Hipkins said the Labour Party would make New Zealand’s adoption and surrogacy laws more accessible.
“Currently, Rainbow families are required to adopt their own genetic children after a surrogate birth - requiring court orders, interviews and home visits to determine suitability.”
This work would include passing the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill – in response to the recommendations in the Law Commission report Te Kōpū Whāngai: He Arotake Review of Surrogacy.
The law commission report, published in May 2022, proposed several recommendations, including introducing a pathway for recognising intended parents as the legal parents of a surrogate-born child without the need for a court process.
Promise of new refugee category
If re-elected, a new “rainbow” subcategory would be created under New Zealand’s annual refugee quota to help people who were being persecuted because of their sexuality and gender identity to resettle in Aotearoa.
“Rainbow refugees can face additional barriers, exclusion, and discrimination compared to other refugees,” Hipkins said.
In June, the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network presented a petition to Parliament, calling for a quota specifically for Rainbow refugees. The petition said while some groups can find safety in refugee camps, this was not often the case for Rainbow refugees who could also face persecution in the country they first escaped to.
Blood donations
The manifesto included convening a roundtable of experts, specialists and advocates to explore the latest evidence around the behavioural criteria of donors, particularly the three-month stand-down period for men who have sex with other men.
Hipkins said any change “needed a strong guarantee of safety”, but New Zealand needed to look at the evidence used in other countries like Canada and Ireland which had already changed their rules.
Rainbow health care equity
The party said it would deploy a nationwide informed consent model for gender-affirming healthcare and review the cost of gender-affirming surgeries and treatment “with a view to lowering the cost and ensuring more equitable access”.
It also said it would implement a “child rights based health-care protocol for intersex children so that no one is subjected to unnecessary medical or surgical treatment during infancy or childhood, and binary gender assignment is not automatically presumed to be the best-case outcome”.
The party’s Rainbow Policy also included continuing work already under way, such as the rollout of the HIV Action Plan and improve Rainbow health outcomes by making access to health care services easier for transgender people.
It also included work in the education sector and support for non-government organisations that support the Rainbow community.
