Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill

I move, that the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill will be reported to the House by 19 July 2023, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

This bill is the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. The law specifically relates to Annie, a constituent of my Kaipara ki Mahurangi electorate. Annie has had a number of different names throughout her life. Therein lies the story parallel to such other deeply fundamental questions about personal aspects that we will consider tonight: where she comes from, who her family might be, and therefore who she is.

While the bill is ostensibly specific to Annie only, there is potentially wider significance. I’m aware of many other Kiwis—and others around the world, for that matter—who have faced the same difficulties and distress. This law change will not directly help their situation, but by shining a light on the plight of those adopted away from their birth parents without the informed consent of anyone involved—that is to say, the birth parents and the child herself or himself—the passage of this bill will help them indirectly. A broader look at this area of law and policy is needed, in my view.

Annie’s story, then: Annie Oxborough was adopted as a child, and the identity of her birth parents was removed from her—young and unmarried as they were—just as she was physically removed from them. Annie has subsequently formed a relationship with her birth parents, and is seeking now to have their names added to her legal birth certificate to formally register her biological and legal parentage. As it happens, her original birth certificate, pre-adoption, did not include the name of her biological father, as this was not provided at the time of her birth. In any case, neither Annie’s original birth certificate nor her legal post-adoption birth certificate provide a true and accurate account of her lineage. This private bill would rectify the issue and provide to Annie the right to have your biological heritage reflected on her birth certificate.

So what, you may be asking, happened? Well, Lisa Clarke was born February 1971, the biological child of Susan Cox, née Clarke, and Scott Sinel. Lisa was subsequently adopted. In accordance with the Adoption Act 1955, a new birth certificate was issued in December 1979 at the Magistrate’s Court in Auckland. In that, Lisa Clarke had become Angela Joy Marshall, being the legal child of an adoptive mother and adoptive father. The child’s name was subsequently changed to Ann Joy Marshall, known as Annie, by deed poll by her adoptive parents in June 1976. Annie married in 1990 and changed her surname to Oxborough.

Both of Annie’s adoptive parents are now deceased. As an adult, Annie was eventually able to contact and form a relationship with her biological parents. Annie seeks to replace the names of her adoptive parents—now deceased—on her birth certificate with those of her biological parents, so that the record of her birth represents a true account of her lineage. To cut a long story short, but I note to assure the House that the requirements of a private bill have been met, this bill is the only legal mechanism that exists by which Annie can achieve, in a certain fashion, this outcome.

The way that the bill would do this is to instruct the registrar-general to record the names of Annie’s biological father and mother on her birth certificate as her two parents, in accordance with section 24 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995. In this respect, it is not dissimilar to the Paige Harris Birth Registration Act 2022, passed relatively recently by this House in the name of Louisa Wall, in unanimous fashion. I point out that Annie’s biological parents have consented to this step being taken.

I wish to acknowledge a number of key figures who have been involved in the formulation of this bill. First, actually, the journalist Duncan Garner—who interviewed Annie Oxborough on his show, and I understand has spoken to her more recently too—who encouraged Annie to take steps to address this situation, which had clearly troubled her all her life. He suggested that my colleague and friend Todd Muller might assist Annie. He, in turn, contacted me as the local member of Parliament for Annie. I acknowledge also the team who assist in Parliament—they assist in providing legal advice, drafting, and so forth—as well as my staff colleagues Jo Irain, in particular, but also Cheryl and Emily at the electorate office end.

Other parties of this House have very generously indicated in advance of today’s first reading that they will support the bill, at least today, and that’s all that I could have wished for, because I’m confident that if you have the opportunity, colleagues, to hear directly from Annie herself the story of her life as it relates to this matter, you will be more than happy to continue to support this bill at subsequent stages.

I also acknowledge those who have reached out to me already, inquiring about the implication of this law for their own situation. As I started by saying tonight, for those people, this bill will not do everything, but at least it may do something.

Finally, of course, I wish to acknowledge Annie herself. I salute her courage, from cold-calling strangers in the phone book to ask if they might be her parents—with no better guide to her own origins than the similarity of surname—to telling her story in the present day to strangers, including me.

