Third Reading
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs)
: I move,
That the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill puts into place important measures to regulate access to registered information about births, deaths, marriages, civil unions, and other relationships. Those measures will help to increase an individual’s awareness and control over how his or her personal information is disclosed while balancing the public’s need to access this important information for a range of legitimate purposes.
The bill also improves the ability of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages to collect and verify information to ensure the official records are accurate, and it modernises the law to take into account all relevant technological and social developments. At present, individuals generally have no idea who might be accessing their records or the records of their children or family members, or for what purpose. In most cases, of course, people who are accessing those records will be doing so for reasons that may be regarded as benign, such as for family history research.
In other cases people may be using the information from those records as a basis for applying for false documents and conducting fraudulent transactions. Those kinds of people can get the information either from an authenticated certificate or from unofficial printouts from the records. Information is being misused, and we see frequent reports of offenders being convicted and sentenced for identity crimes. The impact on those whose identities have been stolen and on their families is well known—contrary, I might add, to the claims of some others who have spoken in this debate and claimed there is no issue around identity theft.
I will give several examples of identity theft. One sample analysis involves 33 proven false passport applications made in a 3-year period from 2004 to 2006. It was found that in three-quarters of those cases the offender had accessed the victim’s birth record prior to submitting a passport application. The birth certificate gave those offenders enough information to complete the passport application in each case.
As another example, I remind the House that David Bennett, the member for Hamilton East, wrote to me on 15 October 2007 about a constituent whose brother had allegedly obtained a driver’s licence using the constituent’s birth certificate. Mr Bennett was rightly concerned about this and asked me when the requirements for applying for a birth certificate would become more stringent. I agree with him. This bill does exactly that.
A third example is that of Laurelyn Smith who was convicted and sentenced at the end of 2007 for impersonation and forgery. She used the birth certificate of a New Zealand infant who had died at birth in 1962 to get an Inland Revenue Department number and to set up a bank account. She then used the child’s identity to claim over $31,000 in welfare benefits. Sandra Goudie was concerned about this case, and on 29 February this year she asked me how Laurelyn Smith acquired the birth certificate of that dead girl. The answer is that currently anyone can generally access anyone else’s records without any sort of protection for the subjects of those records.
The Law Commission noted in its report on public registers, released earlier this year, that in our computerised age the ability of people to search for and gather personal information about a large number of individuals or about particular individuals has rightly led to public concern about the potential for abuse of this information.
The bill now maintains a general availability to access anyone else’s records, but it puts in place three key safeguards. People will be required to present reasonable identification when applying to access someone else’s records, and their names will be recorded and made available to the subjects of those records on application. These measures are intended to act both as a deterrent to people who wish to access another person’s record for mischievous purposes and as an incentive for people to act with respect to others by encouraging people to notify the subject of the record they are intending to access.
This approach is already followed as a matter of good practice by many people. When my aunt was researching my family’s history she wrote to me asking whether I would mind her accessing my record and the records of my children. I was quite happy to allow her to do that. Even if I had not been, at least I found out how my personal information was to be used.
These measures provide a good measure of protection while ensuring that people continue to have generally open access to the records that currently exist. However, in cases where there is a recognised need for individuals to be protected, the bill will allow people to request that their records not be publicly disclosed for a certain period of time. It is recognised that the circumstances in which individuals may require such protection may change over time, and the bill’s flexible framework ensures that a responsible approach can be taken as those changes arise.
At the same time the bill makes it easier to access registered information where it is appropriate to do so. Genealogists, historians, and other members of the public will benefit from the ability to search for their family history records online when the Registrar-General’s website publishes information from historical records.
Researchers will be able to request access to a greater range of information, including identifying information about groups or individuals. Such access will also be extended to people undertaking historical research. Currently researchers can access non-identifying information only for health, demographic, or statistical research. Private sector organisations will be able to use information about deceased individuals to ensure that databases are up to date and that correspondence is not being sent to those individuals and causing pain to family members.
