Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill be now read a third time.

I am incredibly proud to be standing here in the third reading of this bill. This is a proud day for this Parliament because while this enacts a small change in legislation, it is a big change for many in our community. Today is a day about inclusion: having the right to have a birth certificate that reflects who you know yourself to be. I am talking about the self-ID provisions in this bill, and I will talk more on those shortly, but what has been lost in this debate is that there are actually other provisions in this bill.

The first reading of this bill happened four years ago—actually, four years ago tomorrow—and while it made important changes to our national record of New Zealand’s births, deaths and marriages register, none of the provisions were deemed to be controversial and were accepted as sensible and necessary changes. For those people outside of this environment, this bill was probably seen to be a bit bland, but when it came back from select committee in August 2018, all hints of blandness had gone. In fact, it would be fair to say that it was a little bit more interesting than it was before it went to select committee.

The then Governance and Administration Committee had listened to the petition of Allyson Hamblett and agreed with the request that the Government introduce a self-identification process for amending registered sex without the requirement for medical treatment and without the need for a court process, and the bill was amended accordingly. I’d like to take the opportunity to thank Allyson, and also thank the then select committee for the work that they did on this bill at that time.

Groups and individuals, though, were perturbed about this because they were concerned that this new version of the bill had not undergone public scrutiny. The then Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon Tracey Martin, set up a working group for reducing barriers to changing registered sex, and even though they came up with a large number of very, very good recommendations, they said in that report that nothing could trump a change in the legislation and that this needed to happen.

So when I became Minister of Internal Affairs just over a year ago, this bill had been sitting back on the Order Paper for two years. I decided to direct my officials to develop a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) of the self-identification clauses and send that SOP to an inquiry with the select committee so that it got the scrutiny, and all would have the opportunity to have their say. I would like to thank all of the submitters who had their say in this, and also thank the select committee for their hard work over this time. I also want to thank my officials for the work that they did.

There is one part that has come back today in this bill that does give me a little bit of disquiet, and that is that, unfortunately, today we don’t have a solution for overseas-born people who live in New Zealand but want to change their birth certificate. The select committee worked hard to find the solution, but, unfortunately, we just couldn’t get to that point because the options would have left members of this community exposed and wouldn’t have necessarily been a good option, let alone the best option. However, the select committee did recommend that the Government continue to work on finding a solution, and I agree. So I have already signalled to my officials that we need to continue work in this area. Targeted consultation on finding the solution will begin in 2022, and I am committed to that work.

At the same time as the consultation on the overseas-born solution, there will be consultation occurring on the regulations. These include the sex markers, who is a suitable third party to support 16- and 17-year-olds in their decision to change their gender, and the additional requirements for when a person applies to change their gender more than once to prevent fraud, which is a necessary check and balance. Setting these provisions in regulations is important so that we can futureproof the bill as societal norms change around gender and identity over time.

As I signalled, this bill has had some controversy. It’s been a tough journey for our trans and non-binary community, and I want to thank them for the work that they have done in advocating for this. I acknowledge that throughout the journey of this bill, there have been real people who have been hurt when they have been belittled, mocked, or discriminated against—people who, like any one of us, just want to be accepted for who they are and treated with dignity and respect. A lot of the discussion has been aimed at our trans women, who, as a cisgender woman, I am proud to stand alongside and call my sisters. I stand strong against misogyny. Any misogynistic behaviour that aims to keep women down should be rightly challenged. Trans misogyny is still misogyny, so I stand strong in challenging this discrimination.

We continually are moving to be a more inclusive country. One day, all transgender and non-binary individuals will have the freedom to be who they are, no matter what, and they won’t have to face discrimination and hurt from society. They will be able to live their lives and be treated and respected like everyone else, and today is a big step towards realising that goal.

A few years ago, a child was enrolled at my school, where I was principal, who was angry, hurt, and confused. At eight years old, they had been excluded from another local school. The world saw them as a boy, but they knew themself to be a girl. We walked a journey together. They shifted and we fell out of touch, but about three years ago, they contacted me over social media—just the once—but this time as a beautiful, confident, and, most importantly, happy young woman. She wanted to let me know where she was at in her journey, and to thank me for always seeing her.

Well, today, we not only see our transgender and non-binary community but we are changing legislation, and that is truly a step closer to an inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand. Again, I thank the rainbow community, who have been staunch advocates for this change for a long, long time. To our trans and non-binary community, kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui—you keep proudly being you. I am absolutely proud and delighted to commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I rise as the National Party’s spokesperson for women also to speak in support of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill. I think we’d all agree that few bills have had such a complicated passage through this House. I think, though, that we have made it to the third reading with a bill which is in a much better state than the first one that was introduced back in 2017.

While I wasn’t in the House for the original select committee consideration in 2018, I did sit on the Governance and Administration Committee for the inquiry of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 59, and I acknowledge my committee members across the House over there. We had a number of core arguments for and against the bill, and they have been widely canvassed during that committee process.

In the second reading of the bill, I committed to the House that so long as I am a member of Parliament, I will work to advance the rights and protections of women, irrespective of the sex marker on their birth certificate. So let me say that I do understand entirely the strong views on both sides of this debate around this bill.