Colleagues, I thank you for joining me, and listening to Annie tell her story. Today, it is a story being told through me, but on another day, I very much hope that she will tell it to you herself. So please now let us help Annie write a chapter of her life story that is happier than the first chapters have been. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I want to, firstly, thank Chris Penk for his contribution and for bringing this piece of legislation to the House, and in what he has already said in terms of this being the only legal outlet to bring about the effective change that has been asked for. In the 21st century, sometimes we wonder—you know, it would seem simple, in a stroke of a pen to make a significant change like this, but, actually, it isn’t. So, again, acknowledging Chris Penk in terms of shining a light on some of the challenges that can potentially be unpicked in times to come to ensure that there isn’t the challenge or the trauma that people have to go through when they want to make a decision like having their birth parents on their birth certificate.

Now, in my family, my mother was adopted and has been through the experience of searching, looking for her birth parents. It was a different time. My mother was born in the early 1940s, and it wasn’t until her mid-30s that she actually started looking to see if she could find her birth parents. It wasn’t until later on that she was able to find her birth mother, but no record of her birth father. So, for me, I have, I guess, in a different way lived through the challenges of what was back in the day closed adoption and the challenges that closed adoption brought. And also around the feeling, often, of the State, of church organisations that for some reason thought the best idea for a child was for them not to know their lineage, not to know their whakapapa, not to know the history of who they are.

So, for me, I stand here as someone who knows half my story or maybe close to three-quarters of my story, but there is a gap for me in terms of who I am and my history. So as I look at this Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill, I’m glad to stand and support it and to encourage us, as a House, to move forward and support what happens.

Chris Penk has made quite clear what this does in terms of Annie being able to have her birth parents’ names on her birth certificate. I think it’s something that we need to celebrate, because it’s not easy going through the process of discovering, seeking, looking, finding who you are, but it’s also the next step to then actually want to have that recognised under law, to have your name and your birth parents’ name actually registered on a birth certificate for the State to understand.

I won’t say a lot more, because I believe that we just want to get on and support. I imagine if, Annie, you’re watching, we, as a House, want to—I know on this side of the House, we want to support your journey. We hope that, as you take this next step, that you will continue to grow and flourish as you have, as you’ve explored who you are, your identity, but also now having that recognised.

So I’m sure there are many people in this House, and I’m sure there are many people around Aotearoa New Zealand—maybe even a couple of people watching tonight—who can fully understand and connect with what this is and the joy but also the challenge that adoption brings. So I support the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a brief call on the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill and say that ACT will be supporting this, joining other parties in this House. I appreciate Chris Penk for providing a good history of how we got to this point and some background into Annie’s journey.

I think, though, the overarching point of this bill—and if I refer to a statement from the biography, or from her book, which is that her life’s mission is to correct the law of the past and get archaic, outdated, and cruel regulations changed. And I think it’s fairly obvious that this is probably not it for the broader people that this issue affects, but it does make a difference. It doesn’t create a legal precedent, but it does fix the situation that Annie is in. It raises awareness and puts the spotlight on the issue so that perhaps Parliament in future can look at proper reform, because there will be many others in New Zealand in similar circumstances. It’s not particularly reasonable to say that for every single person—that legislation on a per-person basis is the answer long term. Certainly, there probably needs to be some law changes here.

It’s particularly important around historical adoption in the “baby scoop” era, where it says that, at one point, 76 babies were being given away each week in New Zealand. Historically, over 100,000 adoptions have taken place, and those children—now adults—don’t have that legal right to actually have the biological parents put on their birth certificate. So here we are, in Parliament, doing a bill like this.

So I won’t take up more time of the House just to say ACT supports this bill, we support Annie, and we wish her well in her journey. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is very much a privilege to take a short call on the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. May I begin by acknowledging the member taking this bill through the Parliament, Chris Penk, and thank him for his work, and I also acknowledge Annie. It must be quite strange to be listening in to a group of strangers in the Parliament talking about your life in such a detailed and intimate way, and can I acknowledge Annie’s strength in speaking out publicly, writing a book about her journey, and taking this step to right a wrong that occurred in her life. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, which will consider this bill, can I just assure Annie that we will treat this bill with the care and respect that it deserves, and we will treat her story well and uphold her mana throughout this process.