Government departments will be able to receive better information for authorised information-matching programmes, and reciprocal arrangements will be able to be put in place between New Zealand and overseas registries to ensure that records are kept up to date with details of relevant deaths and name changes that occur in each place.
The bill’s other measures are important too, albeit relatively technical. Usually, requiring both parents to sign a birth registration form will help improve the accuracy of the information provided and will reduce the claims that a person was wrongly named as a parent. Increasing the ability of the Registrar-General to obtain and use information from other sources will help improve the comprehensiveness of the official record and the accuracy of the information. For example, the Registrar-General will be better able to trace mothers of unregistered babies and ensure children born as a result of assisted reproductive procedures and their donors can identify each other with the most up-to-date information.
The bill was considered by the Government Administration Committee, and again I would like to thank the members of that select committee who made workable suggestions to amend the bill’s provisions, especially those relating to the registered information held by Births, Deaths and Marriages. I also thank those who took the time to make submissions on the bill. I commend the bill to the House.
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country)
: I rise on behalf of the National Party in opposition to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill, and I do so on a number of grounds. But before I oppose it, can I first of all, as the chair of the Government Administration Committee, thank the officials and the members of the select committee for their diligence and hard work during this process.
The primary reason why the National Party now finds it difficult to support this bill, and therefore will not support it, is the process itself. A number of people submitted on the original bill that was sent to the select committee after its first and second readings in the House. Here is a comment from one of those submitters, Dr Lynley Hood. This is what she had to say: “The free flow of information and ideas is the lifeblood of a participatory democracy. For this reason, freedom of speech is protected by section 14 of our Bill of Rights Act. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form. The Act also says that our rights may be curtailed under some circumstances, a proposition that few would disagree with, but only to an extent that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. This submission argues the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill is a threat to free speech that cannot be demonstrably justified in a free, democratic society.” That is fairly clear. Most of us could understand that.
This person has been involved in the writing of many biographies and other books. She also is a senior person in terms of writing columns, newspaper articles, and other
such things. So we asked the officials whether she was correct. The officials went away and did some work, then they came back and said that it was possible that some elements of what was being proposed in the bill as it stood could have those impacts. So what does a select committee do in those circumstances? It either recommends changes, or the committee as a whole comes to the conclusion that the bill should not proceed. We recommended some changes. I have to acknowledge the work of the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Labour members on the select committee; some of those recommendations have been taken up in the House in the form of Supplementary Order Papers, and I commend the work that has been done.
But the reality is that that submitter, and the others who submitted during that process, did not have the opportunity to come back and say whether they thought those subsequent amendments would achieve the result they were after. Further, it could be argued that because the Minister did not have the numbers to have the bill passed, he consulted with the Greens, New Zealand First, and others, and through making amendments here and there via a number of Supplementary Order Papers, he was finally able—I am not sure; we will not know until the vote is put, of course—to round up enough votes to have the bill passed. So the main argument put up now by the Opposition is that that was not the correct process for such an amendment, and therefore National cannot support the bill.
When one looks at the reasons why the bill was submitted to Parliament in the first place and referred to the select committee, one can only conclude that the Government was floundering around, trying to find some legislation to put on what was a very skinny Order Paper. As a result, some budding Labour candidate studying political science at Victoria University, or at some other institution of fine political science scholarship, was tasked with the job of going through the statute book and finding some statutes that were getting on a bit in age that Labour could find a reason to amend, so that amending legislation could be introduced to Parliament.
However, I think the Minister himself, in the opening comments of his third reading speech, may have shed some light on where this bill came from. He said that his aunt had written to him that there were a number of things he should know about the Act, and as he now occupies the big seat down there on the hill, he can fix it up. So we now know the reasons why the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill is before the House. It is in response to the call of Michael Cullen, the Leader of the House, for the Order Paper to be filled up, and it also is thanks to the Hon Minister Rick Barker’s aunt. The end result is that National will not be a part of that kind of process, so we cannot support the bill.
