Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs)
: I move,
That the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill be now read a second time. All of us are required to give our personal information to the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry whenever we have a child, get married, or enter into a civil union. Our personal information will again be collected when we die. This information is used as part of the basis of our country’s official population statistics and provides an invaluable source of information for demographic, historical, and health research. It also provides official evidence that an event has occurred.
There are therefore two key concepts underlying the main provisions of this bill: first, that people must be able to access and obtain evidence of the information that supports their identity and family history; and, second, that it is vital that the public trust the Government to be a responsible steward of their personal information. Those concepts are especially important in light of the fact that today the world’s social and technological conditions have changed since the registers were first established here in the mid-1800s. In particular, the ability to gather and search across large amounts of personal identity information now that the registers have shifted from a paper-based environment to a computerised environment, and a public concern about the prevalence of identity fraud have meant that the traditional position of having virtually all registered information publicly available, practically without any controls, is no longer appropriate.
The bill as introduced proposed a robust regime for gaining access to the registered information relating to births, deaths, marriages, and civil unions. Access was to be granted for legitimate purposes that were consistent with the reason why the information was collected from individuals. A great deal of misinformation about the bill’s effects was reported in various media sources, which was unfortunate. Despite that, I have said in this House, in the media, and to people who have written to me and approached me personally that I would consider any workable suggestion that achieved a balance in the law between ensuring that individuals and families have their personal information protected from abuse, and ensuring that members of the public can access other people’s records for legitimate purposes.
On 10 October 2007 I wrote to the Government Administration Committee to suggest an alternative approach that could be taken to achieve an appropriate balance. I express my gratitude to the Labour members of the committee and to Mr Keith Locke, a non-voting member of the committee, who adopted and developed the suggestions I made to the committee to amend the access provisions. Although the contribution of Mr Peter Brown, another non-voting member of the committee, is not reflected in the committee’s report, I am also grateful to him for working with the Labour and Green members to develop a workable amendment that could be accommodated by the Government, including addressing some of the technical issues raised in some of the 151 public submissions made on the bill.
Although it is disappointing that the committee could not agree on the amendments to the bill, I intend to put forward a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage to incorporate the suggestions made by those select committee members. The changes set out on the Supplementary Order Paper will mean that any member of the public could still generally access another person’s registered information. However, there would be a new mechanism that increases the individual’s ability to know and control when his or her personal information is released to other people. When applying to access a record—for example, in the form of a birth certificate—an applicant will have to present adequate identification. People will be able to check an access register in order to find out who has applied to access their records, and public sector agencies will be able to search the access register for maintenance of law purposes.
People will be able to request on certain grounds that their records not be disclosed to the public for a certain period. The grounds for and duration of those non-disclosure directions will be prescribed by regulation. I would not expect the regulations to provide that everyone will be able to apply to a non-disclosure direction for any reason, but instead that they will require applicants to point to some substantive reason for needing protection. Setting the grounds and the time period in regulations will mean that the Government can respond more quickly and efficiently to changing societal conditions and expectations, by making the mechanism narrower or wider as appropriate. Where a
non-disclosure direction is in force, a person who wants to access the record could get authorisation from the subject of the record. Otherwise, a person who wants such access would just receive confirmation that the record existed.
If the subject of the record has publicly disclosed personal information about himself or herself, any person could apply for that information to be verified against that person’s records. That would meet concerns about fraudsters attempting to mislead the public and conceal relevant information where there is a public interest in the correct information being known.
A review of the operation of the access provisions 5 years after their commencement will ensure they will provide an effective and efficient process that balances our interests, as the subjects of the records, in the protection of our own personal information with our interests, as members of the public, in being able to access other people’s records for legitimate purposes.
The Supplementary Order Paper will also address a number of technical issues that arose during the select committee process, including delaying the commencement of the bill by 6 months to ensure that the bill’s provisions can be implemented in the most effective manner.
I also intend to put forward a second Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage to address a technical issue that has arisen from a recent Family Court decision declaring that under the Act’s current provisions, an overseas-born transgender applicant’s birth certificate should be now changed to show the applicant’s nominated sex. The Supplementary Order Paper will clarify the ability of overseas-born applicants to seek similar declarations for the future, although it will ensure that the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry is not necessarily involved in applications that relate to people whose details are not registered in New Zealand, and that the Family Court’s processes are not abused by applicants who do not have a genuine connection with New Zealand.
A third Supplementary Order Paper will update the bill in the light of the Human Tissue Bill, which has just passed its third reading. This is a technical amendment.
Before closing, I will make some brief comments about another aspect of the bill where some confusion arose during the first reading debate. This is in respect of the new requirement that both parents sign the notification form when registering the birth of their child. The bill provides an exemption to allow only one parent to sign in cases where the other parent is missing, is unknown, is unable to sign the form because of a medical condition, or has died, or where unwarranted distress would result from trying to get the second parent’s signature. In those cases, although only one parent would be required to sign the form, the details of both parents can be registered. Therefore the child would not miss out on learning about both parents, as some members had feared. In cases where there is only one parent at law—for example, where a child was conceived as a result of an assisted reproductive procedure—
