Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: When the House was last debating this bill the Hon Darren Hughes was speaking. He has 6 minutes remaining.

Sandra Goudie: Mr Deputy Speaker—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has, according to my records, spoken on this bill once. Does the member wish to speak again?

Sandra Goudie: Yes. I seek leave to finish that part of the debate.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you may seek leave to take another call if you wish.

Sandra Goudie: I seek leave to take another call.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course to be followed. Is there any objection? There is. I call Brian Connell.

BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) : I rise to reinforce the fact that National strongly opposes this bill. We do so for two fundamental reasons. One of them I will canvass in some detail, and one of them I will just touch on.

The latter reason is that the argument put forward by the Minister of Internal Affairs and by the Labour Party specifically is that this bill is about identity fraud. Well, that is a smokescreen argument. A cursory glance at the statistics demonstrates to all those who are interested in consulting statistics that the number of identity fraud cases in this country has dropped off markedly. I will come back to that a little later.

The key reason we object to this bill is that it implies restrictions on access to information. The National Party put these arguments in a very coherent fashion to the members of the Government Administration Committee, and I am convinced that the Labour Party members felt that those arguments had merit. I am of the view that they went back to the Minister and presented these views to him, but the Minister, for some reason best known to him, simply would not accept those arguments. So the National members were forced—and we did it reluctantly—to put our position in the commentary on the bill.

I want to touch on that commentary, because I think that after the Minister had read it he started to think that maybe he had made a mistake, and that that led to our now having two more Supplementary Order Papers before the House. That would have been totally unnecessary had the Minister listened to our arguments, because embodied in the Supplementary Order Papers, and in one in particular, are the arguments that I want to put before the House.

The first reference I want to make, as I said, is to the National Party’s commentary. It reads, in part: “The Government failed to consult widely on the bill prior to the bill being introduced to Parliament and consequently struggled to get widespread community support.” I will demonstrate to the House through the course of this debate that that argument is meritorious.

The second thing we want to say is that a significant number of submitters raised this concern, as well. They went on to add that they felt that the key component leading them to object to this bill was the access restrictions. The National Party’s commentary goes on to say: “It is the view of National members that these restrictions will continue to hamper academic and genuine genealogical research, and other legitimate purposes needing access to births, deaths and marriage information.” The National Party members on the select committee argued that our party supported openness and transparency, that we believe that they were being denied to the public, and that our position was not being taken in isolation.

A number of academics of renown also take that view. One in particular comes to mind, and that is Professor Geoffrey Rice from Canterbury University, who heads up the history faculty there. He took the time to write a detailed submission to the select committee. I want to refer to just one paragraph of that submission, because his argument is compelling. It sums up why this bill did not get public support, why the Government, at a million miles an hour, started to back away from it, and why we have a Supplementary Order Paper before the House right now. He said, in part: “If passed, this Amendment Bill would render the writing of New Zealand’s twentieth century social history well-nigh impossible.” Which select committee members who were in their right mind could deny, when confronted with that statement from someone of such renown, that this bill was something that needed further discussion?

I then said to the members of the select committee that we should have Professor Rice, and the other academics who had taken the time to write to the select committee expressing their concerns, come in front of the select committee to put their positions, because on the one hand we were getting petitions from petitioners, and on the other hand we were getting advice from the Government members and officials that those people’s concerns were wrong. I argued that we should have those academics come in front of the select committee so that they could put their position to it. The Labour Party members backed off that proposition at a million miles an hour.

Professor Rice went on to say: “The value of such data for genealogists, family and local historians has been invaluable and their work has contributed enormously to the enrichment and understanding of New Zealand’s heritage.” He also went on to say: “The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Barker, referred to the prevention of ‘identity theft’ as one of the aims of the amendment, but such cases are rare in New Zealand”—which is a point I have already made—“and this legislation will not prevent them.” The most compelling sentence of his whole submission is this: “Here is an example of a bad law being proposed to remedy a very small problem.”

Again I made the offer to the members of the select committee that we have these academics come in front of the select committee so that we could understand their concerns in more detail, so that we were in control of all the facts, and so that we could put together coherent legislation. As I have already argued and articulated in the House, the Labour Party members were opposed to that proposition.