Having been on the committee that took through the Paige Harris bill last year, it was a humbling experience for us all, and there are times in this Parliament when we take through bills like this that are deeply personal for individual New Zealanders. Can I just acknowledge the comments from the previous speaker, James McDowell from the ACT Party, who has made, I think, absolutely accurate comments and wise comments about the need for broader law reform. I don’t think anyone in this House would hold a view these days that this type of approach, when a young woman had a baby out of wedlock and had her baby taken from her, should ever happen again. I think that all of us acknowledge that that was wrong. It shouldn’t have happened and Annie should have been able to stay with her birth parents, and I think all of us in this House would feel very strongly about that.

The Government is working on law reform in this area, but it does have complexities and it does have real challenges around the historical wrongs that have occurred. In my electorate, I’ve recently had a constituent come to see me who doesn’t have his full story. He has used tools that are available now, like AncestryDNA, to do his own detective work and has managed to find some siblings, but there is still a lot of his journey that he does not know, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to not have all of your story available to you and to have had that taken from you.

So I do want to acknowledge Annie and thank her for bringing this to Parliament. We shouldn’t have to do these things through the Parliament, but that is the only way at the moment. We will look after your bill, we will look after your story, and I look forward to being able to progress this as quickly as we can for you so that at least part of your story can be corrected in the history books. So I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. I’d also like to join others around the House in thanking the member Chris Penk for bringing this bill to the House and for outlining the breadth of the bill but also the narrowness of the bill and how it will specifically correct this circumstance of Annie Oxborough but also understanding that it opens up a wider conversation about those who were impacted who continue to feel the impacts of finding out that they’ve been adopted but that their parents were coerced into adopting them out.

This bill will enable Annie Oxborough to register the name of her birth parents on her legal birth certificate in the place of her adopted parents. All relevant people associated with this private bill have given their consent for this action to take place. Ms Oxborough’s birth parents, with whom she has formed a relationship, are fully supportive.

I remember when the Paige Harris bill came through the House, as well, and how people try to do everything with the tools that they have and then they run out of those tools and we find ourselves discussing these types of very, very important issues in the House as well. That’s what’s happened in this case with Annie Oxborough. So I would also like to acknowledge her bravery for stepping forward, for telling her story, and also her commitment to get it this far as well. I’m sure that it will encourage others to speak out as well.

I think it’s really important for us to remember and to hold the trauma for many people who this will resonate with as well. As I was thinking about this bill, I was reading through one of the witness statements from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, in particular of people who had gone through the St Mary’s Home for Unwed Mothers, and the many young mothers who were coerced to give up their children, without their permission—the trauma that must still be there for those mothers, and the intergenerational trauma continuing on for those children who are trying to find their story, because life is about if you’re going to stand on your tūrangawaewae, if you’re going to stand on your whenua—and I look at it from that perspective, as a Māori—it is about knowing that whakapapa, it is about knowing the connection, how you are connected back as well. If that story is missing for you, then people go searching as well.

So I want to acknowledge the trauma for some of our parents, for some of the people who are searching out there as well, but I also acknowledge the bravery and that journey towards healing in terms of the trauma that was impacted upon, particularly on the children and the descendants of the parents.

I look forward to hearing more about this bill, and, like with others around the House, we acknowledge Annie Oxborough once again and also all the members for being very receptive to this type of legislation, and we commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I acknowledge, actually, the heaviness with which I’m sure Annie and her family have traversed bringing this bill to the House. Can I thank the member Chris Penk for bringing it to the attention of Parliament. Can I also agree with the member from the ACT Party that this keeps happening. We had the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill come before the House. We had to send that through to a select committee process, and all that needed to happen was that a name needed to be put on to a birth certificate. It seems like a very quick administrative fix, but the fact that it needs to take parliamentary time, House time, in this House seems absolutely ludicrous to me, and here we are again having to go through a very extreme process to be able to fix something that needs to be fixed. But does it need to be fixed through this House like this? Can we find a better way to do this? I should think that we should be able to do that.

I’ve got to say, just tonight I was having a conversation with somebody who brought up to me the fact that he and his partner this year got married, and while that’s all good and well, the marriage certificate was presented to him and it said “groom and bridegroom”. He sat there and looked at it and said, “But I’m not a bride, and there’s no bride in our relationship.” But the certificate is apparently so fixed that it has bridegroom on it. He took umbrage with that and he said, “But I’m not; I’m just a groom, so could we just have that on there?” They said no. So there may be another bill that may have to come to the House to try and correct something which, again, should not take the time of the House to be able to fix these little things.