Throughout the submission process, I’ve heard from people for whom this legislation is very important, and for them, it is another step in feeling accepted and free to be who they are. We also heard and met with many people concerned about what was being proposed, and I’d like to say that I do understand the fear that some have expressed that allowing people to change their birth certificate according to how they self-identify might somehow diminish the status of women in society and it might also represent a step in the direction of replacing the concept of sex in law and public policy with the concept of gender. Those views are genuinely held by a number of people, and their expression of them is a valid contribution to the conversation that we’ve had in the debate that has gone on, but we, as parliamentarians, do have an obligation to listen to them and to take them seriously and to respect them.

I have to say I have been concerned that during the passage of this bill, some groups who have wished to hold public meetings, public debate, in public venues have been blocked from doing so. This is wrong. It is a clear overreach by those venues in question. We can’t have a situation in New Zealand where the views of others that might be disagreed with are somehow branded as harmful or dangerous or offensive. There is no right in this country to be offended by what other people think or what their opinions might be. If we shut down the full expression on topics such as this in this House, we won’t benefit from considering a full range of views as we debate complex policy and ideas, and I do worry about the societal impacts of people feeling that their views are no longer able to be expressed. We really do need to draw a line in the sand on this censorious, restrictive direction of free speech in this country.

On the committee, I listened to all the submissions with as much of an open mind as possible, and I tried to understand where the different submitters were coming from and—importantly—to assess those submissions in light of the legislation and in light of SOP 59. Ultimately, I came to this conclusion: this bill is a small liberalisation of a law that will make life easier for many New Zealanders, and the current law is causing unnecessary distress for people for whom it is a really important matter. I’m not convinced that it sets a broader precedent and that the various policy ramifications on other areas like corrections and health and education are going to be restrictive. They have been worked through and there is a clear pathway forward on all of them.

So Parliament has done what it should do. It’s examined a Government proposal at a multiple of stages, considered the implications, improved them, tightened up protections, weighed the views of all those who contributed, and we’ve decided on a way forward. I understand it’s not a way forward that will meet with the approval of everyone who submitted on the bill—far from it—but it is a reasonable and fair outcome.

I do encourage everyone to continue to contribute to the development of this policy area. There’s going to be another year and a half for public submission on regulations, and, as we all know, the legislation will be reviewed five years from now.

My expectation is that as with other societal shifts and liberalisations in policy and law that we’ve seen in the past, the fears some hold that their freedoms will be removed and that they’ll be affected and the rights they hold will be affected—I believe that as we’ve seen in the past, these fears will be unfounded. Our laws in this country need to reflect the times that we live in, and remembering that this bill—all it is doing is modernising a process that is already in place. It was a dated Act of Parliament. This is a shift in the right direction.

So can I think the Minister for the approach that she’s taken to the passage of this bill. I thank my select committee. Thank you again to Minister Tinetti for the open way you’ve communicated with me. I think that Parliament passes better legislation when we’re able to work in such a collegial manner, and may I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It is incredibly humbling, actually, to take a call on the third reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill. As the Minister pointed out, this bill began as a straightforward administrative bill, and the previous Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee referred it back, recommending changes to the self-identification process of a person’s registered sex on their birth certificate. It was an unusual process to refer it back to select committee for a further inquiry, and—speaking as a member of the committee—we received around 6,900 written submissions and heard around 279 oral submissions.

I want to pay tribute to the brave members of the transgender and gender-diverse community who told their stories in a public forum. They were moving and powerful. There was one particular submitter who really stuck with me: the parent of a young woman who has significant business acumen and was wanting to set up her own business. When she went to start a bank account in order to do this, she was not able to do it under her preferred gender, and the heartbreak that that caused that young woman.

Some submitters raised concerns about the impact of this bill on women and women’s spaces. It was heartening to hear from officials that the bill will have no impact on women’s spaces and who can access them. As a woman who has the correct gender on their birth certificate, this bill will have no impact on me.

Some of the submissions from people in opposition to this bill, I just want to note, cause significant hurt to members of our transgender and gender diverse community, particularly our rangatahi. As the Minister pointed out, it was disappointing for the committee that we were unable to reach a solution around people who were being born overseas. I just want to put on the public record that everyone who participated in the committee was committed—absolutely 100 percent committed—to seeking a solution to that particular issue, and we will work tirelessly to do that over the next few months.

I really want to thank the officials who went back, and back and back again, answering our questions as we tried to find solutions for some of the gnarly issues that we faced. They worked incredibly hard. I also want to particularly thank our Green Party member who joined our committee, Elizabeth Kerekere, for her expertise that she brought to the table.

In finishing, I want to acknowledge some amazing young people from my electorate of Nelson. People who are part of Q-Youth, Nelson Pride, and, in particular, two young people who sat in the gallery during my maiden speech and who I have watched grow since before they were at school. I used to call them my adopted nieces and no longer can do that. I just want to acknowledge today Xander and TK—I love you and I am very, very proud of you.

The message from this Parliament is that for all of our rangatahi who are transgender and gender-diverse, we see you. We acknowledge who you are, and this one’s for you. Kia ora.

