront about it. It’s really important to let us know what is motivating you and where opinions come from.

So my final plea for this bill is that people, when they are talking to us as parliamentarians, treat us with respect and treat us with honesty.

Can I start by first acknowledging the sponsor of the bill, David Seymour. David, can I acknowledge the respectful way that you’ve dealt with me throughout this process, which is an extremely sensitive one. Can I acknowledge Matt Vickers, who’s in the gallery tonight. Matt, can I acknowledge you, the love and dedication that you’ve shown to Lecretia in advancing this, and I think Lecretia’s mum is here tonight too. Can I acknowledge her as well.

In terms of these conscience votes, we all deal with them as members of Parliament in a different way. My approach that I decided to take was that if a conscience vote came up before an election, then I’d go out to my electorate and I’d make it very clear what my position on that was. The reason I did that is I felt that then they could take that information and use it in the way they cast their vote, in whether or not they wanted to support me. In the case of conscience votes that come up after the election, I felt strongly that I would go back to my electorate and I would consult with them. I would use public meetings, polls, surveys, and a ballot box in my office to find out what the majority view was and to try and get the debate started in my electorate, from the south, in Silverdale, Ōrewa, Whangaparāoa, Pūhoi, Waiwera, right up to the north, Warkworth, Matakana, and Leigh.

I can report to the House tonight the results so far of that work that’s been. Of the 1,309 responses that I’ve had, 561 are for or in support of the bill, 653 are against. There are 95 people that are undecided and we’re probably operating on a margin of error of about 7 percent. So you can see that it’s very, very close. It is virtually 50/50. For me personally—I want to state here what my own position on the bill is—in its current form I definitely do not support it and I can’t see myself supporting it through to the third reading either. On this poll result, if it was a third reading I’d be voting against the bill, because I’d have to disregard the undecided in the margin of error. But I am going to support the bill. I am going to support it through to a committee stage because I want the people in my electorate to be able to continue to engage in what I think is a critically important debate for us as a country.

I want to acknowledge Maryan Street, I want to acknowledge Maggie Barry, I want to acknowledge Professor Rod McLeod and David Seymour for coming up to my electorate, where we held a public meeting. I found the biggest venue I could find and it was standing room only. That’s the amount of debate and that’s the amount of engagement that we’ve had on this. The reason why, and it’s very simple—I don’t have any clever nuanced sort of approach to this other than the fact I was on the committee. I went to Tauranga, I went to Hamilton, I went to Whangarei and Auckland, listening to submissions. Can I acknowledge the submitters in their bravery to actually trust us to come forward and share what was for them very personal details about their lives.

But really what it comes down to for me, and I don’t know if anyone can really allay my fears, is that we do deal with elder abuse in this country. Yes, you’re right. The previous speaker, Deborah Russell, talked about financial abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse. It happens behind closed doors, and the sad thing is that often the perpetrator or perpetrators are family members. So if someone can tell me how we can protect our senior Kiwis behind closed doors, from having the insidious pressure put on them to take a lethal dose of medicine and kill themselves—if someone can tell me how we can protect them from that, how we can remove that pressure, because I deal with it; I support Age Concern and I deal with elder abuse cases, sadly, in my office almost on a weekly basis. If someone in this House can stand up—and I acknowledge the Minister of Justice, and I’m committed too to continue to work on this bill on behalf of my electorate. But I need to be convinced, and I’ve spoken to the sponsor of the bill, about this—I need to be convinced that our senior Kiwis behind closed doors are not going to be subjected to what I think is an insidious situation where they’ve got people trying to persuade them and coerce them into taking a lethal dose of medicine and killing themselves. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

The time determined for this debate by the Business Committee has now expired. I have determined that the subject of this vote will be treated as a conscience issue. That won’t surprise people. In this case, I know there are members who will want a personal vote, and I will therefore accept one. The process we follow is that I put the question, people vote on the voices, I declare the result, and I’m pretty certain that at that point someone will ask for a personal vote, and one will be held.