But they are big things, because we as New Zealanders, we do rely on our identification, we do rely on these things like birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates. They are important, but I truly believe that we shouldn’t be taking time in the House to be able to fix something that seems at the outset such a simple fix. I will pursue that one, and I will also look to support this one. I hope that Annie gets her justice, and I hope that she gets it soon so that we can continue to focus on the bigger issues that bring us to Wellington and into Parliament as well. So I commend this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too look forward to supporting this bill, and I want to acknowledge the comments made by many around the House who have expressed their sympathy with Annie Oxborough’s situation, and their desire to support this change, recognising the importance of identity.

I wanted to relay something of a personal story, actually. My mother was adopted a generation before Annie Oxborough. I note that I am of a similar age to Ms Oxborough, and this is a story of a generation before, but not completely dissimilar. My mother was part of an adoption at a time when these things were done discretely and secretly. She felt that that left her—I talked to her earlier about this, earlier this evening, and I hope I’m using her words right—at sea or without an anchor. There’s something about being dislocated when you are an adopted person.

Later in her life, after her adoptive mother had died, her adoptive father shared with her some information about her adoption that was sufficient for her to trace some of that history and reconnect with her birth mother—the last name of her birth mother, the age which the mother was when she was born, and in which town she was living at the time or registered in. With that information and a good deal of detective work, going through both Births, Deaths and Marriages; processes; newspaper articles; and the like—I can remember travelling as a child around the South Island with my parents as they did the detective work, essentially, to find that connection. Then, eventually, that led to a reconnection with my mother’s birth mother, who then I, as a child, came to know and developed a connection with.

And that was pretty special. I know it’s very, very important to my mother, for her identity and for that connection, to understand everything from medical history right through, but also, you know, where certain personality traits come from or other connections, coincidences—it’s all tied up with identity. And that was really important to my mother. For her, it was really important that it wasn’t something she wanted to do while her adoptive mother was alive—it didn’t feel right. The time was right to do it later, but it was an incredibly important journey. And I, as it happened, then have developed connections with those birth parents—with her birth mother and with her subsequent husband. I actually have had the privilege then, only recently, two years ago, on the 13th of this month—so in three days’ time, two years ago—of burying my mother’s birth mother and, as I’m a Presbyterian minister, conducting the funeral service. And I, prior to that, conducted the funeral for her subsequent husband. So we have become very much a part of that family and of their story, and have felt privileged to know the other siblings—you know, half brothers and sisters—and their families. And it has felt like such a privilege and a wonderful connection to have.

So I can relate to some of the story I’ve heard about Annie Oxborough’s quest to have identity affirmed. I know it’s been so important in my own family, through that adoptive connection, to better understand the connections of the family, to build those connections, and just to the sense of identity.

I am delighted that there is work progressing, that the Ministry of Justice is leading on adoption law reform that will address some of these issues with time. I’m not sure that it will actually address Annie Oxborough’s case directly, because it may not be retrospective in its effect, but it’s good that we are doing this work as a Government and as a Parliament. This identity question, we all know, is so important, and it is really good to be able to stand today to support this bill. It’s, for one person, incredibly important. It may not seem to the wider picture that we’re solving the bigger picture, but, actually, for this one person, this will be incredibly important. And it’s also symbolically important for others in similar situations—to let them know there are avenues for properly being identified according to your history, your family, and your connections. So it’s with some pleasure that I support this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. I think it’s great that Chris Penk could bring this bill to the House. But I find that if you live in this House for long enough, you’ll agree with everyone in the House on something, and I found myself agreeing with Tāmati Coffey on just about every issue he raised tonight. It might have taken 12 years, but I’m agreeing with him.

I think that, you know, having sat on the Governance and Administration Committee that passed both the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill and the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill, which allowed people to change their names on their birth certificate—their sex on their birth certificate, actually—I’m of the view, and I guess that I’m one of those people who is fortunate enough to think I know who I am and think I know who I’ve always been, but, obviously, a lot of people don’t. I can’t imagine what it would be like not actually knowing who you are for a fair bit of your life. That is what has happened to Annie, obviously, and I think it’s pretty cool that this Parliament can fix that for her.