Kia ora.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s good to have the opportunity to speak on the third reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill. Other colleagues have noted—quite rightly, of course—that the passage of the legislation has been an unusual one through this House. We’ve heard about its origins and, actually, going back even before the point that it was in the House, the Law Commission’s review of burial and cremation law back in 2015, through a ministerial review, an internal affairs departmental review, the Governance and Administration Committee’s amendments following the first reading of the bill. Of course, as others have alluded to, and more than just alluded to—obviously, covered in some detail—a particular Supplementary Order Paper that would have made a change, and indeed will make a change, has been the subject of a lot of discussion and debate.

I do want to reflect on that within my contribution, but perhaps regarding the rest of the bill, if I can put it that way, I would just note as well, lest it not be recorded at any other point in the third reading, that the bill has actually a really sort of broad ambit. We’ve got the expectation of New Zealanders to create change, use, and access identity information, so the bill is very much designed to provide a more accessible way for Kiwis to reach their own records, and, where appropriate, those of others. That’s sort of the general philosophy, and obviously a lot of the detail of the bill was very much geared towards that. So they are things that we would ordinarily reflect on in Parliament and in select committees, of course—drafting style, definitions of historical information, and relatively straightforward matters such as those.

I do just want to highlight before I move on to those other aspects—before I go any further, I do want to acknowledge the contribution of my colleague and friend Nicola Grigg. I think she set out in very clear fashion the progress of the bill and the process, as well, but if I might just also place it on record, I thought that for a relatively new member of the House and of our caucus, she’s handled with great diligence and grace the competing demands from various sectors of New Zealand’s community and the various pressures that she and her select committee colleagues have felt in relation to the bill. I think she produced in today’s third reading a really good dissertation of the way that she’s thought about the bill and the result, ultimately, that we have reached on this side of the House, along with the Government.

But before I go back into that—and I promise I will get there—greater digital access to information is actually a major theme of the bill, and I think that’s a really worthy aim. Oftentimes, we talk in this House about accessibility of law and other contexts. Of course, a key aspect of the rule of law is that we are able to see the law as it applies to us, but also personal records, and that’s important. If the State is to hold information about individuals—and there’s nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes—then of course it’s appropriate that individuals should be able to have a way of interacting and handling and accessing that data in a way that makes sense for them.

My final note on that is that the privacy protections are always really important in this kind of endeavour. I suppose, arguably, a flipside of accessibility is that it must only be accessible as appropriate. So we see, for example—and I rely here on the legislative statement that’s been provided to the House a note about the exception for public sector agencies to be included in the named person rule. That’s whereby the registrar-general is able to conduct one-off searches that don’t relate to the person’s birth, death, and marriage records, but only under specified circumstances. So not a real blank cheque there in terms of officials being able to handle the data of individuals.

So, then, in terms of the self-identification provisions and amendments that we have made at the committee of the whole House stage, can I say first of all that I think that the House, or perhaps, more accurately, the Government, made a good decision to send that back to select committee. I think there would have been some disquiet if the public had not had a chance to make submissions on a particular aspect of the bill that was very strongly and keenly felt by I suppose I could say, probably fairly, a couple of different sides, and it was somewhat divisive and it’s a shame in a way that the debate produced at times more heat than light. But I would like to join others who have thanked those Kiwis who were good enough to spend their time and their energy and—yes—show courage on both sides of the debate to submit to a select committee. I think it’s a great thing that we have a democracy in this country, whereby New Zealanders generally feel encouraged and able to make submissions to a select committee and that their views will be heard and respected accordingly.

So acknowledging that the debate at times, I suppose, had the tendency to be divisive, I think it’s worth acknowledging, again, as my colleague and friend Nicola Grigg did, some of the tensions around the free speech aspects. She’s framed that, I think, really well, so I won’t go there again. But I think at its best, debate—whether that’s in Parliament itself or the House itself, or select committee—is where one allows others to speak, in the first instance; second, seeks to understand their point of view; and, third, does not make an effort to misrepresent that other view, and acknowledges the strengths of the other view and addresses those, even if it’s ultimately a matter of saying that one may disagree ultimately with the conclusion because there’s another factor that’s able to outweigh that.

So with that sort of philosophical discussion about the nature of the debate, I do want to acknowledge that of course there were also discussions in select committee, and certainly amongst the community, regarding practical aspects such as fears and concerns in relation to safety but also, of course, imperatives regarding identity. These things are very important. They go to the heart of what it is to be human, and so we should always take seriously and acknowledge the heartfelt and genuine good-faith positions of others in respect of such matters.

I think it’s right to acknowledge at this point, as others have done, that the process going forward does include, I suppose, a couple of safety valves. One is simply that which exists for any legislation with regulation-making powers.

So, for those who are less familiar with the way that laws are made in this country, the primary legislation comes through this House. Sometimes it will set up a process whereby other laws can be made under that—we call this secondary legislation for obvious reasons—and sometimes regulations, and, at that point, there’s also an opportunity for members of the public to have their say. It’s not with the same formal process by way of select committee, although I would just note—and never missing a chance to advertise the great and good work of the Regulations Review Committee—it will be for us, if anyone wishes to bring to our attention those regulations, to consider the way that those have been made and the way that they affect people’s lives; not so much from a policy point of view. We’re not able to second-guess the decisions of the whole House at the committee of the whole House stage and also, in that more broad sense of the phrase, of Parliament.