And those are not isolated examples. That socialist rag, that tabloid in Christchurch that some will know as the Christchurch Press, which will do anything to pursue a populist theme, took the time to write an editorial, and I want to quote to the House a couple of sentences from it, as well, because it sums up public opinion on this legislation. It starts by stating: “It is not often that historians and researchers get stirred up about a matter that makes it into the newspapers. But an innocuous-sounding bill quietly put before Parliament … ” has done just that. The emphasis there is on its having been quietly put before Parliament. The Minister argued earlier in the House that there had been widespread consultation on the introduction of this bill, and that is simply not the case. The Christchurch Press on this occasion got it right. It went on to say that the bill “would almost close free access to public registers that have been open to everyone since not long after colonial government was established in New Zealand.” It goes on to say: “There is no compelling need for the secrecy provisions of the bill and certainly no sign of any public call for them. … it is yet another encroachment that chips away at information that should be publicly available to all.” The last sentences are these: “These registers have been public information for centuries, long before they were kept by governments. No other free society has this kind of restriction. There is no need for it here.”

What is driving the argument on the behalf of the Government? It is a silly, misconstrued argument that people will have their privacy interfered with if other people go about their legitimate business of accessing data so that they can pursue social histories, family tree histories, genealogy, and accurate historical accounts of where New Zealand has come from. This bill will impede good scholarship, and National has to oppose it. Any person with any dignity—

Peter Brown: You’ve got it wrong.

BRIAN CONNELL: Unfortunately, Mr Brown has not been listening to the evidence that has been put before the House. The Christchurch rag got it right, Professor Rice got it right, and the 164 submitters who submitted to the select committee got it right. But Mr Brown stands up and says that we have all got it wrong.

Mr Brown will do anything to support the Government, because he knows that in a few months’ time things will get a bit—well, let me just say that he probably will be dusting off his CV, along with a few other non-Government members who continue to vote with the Government. I know that that will mean a huge loss of quality in this House, but, unfortunately, that is the way things are starting to pan out. That is the cost of their voting with the Government. The logic of what is being suggested by everyone who is opposed to this legislation is starting to catch up with some of my colleagues.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) : The previous speaker, Brian Connell, referred to those who made submissions on the bill to the Government Administration Committee. I was one of those who did so, in concert with my good friend Mr Keith Locke. I think it is fair to say that we made a submission on the bill as it was introduced, and on some serious shortcomings we saw in the bill, but we now see that the amendment the Minister is proposing—the Supplementary Order Paper that will be moved at the Committee stage—substantially addresses our concerns.

The view we took was that this bill would impede those who were seeking family histories, that the limitations it contained originally were excessive, and we doubted its impact on resolving the issue of identity fraud. The Minister and the select committee have listened, and the amendments they propose will address those issues. To some extent though the whole issue is somewhat of a fiction. In the last couple of months I have taken the time to catalogue my own family’s history back through all of my own grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great, and great-great-great-grandparents for the previous five generations. I have all of their data, but none of that has been obtained by accessing official records in this country. I have gone to cemetery records, I have used overseas records, newspaper accounts, and some of the National Library’s provisions, and I have built up a pretty complete picture of my own origins. I am quite satisfied with having achieved that as a spare-time hobby. But it does raise the issue again that we were concerned about at the time we made the submission on this original bill.

The amendments being proposed remove some of the immediate problems we foresaw about access beyond certain periods. But I think it remains a fiction to suggest that even with this amended bill, which we will be supporting, the fundamental issue that was put up as the reason for it in the first place is valid. As I recall telling the select committee, and as my experience in recent months has confirmed, it is pretty easy when one sets out to trace information about families and about people if one has a few basic tools.

I will give members a “for instance”. The member who preceded me is from the Christchurch area. The Christchurch City Council has available on the Internet all of the cemetery burial records for Christchurch cemeteries. So if people know the name of an ancestor or a family member they simply type it into the search page and it will give them all of the details, date of death, description of where the person is buried, occupation, age, and last-known address. It has nothing to do with registers of births, deaths, and marriages; this is information that is held by other sources. If people are then interested enough they can go to the National Library’s Papers Past website, which has a record of previous New Zealand newspapers up until around the first years of the 20th century. One can search death accounts, obituaries, and other pieces of information there.

Genealogists and amateur historians will know this well, but the point I am making is that even with this bill, even in its most Draconian original form, and certainly with the amendments now being moved to it, it will not have any impact on people’s ability to access that degree of information. So a number of the concerns that were being raised are readily able to be addressed.

That then leaves the question of identity fraud and whether one wants to put restrictions on the period through which one can have access to records to prevent the exploitation of fraud for those purposes. It reminds me of a story attributed to the late President Johnson, who in earlier days in Texan politics was part of a group of people who used to visit gravesites at night to find the names of the dead whom they could then enrol to cast votes for them in current elections. A story was told about one evening when a group of people were going through a particular cemetery. The trick was to go back several generations so that there was no prospect of the person they were having vote ever having anyone who would turn up and say “Hang on, that’s my uncle who died a few years ago.” They were going through the cemetery and Lyndon was particularly punctilious in going to the oldest graves he could find to get the names. His contemporaries were saying to him: “Come on, Lyndon, we haven’t got time for this. Just grab these names and go.” He turned to them and said: “He’s got as much right to vote as anyone in this cemetery.”