But quite aside from that, I do think that we have to find ways of avoiding—and I spoke on a bill earlier in the night on the same issue. Here’s where I agree with Tāmati Coffey: I think we do have to find ways of dealing with these issues without having to bring these bills to the Parliament every time it happens. There will be numerous people in New Zealand in exactly the same position as this. Some would probably be like me and probably don’t even know what my birth certificate looks like, but some people do care about this sort of stuff, and we have to account for that in the course of what we do here.

Actually, in the course of the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill, there was some discussion about the fact that there are a whole lot of other things that need to be dealt with in the course of birth certificates, and this was one of them—not this particular case, but the fact of adopted people wishing to register their rightful parents or their real parents on their birth certificates. So I think there’s got to be a way of this Parliament doing some work on this and resolving it.

Of course, there are some issues in that very same Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill which weren’t resolved at the time, and that related to overseas people coming to New Zealand. I think that with respect to this, the same thing will apply here. So there’ll be exactly the same issue in this instance, given, especially, that we adopt a lot of overseas children in New Zealand. So it’s quite an issue for those people as well, I would imagine, or it will become an issue for them as they get older, or it may become an issue for them.

So I think there’s quite a few challenges in how we deal with this, but I do think it’s worth doing some work on it, because we take a lot of time in this Parliament on these bills. I’ve never worked out what it costs to run this place, but it wouldn’t be cheap. I’m not saying that these people aren’t worth spending the money on—in fact, some of these bills might be a whole lot more relevant than some of the bills that we put through in good faith as a Government—but I do think there’s an opportunity for us to look at these issues and to change the way we go about it. So I look forward to the discussions on this. I’m sure it will be resolved, and it’s good to see the Parliament united in the view that it needs to be resolved. So that’s probably all I need to say on this bill, and no doubt we’ll have an opportunity to take this further at a later date. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Before I commence, I’d just like to say it’s nice to see you in the Chair. I am delighted to be speaking on the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. It’s a matter I think that we all in the House are concerned about. I want to acknowledge the member Chris Penk for the work that he’s done and the sensitive brief that he has given us of the life of Annie and her desires to see this bill come to pass.

I think this is a great example of when the House comes together on a matter that we consider important. We’re not yelling at each other. We’re not being nasty to each other. We’re all getting on, doing something that is significant and important, and while that may be to just one person, it is extremely significant to her life and her life’s history. I can only begin to imagine the yearning and the desire that she has to know her whakapapa and to find it and now to have her parents recorded on that birth certificate. So I think that’s simply an important thing to do.

But, however, I do agree with other members—gosh, it’s cumbersome to have to come before the House and use the House in this manner to change a birth certificate. We surely can do better. However, this will fix the matter for Annie Oxborough.

Now, I just wanted to make mention of—so I’m a member of the Social Services and Community Committee. Now, in the 52nd select committee, we had a number of women come before us to talk to us about the forced adoption process. Frankly, it was heartbreaking. The stories that those women told us and the children who came before us as well who were affected—it was devastating to hear those stories. I want to acknowledge their courage as well. So Mrs Maggie Wilkinson, Mrs Hamilton, and Ms Sumner, who came before us with that petition, I want to acknowledge them in this House today. What we were able to do with that piece of work—and I think it’s worthwhile mentioning—is that that particular circumstance of forced adoption was then placed into the abuse in care royal commission of inquiry so that those women and children had the opportunity to come before the organisation and to speak their story. We look to see what the outcome will be for them. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to say that.

I’m also particularly interested to read Annie’s book; I think it looks like a good read. Like most members here, I have my own adoption story from family. I was born in 1971, so it was something pretty common in that era and continued to be so until the 1980s. So, as a consequence, I think many of us have adoption stories of family members, etc.

We need to fix this. We’re working on it. It’s coming along. But I do think that time in this House is being taken for an important matter for Annie, and I do hope that we don’t need to continue to do this going forward. But, with that, it is my great pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

Noa’ia e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an absolute privilege to stand here tonight to speak on the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the member whose brought this bill to the House, Chris Penk. Thank you, Chris Penk, for bringing this to the House.

This Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill is really important. I can never understand and can never know what it’s like to be Susan Mary Cox; to have a child with the birth father, Scott Geoffrey Sinel, 50 years ago, and, 10 months later, be registered another name and not know the name of their child and where their child is. I would never know that.