But, nevertheless, there will be opportunities for people to see how the regulations play out, whether there were any unintended consequences, and so forth, and I think I’m right in saying that Ms Grigg indicated that there’d be a five-year review, at which time, I suppose, in or by 2026, the legislation will be—must be reviewed, in fact. So the good old quinquennial review will soon be upon us, and members may decide whether they wish to be in the House at that time or not. That’ll be interesting, and whether or not the views that were expressed at the time are the same in five years will be genuinely interesting.

Of course, society does change. It does make an effort to recognise the views within the community, but I would just, of course, urge that in five years’ time, for anyone who may be involved in that review—whether that’s me or others currently in the House, and no doubt, of course, others will join us, or join them—I just do hope that such a review is conducted in a spirit of good-faith debate without unnecessary division, allowing all to express their views on the matter.

With that hope expressed for the future, may I say today that, as Ms Grigg has indicated on behalf of National, we do support this bill, and we note that at the third reading, it is likely to pass into law today. So, again, to thank all those who have worked hard and involved themselves in its passage.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m grateful to be able to take a call on this bill in this House, and you’ll see this a theme throughout my whole entire speech today is thankyous. First of all, just thank you to all of the submitters, but especially those who have lived experience as a trans person, or their family member. Like my colleague Rachel Boyack mentioned, the ones that stick most permanently in our minds are the ones regarding children: the parents who have bravely made submissions and have conveyed their heartfelt stories to us about their children, and the journey that they had to go on, watching their children get hurt by our community sometimes because of these laws. Those are the stories that stick in our minds.

Can I also, please, thank all of our officials who, like my colleague also mentioned, have gone back and forth and who have done most of the legwork in terms of trying to find solutions for the migrant community, and that’s probably where I’d like to make the most of my contribution. It is the refugees, the asylum seekers, and the migrants to our community, who, unfortunately, will not benefit from this bill, but, as the Minister has committed to, we are here to listen and we will commit to finding a solution. It might not be perfect, but we will endeavour to make your life a little bit easier here in New Zealand in the near future.

I thank, especially, organisations like Rainbow Path for engaging with us on this issue, for being able to say, over and over again, through excruciating detail, to help us understand the journey that you and the people that you represent have gone on so that we can get a better picture. I’ll be very honest: I’m actually delivering this speech knowing far more about the trans community, especially in the migrant and refugee space, than I did coming into this bill.

So, on that note, I’d also love to thank all of my rainbow caucus colleagues from the Labour Party who have subbed in—it was during Auckland’s lockdown; it was long hours sitting in front of the computer—but also our colleague from the Green Party: Dr Elizabeth Kerekere. Thank you so much, all of you, for being able to impart your own lived experiences and your own experience of working with the trans community and the non-binary community with us. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

It is with great pleasure that after generations of systemic discrimination, decades of community activism, and many years of work in this House, we are passing this amendment to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill today. Ngā mihi ki te Minister Jan Tinetti for bringing this bill back into the House and for her staunch ally-ship in working through this. Your willingness to engage with community leaders over the course of this has made it a better bill.

Many thanks to the Governance and Administration Committee, which I joined for the passage of this bill. There is a comradery that builds when you spend hours and hours together hearing submissions of such divergent views.

A shout-out to Rainbow Greens and all of the community organisations who have worked alongside us to encourage people to make submissions and make their voice heard. We acknowledge Gender Minorities Aotearoa, who have been community lead for this for over the last few years; to Rainbow Path, who have specifically worked with the Minister and ministry to advocate for refugees, asylum seekers, and recent migrants. We acknowledge the work of our teams of Tīwhanawhana, Te Ngākau Kahukura, InsideOUT, OutLine, RainbowYOUTH, F’INE, the parents of transgender and gender-diverse children, and the Counting Ourselves and Identify research teams. Ngā mihi aroha, kia koutou katoa, he mahi uaua tēnei. Your job is not done, but we’re nearly there.

I offer a quick whaea whakapapa. In 2004, Georgina Beyer’s member’s bill to specify gender identity in the Human Rights Act was drawn from the biscuit tin, but was later withdrawn. In 2008, the Human Rights Commission produced To Be Who I Am—Report of the Inquiry into Discrimination Experience by Transgender People—a shout-out to Jack Byrne. In 2012, the Department of Internal Affairs offered M, F, and X options for passports. In 2013, the New Zealand Transport Agency offered female, male, and indeterminate options for drivers’ licences. In 2013, Green MP and my colleague, the legendary Jan Logie, ran a consultation with the trans community, and met with Allyson Hamblett and supported her to make the petition that led to this bill. In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018—in pretty much every single year—the IDAHOBIT collection of—collection also, but coalition—coalition of rainbow groups presented to Parliament, to the cross-party network here, and in those submissions every single year was the amendment of the Act. In 2017 the Government and Administration Committee recommended that the Minister of Internal Affairs instruct its officials to review section 28, based on Allyson Hamblett’s petition. It was going so well that it was introduced that year, and, in 2018, it was withdrawn by, at that time, the Minister of Internal Affairs. In 2020, PRISM: Human Rights issues relating to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) in Aotearoa New Zealand was released by the Human Rights Commission—a shout-out to Taine Polkinghorne.

