The select committee considering New Zealand First’s gender bill is refusing to say how many of the 40,000 submissions made on the Bill it has rejected. A long statement was issued this week explaining why submissions might be rejected, but was missing any figures. Multiple people have expressed confusion and concern about their submissions on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill being rejected, most commonly on the basis that they shared information about third parties, such as partners or children. The committee said it decided to return some submissions that contained sensitive, private or personal information about identifiable parties. “We consider that someone is ‘identifiable’ if they are named or if the submitter has a close familial relationship with them. “This usually means people sharing information about their children or close family members,” a statement issued earlier this week said. The aim of the Bill is to define the terms ‘‘woman’’ and ‘‘man’’ in New Zealand law. Supporters have said it clarified sex-based rights, while those opposed have said it threatened transgender, non-binary and intersex peoples’ rights. A Dunedin woman shared her shock early last month at what she said was the ‘‘dangerously undemocratic’’ removal of submissions mentioning transgender people from feedback on Bill. After disputing the initial decision to reject her submission because the mention of her transgender partner was regarded as a privacy breach, the committee eventually accepted it as originally submitted. She said it was strange the committee would not say how many submissions were rejected as it was relevant to people understanding the gravity of the situation and feeling motivated to have their’s reconsidered, an option she felt was not necessarily made clear enough by the committee in their rejection messages. “Not wanting to speak publicly about the rejections until after the process is over seems at odds with what feels like the most pro-democracy approach in the situation — making sure people know there is a way to have their voices heard and making sure they know this while they can still do something about it.” The Spinoff this week shared stories from five people whose submissions were rejected on similar grounds, reporting those people were given options to write a letter confirming the other person’s consent, anonymise the submission or remove all third party information. The committee’s statement confirmed more than 40,000 written submissions had been made on the Bill, and there had been over 1500 requests to make oral submissions. As well as talking at length about the rejection of submissions it also suggested those who wanted to speak to their submissions needed to be prepared to be disappointed. “We are still deciding a process to allocate any available hearing time, given the very limited meeting time remaining in this Parliament.” Two common reasons submissions on the Bill were returned included because they shared personal information about third parties and because they were effectively anonymous, the statement said. “Many submissions” had opted to include personal information and while the committee appreciated people might want to share details from their own lives, they also stressed a need for caution around sensitive personal information. “Submissions are publicly available and will remain online permanently,” they said. “We need to consider whether publishing a submission might risk harm to a person, or frustrate their reasonable expectations of privacy.” They added that children were of particular concern, as, depending on their age, they might not be able to meaningfully consent to their private information being shared. The statement mentioned other select committees had considered it “inappropriate to publish detailed accounts of a child’s mental health challenges” on the basis that “doing so without the child’s consent was unconscionable”. In the meantime, committee staff were continuing to work with people who had their submissions rejected “to address our concerns”, the statement said. When asked to confirm the number of rejected submissions and how many of those had been resubmitted, a spokesperson from the parliamentary services communications team said outside what a committee might choose to release, information about submissions and submitters was confidential to a committee until it reported to the House of Representatives. “Therefore, we cannot comment.” Under Parliament’s rules, a select committee might choose to disclose information on an item of business before it reported to the House, but that was at that committee’s discretion, they said. The Bill will be reported to the House of Representatives by November 20, after the House has dissolved for the term. The Bill will go in to stasis at that point. If its sponsor, Jenny Marcroft, remains a member of Parliament in the next term, the Bill’s passage through the House will continue. If she is not re-elected, for the Bill to be reinstated another MP — usually someone from the former politician’s party — must agree to sponsor it. If no one does, the Bill lapses.
