Gareth Dyer gives evidence to the Health Select Committee about the experience of using a surrogate under the current law. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Attending select committees can be an education, but not always the one you might expect.
The submissions that MPs hear on bills often cover a very broad range of expertise and evidence, and the advice procured can have a surprisingly large impact on the final shape of legislation.
More surprising is that valuable input comes not just only from professional experts, but from real-world experience.
For example, on Wednesday morning, the health committee spent an hour hearing submissions on a bill that would rework the law around birth surrogacy. It wasn't their only focus of the morning, but it was instructive.
There were five submitters who, between them, showed a breadth of expertise, opinion and knowledge:
- Kiri Kowhai spoke for Te Kāhui Raraunga Charitable Trust and focused on how the Bill could be adjusted (among other things), to make it easier for children born under surrogacy arrangements to access whakapapa relating to a birth parent. She brought expertise in tikanga Māori - particularly on behalf of the children of surrogacy.
- Jill Ovens spoke on behalf of the Women's Rights Party, and shared views about how best to protect the rights and needs of those acting as a surrogate. You might call this political and philosophical input.
- Debra Wilson is an academic and researcher with a specialisation in medical law. She has also served on the government's advisory committee on assisted reproductive technology. She offered legal analysis, research and international perspectives, which were also useful and interesting, especially the way in which courts currently balance (or fail to balance) competing legislative requirements.
- Margaret Casey is a King's Counsel and spoke for the Law Society, particularly on behalf of a clutch of lawyers who specialise in surrogacy law (a pretty specialist field). She contributed practical experience of how the current law is interpreted and implemented, and where it fails. She also offered experience about the kind of tricky legal circumstances that any new law would need to be able to address.
- Finally, there was Gareth Dyer (who had the advantage of being present in the room, which always helps enormously if you want to engage effectively). He had another kind of input entirely - personal experience. He and his husband have a child through surrogacy under the current law. The process sounded difficult, draining, costly, and prohibitive in its complexity. And also terrifying, as a result of its current legal vulnerability, with the intended parents having no rights until a legal adoption occurs after the birth.
It is easy to see how useful it is for MPs to gain help from experts, academics, tangata whenua, and those who will ultimately need to interpret a new law.
It is also easy to overlook how crucial it is for MPs to also get advice from the rest of us - the people with lived experience, who can bring real-world examples into what could otherwise be an overly hypothetical imagining of outcomes and consequences.
Offering wisdom to power does not always require specific qualifications or lofty titles. Experience from the pointy end of life can be the most instructive thing of all.
RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.