In 2021, Minister Tinetti brought the bill back to the House, and here we are, at its third reading. In between, that represents thousands and thousands of hours of volunteers out in our community, talking to Ministers, talking to MPs, and talking to agencies.

The hearings were something else. We would have hoped that all submitters presented with accurate information and a genuine care for the humanity of all New Zealanders. Sadly, that was not the case, and we acknowledge that many members of takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary communities and your allies were infuriated and traumatised by the gaslighting, transphobia, and, particularly, transphobic misogyny that was expressed in those hearings.

On a side note, somebody made a meme of my colleagues Deborah Russell and Rachel Boyack and I on one of the times that we suggested that perhaps they could calm down some of their observations. But, channelling my Catholic mother, I hope that the complete and absolute failure of the anti-trans lobby provides them with an opportunity to sit down and really think about their behaviour.

The Green Party proudly maintains our long-held stance that trans, intersex, non-binary, and takatapui people with diverse genders and sex characteristics should be able to identify their own gender on their birth certificates in a way that is mana-enhancing, affordable, and accessible in a simple process that can be done without fuss, without serious invasion of privacy, and without proof of surgery, because all people in this country should have documents of identity that reflect who they are, regardless of where they were born or when they arrived in this country.

The bill means we move from an invasive and demeaning Family Court process to a statutory declaration. This will reduce cost barriers, free up the court’s time, and reduce the administrative burden on health professionals, who are required to provide evidence for such applications. But, more importantly, it enhances the mana of takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary people and ensures their birth certificate matches their driver’s licence and their passport, if they have one, but ensures young people can produce a birth certificate that matches who they are and not who they were incorrectly assigned as at birth.

Unfortunately, as my colleagues have pointed out, this only applies to people who were born in Aotearoa. It was one of the two main issues that community advocates raised during the submission process. I may or may not have tried the patience of the select committee by my persistent encouragement of the officials to come up with a solution for this, but I wholeheartedly thank those officials for the hard work that they did. I know they’re all personally invested in marking this work. We could have come up with a quick fix, but nothing that would have protected the privacy of the people who need this.

I am very happy that the Minister has stated her commitment of her and her officials to find solutions for people born overseas. I look forward to the Minister specifying that this includes refugees, asylum seekers, and recent migrants who may not yet be residents, but who’ve come here to make this their home.

The discrimination against people with diverse genders, sexualities, and sex characteristics can easily be traced back to colonisation. This bill signals the continuing shift in New Zealand in our society that reflects that the world is changing—that, actually, LGBTIQ people, people with diverse genders, sexualities, and sex characteristics, are a normal part of our lives, of our whānau.

This bill recognises that those who need to amend their birth certificate can do so and that the courts do not have the right to make that choice for them, that parents do not have that right, and that cisgender people who don’t even know them or care about them do not have that right. This bill upholds the mana, the wairua, the mauri of our takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary whānau. It will be the first of many, especially while I’m in this House.

So, to all of you watching in support, to our tūpuna, takatāpui who came before us, as a takatāpui cis-lesbian femme ally to our takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary whānau, I am very proud to commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As others have stated and we’ve well covered, this has been a long time coming, this bill.

It’s been through a lot of changes. I’d like to thank the submitters and the select committees for the work that they’ve done. It’s obviously very technical and thorough, and I think, ultimately, this bill is about advancing liberalism and actually reducing Government interference in people’s lives by enabling choice and by making things just a bit simpler for those that need it.

There is also the ancillary stuff. It modernises systems and practices, and people have spoken about the digital access being improved, which is desperately needed.

I think this shows compassion, the kind of compassion we want in a liberal democracy to show and present on the world stage, especially for those that have been struggling under the current law. It is very meaningful for those that benefit, while for those that don’t agree with this law change, it really has no effect on them whatsoever, so people just need to appreciate the role of Government in their lives and how it affects them versus how it affects others, and the benefits that that can provide.

So, in any case, I’m not going to hold this up any more than it needs to—after all, I’m in favour of less Government interference in people’s lives. I congratulate the Minister for her work and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It is an honour to speak on this bill this afternoon. I want to address some of the issues that were raised during the recent Governance and Administration Committee inquiry into the bill, and, in particular, into the Supplementary Order Paper which enabled gender self-ID.

I want to address, first of all, the concerns around the science. We had many submitters who came and told us that male and female gender was a matter of science—XX or XY—and that that was all there was to it. One submitter who was of that view had a quote from Distinguished Professor of genetics, Jenny Graves, who is at La Trobe University and has spent her academic career researching how sex develops.

I went digging around in the science too, to find out exactly what was going on, and I found some of what Professor Jenny Graves has written about the development of sex in human beings. I want to quote something from The Conversation site—so she’s put it into language that ordinary, everyday people can understand. She says, “Mismatch between biological sex and gender identity, culminating in its severest form as gender dysphoria, has been ascribed to mental disease, family dysfunction and childhood trauma. But accumulating evidence now implies biological factors in establishing gender identity, and a role for particular genes. Variants—subtly different versions—of genes linked with gender identity might simply be part of a spectrum of gender and sexuality maintained through … history.” Her research shows that there is no simple XX and XY but that development of gender identity in human beings seems to be part of a complex web of about 30 genes that affect the development, and so on it goes.