The other point I would make at this time is that during the select committee hearings the officials were not able to answer a number of other questions. When one is sitting on a select committee and one cannot clearly establish in one’s mind whether legislation is good or bad—when it is one of those “on balance” calls—then one is very reliant on the advice one is given. When people such as the submitter I mentioned earlier raise issues and we cannot clarify whether their concerns are being met, then the Queen’s honourable Opposition is left with no other option but to oppose the proposal before us. That was the end result of the deliberations of the select committee.
I also tell the House that one or two of the National members on the select committee who took a particular interest in this bill did their own research by seeking the details of various family members and other known associates. They found that access to the material was open, but that it was reasonably difficult to access. One of the main platforms on which this bill has come to the House is that access is too open and, potentially, could be used for fraudulent activity, such as the fraudulent manufacture of passports. Well, we could find no evidence of that. Examples were given of passports
that had been fraudulently produced, but they could not be pinned back to the births, deaths, and marriages legislation. You see, people can go around a cemetery and pick out names, or they can look at any other form of public notification—even a daily newspaper like the
Dominion Post—and find that sort of information. That is exactly what had happened, to the best of our understanding, in those cases where passports had been fraudulently manufactured.
On those two grounds, the National members of the select committee finally got to the point where we decided that there was no way we could support the bill, or any potential—but then unknown—amendments that might come out of the process of the bill through the House.
DARIEN FENTON (Labour)
: It is a real pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. I will start by addressing some of the process issues that have been raised by our Government Administration Committee chairperson, Shane Ardern, because I totally disagree with what he says.
Hon Rick Barker: That’s why he’s not on the front bench.
DARIEN FENTON: That is true. I note from National’s report that its members said they were not satisfied with the amendments that the Minister proposed. Well, if they were saying that in their report, they must have known what the amendments were. In fact, I can confirm that they did.
I always thought that the process of select committees was that people came along and made submissions, and that members listened to them, discussed those things, and then came up with alternative ideas to meet their concerns. That is indeed what happened. I can also confirm that the Minister wrote to the select committee, and that the National members were there; they read the letter. We discussed with the officials the various proposals for amendments, but National members decided to oppose them, for some reason I still cannot understand. They have not explained their dissatisfaction with the amendments that were proposed, and they still have not explained their reasons for opposing them. I can think only that it is a political decision.
I also need to confirm to the House that I, as the deputy chair, did approach the National Party about these amendments, in just the same way as the Minister and I talked to the Greens, United Future, and New Zealand First. So National members did have a chance to say what they thought about the amendments. The officials did a very, very good job in putting those amendments forward, and it seemed to all of us who were reasonable that those amendments were very, very good, workable solutions. As I said in my second reading speech, the process was a good one. I thought it was carried out in the way that a select committee is supposed to work, and I thought also that was how MMP works—where there are concerns, members work together to find a solution.
The reality is that those National members missed the boat. We cannot be very surprised about that, because we have learnt in the House this week—and we know that National has had a bad week—that those members do not talk to each other. They do not even talk to each other. So there is a little group of people in a little room making decisions.
Hon Rick Barker: They don’t talk about principles, and they don’t talk about policy.
DARIEN FENTON: Yes. Then they get told what the decisions are—or they do not get told, as the case may be. So I—
Hon Rick Barker: The employment spokesperson is not told about his employment policy.
DARIEN FENTON: That is right. I do want to clear that up, because some very outrageous criticisms have been made by members opposite, and particularly by one of the wonderful brains of the National Party, Sandra Goudie, and by the member on his
way out—on his last hurrah—Brian Connell. He made some outrageous suggestions and some amazing comments. I was actually quite stunned by some of the fairly bizarre things that Mr Connell had to say, and I discussed that last time.
To go back to the purpose of this bill, I tell members that it is to strike a balance between protecting personal information from those who wish to abuse it and maintaining freedom of information and the right of public access.