I’d want to say today that, regardless of what we say here today, it is a celebration Annie Oxborough has got her day in law today. It’s a first step to making it real.

I want to acknowledge that in December 1971, the birth certificate of Annie Oxborough was Angela Joy Marshall. In law, it says that “this birth certificate is the legal source of identity for Annie Oxborough” at the time, 50 years ago.

I want to acknowledge the leadership of Annie and her determination, and her determination to share her experience. I haven’t read her book, Where the [F٭ck] is My Mother?, but I want to commend her leadership for that. All Annie seeks to have is to have her account, to have her lineage recorded in her identity.

On that note, I don’t want to hold us any further. I want to commend the bill to the House. Mālō.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make the final contribution at this, the first reading. I also thank members of Parliament all across the House from different parties who have spoken very thoughtfully and very respectfully. Rachel Boyack made that point about treating the story—which of course is so deeply personal to Annie and also her parents—respectfully, and that will mean a lot to her, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me saying on her behalf.

I do also wish to say that no disrespect is implied to those who have, in many cases, done a wonderful job of bringing up the child of another person, and there are all kinds of different situations and circumstances and experiences that New Zealand children have had over the years in these scenarios. And that feeds into the complexity of what we’re covering today. I think the complexity of the situation—perhaps Annie’s is relatively straightforward. Certainly if her adoptive parents were still alive today, I think that might have made it a more difficult decision to bring this bill to the House. I don’t say that I wouldn’t have done it, but nevertheless I’m conscious that there are many different players involved. And I think whatever decisions we make on any individual bill, and also, of course, the broader question of reform, the key is that we treat everyone with the respect they deserve throughout that, where intentions have been good.

The Green Party member Teanau Tuiono made, I think, a really valuable point, which is that there are different cultural perspectives to which New Zealanders will approach the subject—many different ethnicities, faiths, and the lack of faith or no stated belief. Of course, we live in a very pluralistic society in New Zealand in 2023, so it’s important to acknowledge that different approaches will be taken to this. But, of course, in this House in general terms, we make laws that affect all the population, and it’s relatively unusual—indeed, the private bill along with the local bill is the exception that proves the rule that we don’t usually make the law specifically relating to one person.

So just a brief reflection on that. Others, for example, Mr McDowall from the ACT Party, have rightly noted that it would be impractical, for reasons of the sheer number of New Zealanders involved, for every such matter to come to the Parliament. And others made a similar point acknowledging the time and the money involved in doing that. But to the extent that this shines the light on a broader question, I think that it is time and money well spent.

So I do wish to end on a note of reflecting on that theme—that is, we are doing a thing for one person at one time, and I am sure that Annie is deeply grateful to the House for that, and certainly I regard it as a privilege to be able to do that in the role that I currently have as her local MP, but I conceive of it as almost a diamond shape. So we’ve started with Annie herself, we’ve broadened it out to the fact that this may ultimately affect the life and situation of many others, but at its conclusion I do want to bring this back to Annie. And that’s appropriate too to keep her at the centre of the story.

From here, assuming that the bill passes its first reading—and I understand, from expressions of support around the House, that it will—it will go to the Governance and Administration Committee. There it will be in the very good hands of chair Ian McKelvie and the other members, who I know work diligently on all kinds of matters—that’s the nature of that committee. I will say that while, of course, I hope and, I think I may say, expect that this bill will ultimately pass, I don’t know where this ends more broadly. And it’s not very often that a member of Parliament says that they don’t know where a thing is leading that they bring to the House. I’m approaching the subject with some nervousness and some humility in acknowledging that, but I think, nevertheless, in my heart, if I may say that, as well as in my head, this is the right thing to do in this moment and that I hope that it will lead many of us to a good place.

So, for that reason, again, I thank all those who have spoken tonight in support. I thank those who have helped us get this far. I thank, in anticipation, the Governance and Administration Committee, those who have helped in various different ways discussing a number of aspects associated with the bill, and, of course, Annie herself. Again, we salute your courage, Annie. We will look forward to remaining in touch with you, hearing more directly your story. But in the meantime, I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Annie Oxborough Birth Parents Registration Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Instruction to Governance and Administration Committee