She carries on to say, “Some young boys show an early preference for dressing and behaving as girls; some young girls are convinced they should be boys. This apparent mismatch of biological sex and gender identity can lead to severe gender dysphoria. Coupled with school bullying and family rejection, it can make lives a torment for young people, and the rate of suicide is frighteningly high. As they move into adulthood, nearly half of these children”—the children who express different genders as children—“continue to feel strongly that they were born in the wrong body.”

Trans identity is real, and the scientific evidence shows that it is real. The scientific evidence goes to show that despite the protestations of those who’ve done school certificate science that it’s all about XX and XY, when we look to what the real experts say, trans identity is real.

The second thing I wish to address is some of the concerns that people came to us with during the bill, and, in particular, people who were opposed to the bill. We listened very carefully, and, in particular, I listened very carefully to people like the Māori Women’s Welfare League and the National Council of Women, who’ve had a long, long history of working for women in this country, and they supported this bill.

But I also listened carefully to the Feminist Older Women Lobbyists collective, or FOWL, as they call themselves. These were a group of women who were opposed to the bill but have a long history of being involved in women’s concerns in New Zealand. Some of the concerns that were raised by FOWL and by other people were things like whether or not allowing gender self-ID would promote men getting involved in women’s sports. It is a canard that is an issue for sports federations to deal with. In fact, the big issue around trans people being involved in sports is getting enough of them involved so that they feel sufficiently comfortable to be involved in community sports, and when it comes to elite sports, that’s for the elite sporting federations to sort out, not a bill on gender self-ID.

Some were very concerned about men in women’s spaces, such as men going into women’s refuges. But Women’s Refuge has been coping with trans women in women’s refuges for decades, and Ang Jury, who heads up Women’s Refuge New Zealand, has said in the past that they’ve had processes in place and it simply is not an issue for them.

The biggest issue that some of the people opposed to the bill suggested was a problem was that men would take on a female gender identity and use it in order to go into women’s toilets and attack women. This, frankly, is absurd. First of all, men who wish to do that—predatory men, and there are predatory men who wish to do that—can already do it, and they already do do it. It is not a matter of using gender self-ID as a vehicle to do that.

But it made me curious, and I sort of went hunting. I said, “Well, is there a law on who may use which toilets in New Zealand?”, and there are laws around toilets. There are the laws around toilets that employers must provide, but there is no law that says that only women may go into toilets marked “Women” and that only men may go into toilets marked “Men”.

In fact, the way that we go into public toilets in this country is simply a matter of convention, and if we are uncomfortable with someone who is using a space that we don’t think they should be in, then perhaps we can ask them about it. But even then, we must be careful. There are many stories from butch lesbians, or butch heterosexuals, even, who have been challenged in toilets when they are in the toilet that is entirely appropriate for their gender, so we must be careful about that convention as well.

The third thing I wish to address from what happened during the hearings was what I would simply call the language of hate, and it was a language of hate that came through from people opposed to this bill. Some people were worried about autogynephilia. I’d never heard the word. I had to go and look it up. It turns out that autogynephilia is used to describe men who get sexually turned on by imagining themselves to be in a woman’s body or to have women’s body parts. I actually thought we were over shaming people for their sexual preferences.

But, actually, a lot of the language we heard directed at trans people was language that we’ve heard directed against gay people. It is the language that treats people as non-people—as people who shouldn’t be allowed to exist—and we were required to listen to it. But I do not think we are required to listen politely to it. As MPs, of course we must listen to people who come to our select committees, but I will not listen politely to hate, and I think it’s important that we don’t listen politely to hate. There were young trans people watching those hearings, and if we sat there and listened politely to hate, it would seem we were endorsing that hate. So I say congratulations to the committee members who expressed their disapproval of the language of hate that came through so loudly.

To finish off, I wish to thank my fellow committee members. I noted that many submitters thanked Nicola Grigg for encouraging them to submit. I wish to thank Ian McKelvie for his very gentle chairing of the sessions. It was a master lesson in how to chair a select committee. I wish to thank Minister Jan Tinetti for her courage and her steadfastness in the face of hate mail and hate directed at her for bringing this bill back to the House and for ensuring its passage through the House. Thank you, Minister Jan Tinetti.

Finally, I give this speech today and I give my support for this bill because of Cushla’s boy, for Fleur’s boy, for Anna’s boy, and for Emma’s boy, for Roy, for Melissa, for Sarah, for Kate—trans people all; parents of trans people—and we love them. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Kia tau te rangimārie. May things be calm and peaceful. I think after the journey that this bill has been on, from listening to the speeches in the House this afternoon in relaying the journey of others who have been affected and we’ve deemed have been afflicted by the labelling and the perceptions of their identity, may this Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill give them a sense of rangimārie.

In speaking about that—I had no idea that I would be speaking to this bill this afternoon, but, at short notice, this is what we do because it is about service. It’s also about recognising the importance of who we are as people within a nation, within a community, and our relationships. So when I look at this bill, I just place beside my legal background and the context of that, and I actually look at this bill as one of whakapapa and whakawhanaungatanga—that of identity, connectivity, and relationships. In saying that, as I’ve tended to do over the course of time when addressing the House, I do reflect and I do connect to relationships and this bill, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill.

Last night, I attended a Zoom hui of my whanaunga, my whānau from throughout the world, as we came together because of the death of a loved one, a grand-uncle. The technology facilitated for those of us who weren’t able to be with our whānau in Las Vegas and it drew us together in terms of the recognition of our whakapapa, our identity, and our relationships with the death and the passing of a loved one.

Before I move to the bill, I also draw from tohu, signs, that present themselves to me in significant incidents or events that occur in life. So as I left the House last night, returning to my place of repose for the evening, and as I was walking up the steps, this white feather was on the ground at the entrance of the place that I was going to and I saw that as a tohu. A white feather is a mark of peace and it is a mark of calm and it is a mark of repose. So that tohu was after I had connected with my whānau from throughout the world, globally, with the death and coming together to celebrate the life of my grand-uncle, and here I am today addressing the House on this Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill and hearing the kōrero about the anguish associated with those who have gone through this journey of recognition of what their identity, their gender identity, is. So this mark of rangimārie, peace—this tohu—is so befitting and appropriate.

I come to the bill because—it’s a brief call, and I’ve taken most of the call—befittingly, it is about the significance and the relevance of identity, of whakapapa, of whanaungatanga. I acknowledge the members on the Governance and Administration Committee. I acknowledge Minister Jan Tinetti, who has carried this journey on from Minister Tracey Martin when it was first introduced to the House, and I acknowledge our good friend Ian McKelvie, aptly described and acknowledged from across the House as a gentleman, who conducted this committee where at times it was fraught and contentious with that sense of calm in bringing it back to a sense of respectful debate and engagement and relationships.

Looking through the bill—I’m going to have to commend it to the House very shortly—it is fortuitous that I do stand to speak to address it because, looking through it, there are portions of this bill when I have advocated for people in my former life as a lawyer. I also look at the bill when it comes to registration of births. Some of my tūpuna did not have their births registered because, in their day, they were deemed not important and significant enough for that to happen. This bill—it’s been a privilege to address the House and I commend it to the House.

I call Camilla Belich—five minutes.

Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a short call on this very important piece of legislation. I wasn’t part of the Governance and Administration Committee that considered this bill, but I want to thank the members of the select committee from across the House for the hard work that they did and the tough work that they did. From all reports, I heard that the way that they did that was with dignity and with respect, so thank you very much to those members of the committee.

Now, the reason I wanted to take a call on this bill is before I was elected into Parliament, I was asked about my position on this bill, and how I responded to that was that I have someone very dear to me who is transgender and is a very young boy. When I was asked whether I would support this bill or not, I said to the person who was asking me that question that I would do whatever I could to make that child’s life easier. I think that’s a lot of the reason why we are in Parliament: it’s to make the lives of children as easy, as happy, and as free as possible. So I responded that I would do whatever I could to help that child have the same easy and free life that we want for all of our tamariki in Aotearoa. So I’m very, very pleased to be here while this bill gets passed into law and to think of that child and to think of all of our tamariki in Aotearoa and know that their lives, no matter who they are and how they’re born, will be a little bit easier because of this important piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Nelson Mandela said, “Our freedom cannot be complete while others in the world are not yet free”, and, today, this reading is about another step towards freedom for people in our society: freedom to be who you are.

I had the privilege of being part of the Governance and Administration Committee at different times and heard submissions, and we’ve heard this whole mention of freedom of speech and free speech, and that’s OK when you have the power as the majority. That’s OK when those around you are voiceless. But we do want to ensure that the freedoms of our takatāpui, transgender, non-binary, and intersex community are free indeed.

I want to thank this Parliament, a place that often is a place that has been around oppression, but today it is another step to liberation for many of our people. I want to thank the select committee, I want to thank the submitters, and I want to thank our Minister, the Hon Jan Tinetti, but most of all, I want to thank our takatāpui, transgender, non-binary, and intersex community who had to sit, who had to listen, who have been voiceless, and whose freedoms have been ignored for so long. I want to thank you for walking with us, for bearing with us, and for putting up with us, and, hopefully, this step today is one more step in your freedoms and in our freedoms as a society. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ian McKelvie.

Yeah, I’m getting there, Mr Speaker. It’s a slow process. Thank you, Mr Speaker. It gives me pleasure to speak on the third reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill and to be able to support its progress through the House, along with the National Party. I got to join this discussion just after the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) was referred to the Governance and Administration Committee, and I was there in time to listen to the many, many submissions on it and take part in the discussion on the bill, which I thought the officials handled extremely well in difficult circumstances, actually, because we’d put some quite significant demands on them.

So it’s a bit interesting, because the changes recommended by the select committee were then adopted at the committee of the whole House, and while it’s very unusual to be discussing work done by a select committee at the third reading, in this case it’s necessary because of the unusual process the bill followed as it came back to the House. Therefore, I want to thank the members of the select committee. They put a significant amount of work into this. We heard a lot of submissions over a couple or three weeks, and, of course, it was during the time when Auckland were basically imprisoned and so we had three captive Auckland MPs who couldn’t get away from the submission process. They were there for good. But none the less, they persisted and did very well.

I want to thank the select committee for listening to most of the submissions with courtesy and with sound questions. But I want to apologise to those members of the public who felt uncomfortable with the process, because I’ve got to say I felt uncomfortable with the process too, and I’m going to explain why right now. I was uncomfortable with the manner in which the live streaming of the select committee proceedings led to some submitters being very unfairly attacked on social media without either the will or, in fact, the ability to reply, or any protection from Parliament. If we’re to continue to use live streaming and social media to get our proceedings out there, we’re going to have to put suitable protections in place, or we will lose the public’s confidence and we will no longer have people willing to submit to Parliament, particularly on difficult pieces of legislation.

I, frankly, don’t believe people should be able to use social media to attack submitters that they don’t agree with. Therefore, the only reasonable solution for us is to prevent comment via this medium in the future, and I think that Parliament is going to have to consider that.

I’ve never felt the need to doubt who I am, to change my name, to amend my registered sex, nor, indeed, to live for years in fear of who I am and in fear of what people might think of me, worrying that my private information will get out against my will, worrying, in fact, that when I die, I might not be identified correctly, and so on. I’m lucky. What I’m saying is that I’ve never walked a step in these people’s shoes, and who am I to judge them or to not support their case when I’m in a position to have significant influence on it?

I believe many submitters to the SOP were very like me, but chose to oppose this piece of legislation for many reasons, many of which I respect, but they were not compelling enough reasons for the select committee to accept. Consequently, we unanimously supported the SOP as reported back and, consequently, this bill at third reading.

This is big. We heard from hundreds of people whom all of these issues affect on a regular basis. I must say, having listened to the arguments for and against this SOP and subsequent legislation, it will have very little or no effect on me, but it will have a significant effect on so many people’s lives, and that, I think—as has just been said not a few minutes ago by someone in the House—is why we’re here. If we can make a little bit of difference to someone’s life and have no impact on other people’s lives in the course of doing it, I think we should most certainly persevere with that.

I want to speak for a minute about the fears of some of those who opposed the bill, because I think it’s necessary to address it. We heard from submitters afraid that men would use this legislation to impose on women. We heard that prisons would be rife with people misrepresenting their sex for ill-gotten reasons, that schools would have boys in girls’ changing rooms, and vice versa. We’ve noted that the Ministry of Education would have to put some very real investment into resolving these questions, that the prison service would have to—and, actually, it is in the process of adequately addressing and resourcing this issue, and that the current laws are sufficient to manage any threats that women felt might be imposed on them. I hope we are right; in fact, I’m sure we will be right.

One of the great disappointments of this process was the scant attention paid to the issues facing people born overseas and their opportunity to participate in this process. We were given very good reasons by the officials as to why this was the case. They did also make significant effort to try and resolve this issue for us with quite short notice, and whilst we could have accepted their solutions, those solutions didn’t guarantee protection of those people and certainly didn’t guarantee that we could actually even access their birth certificates to rectify the problem. So there’s a lot of work to be done in that area, and our Minister of Internal Affairs, I think, in her address today said that she’ll get on and make sure that that work’s done. So, given that that hasn’t been resolved, I think the rest of the bill is in as good a shape as we could have got it in, and I hope that it does what it set out to achieve, which is to make so many people’s lives much better.

The provisions and changes listed in the bill have been well traversed by speakers earlier in the debate, and I don’t intend to go there other than to say I think that the select committee did a good job. I think that the Minister’s done an outstanding job of getting this thing through a pretty tricky process, really, when you think about it, and also the officials did, I think, a pretty special job of trying to sort through a myriad of submissions and some quite challenging issues. So it’s with a great deal of pleasure that I support this bill as it goes through the House today.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to rise and take the final call on the third reading, and can I just acknowledge my parliamentary neighbour, Ian McKelvie, who has just resumed his seat, for his role with the Governance and Administration Committee, and other colleagues on that particular committee, who have done an outstanding job in terms of progressing this through the process to bring back to the Parliament.

Can I also acknowledge the leadership and the conscience of Minister Tinetti. Many speakers have acknowledged the fact that this perhaps has not been an easy ride initially, but to have a bill which seems at this stage to have the unanimous support of the Parliament—we’ll find out in a moment—is something outstanding.

This bill certainly does address some of those bland issues, as the Minister has earlier indicated, because it seeks to address plenty of important milestones in life: births, deaths, marriages, and civil unions. But I want to focus my brief comments on what has changed as a result of Supplementary Order Paper 59, because this will allow for an administrative change that will actually not have any impact whatsoever for most, but it allows for an administrative change that will make a huge difference to many. For many in our takatāpui, transgender, gender diverse, and wider rainbow community, this will allow them, themselves, to identify how they wish to be identified on a document, a birth certificate—a Government-issued document that carries with it administrative authority—because being able to identify however a person wishes should be an easier process than it currently is. This change will remove the barriers—the medical, the administrative burdens that actually aren’t expected of others—simply to allow members of our rainbow community to identify as they wish.

The Minister started by thanking the petitioner who initiated this particular change back in 2017, and I want to conclude my contribution by doing the same. So thank you to Allyson Hamblett for engaging in the democratic process to bring about this change. It’s actually proof that the act of petitioning the Parliament does make a difference, even if it can take some time to get there.

I’m delighted to commend this bill to the House—something that will mean so much to so many people.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.