The point I am making in relation to identity fraud is that although the bill puts some restrictions in place, if people are determined enough they can find their way around it. That may be an extreme example for a nefarious purpose, but to go back to my example of cemetery records, one can find people there. One can find out that they did not have any descendants so one would be quite safe in assuming their identity. As members will be aware, we have had many cases of people adopting multiple aliases for fraudulent purposes. It is a comparatively easy thing to do, and the restrictions in the bill will not prevent that from happening.

So why support the bill? I think we need to make an effort to offer some level of protection. I think that the amendments the bill contains—and certainly the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has indicated he will move subsequently—are an improvement on the original. I think that is indicative of the fact that the select committee did listen to the submissions made to it. I have talked to a number of those who made submissions at the time who feel somewhat more comfortable about the bill in its likely amended form than they did in its original form. Most people acknowledge that some protections need to be put in place to prevent the rampant misuse of information that is held about people, but clearly at the same time they also acknowledge the old proverb that where there is a will there is a way.

We should not think that by passing this bill we will absolve ourselves of the difficulty of identity fraud. We should not think that we will prevent people from getting legitimate access to information because they will, and they will obtain it from all variety of sources, but we are in a position to offer some modest protection against the misuse of the official information that is currently held by the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and civil unions are probably now added in there, as well. For those purposes we think that the bill is a reasonable step forward and we will support it, given the fact that it is a vast improvement on what was originally introduced.

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) : I am giving this speech on behalf of Keith Locke, who is unable to participate in the debate this evening. The Greens will support the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill now that the Supplementary Order Paper has dramatically transformed it. We thank the Minister Rick Barker for recognising the role that the Greens, and in particular Keith Locke, have played in this transformation. Keith was, of course, added to the Government Administration Committee to represent the Green Party on this bill.

As has been mentioned by previous speakers, including Mr Connell just previously, the original bill met with huge opposition—in fact, from virtually every genealogist, historian, biographer, and journalist in the country—and rightly so. The original bill largely eliminated the traditional free access to births, deaths, and marriages records, or at least people would have to go through a hugely cumbersome, time-consuming, and costly process of trying to get immediate relatives to give them permission to look at records of relatives who had died less than 50 years ago, were married less than 80 years ago, or had been born less than 100 years ago. The Green Party responded to these concerns and said that we would not support the bill going any further. We linked up with United Future and, in the best MMP tradition, Peter Dunne and Mr Locke presented a joint submission to the Government Administration Committee, which was considering the bill, and Mr Dunne has referred to that.

With several MMP parties, plus National, being against the bill, the Government did not have the numbers to pass the bill in its original form. Rather than simply opposing the bill as the National Party had done, the Greens tried to look for a way through, and we think that it has been found. The key point is that we have pretty much kept open access to records. If people want it, they can get it. However, there is provision for people to close their records, but the Greens successfully pushed for this to be on prescribed grounds and for a prescribed purpose. We were given confirmation in the House by the Minister that it will not be easy to meet these prescribed grounds. He said it must be on “substantive” grounds, and the prescribed period cannot be too long either. We reiterate that position, particularly for the reference of those making the regulations and for the Regulations Review Committee.

The select committee looked at a real substantive ground that might occur infrequently. It looked at cases like a woman who had left a spouse and set up a new relationship and did not want her former partner to be able to track her down. The former partner may be able to track her new address by getting hold of a marriage or civil union certificate, finding out the new partner’s name, and then the address. So it has to be something serious to close a record. It cannot be done just on a whim and for a long period. The period would not need to be for years and years, because there is the right of renewal with the registrar.

After the big changes made to the original bill, New Zealand remains like Britain and parts of the United States, in that it is holding the line for open access to records. We do not need to exaggerate security concerns, because Government officials could not identify many people who were stealing other people’s identities by using the births, deaths, and marriages records. In fact, it is much harder to steal a person’s identity now, due to computerisation and checks in the records of the Department of Internal Affairs. It is much, much harder to steal the identity of a dead person—

Sandra Goudie: There never was any correlation between access and fraud.

NANDOR TANCZOS: All I can hear is yak-yak-yak. It is much harder to steal the identity of a dead person because a death is now registered in the computer records, in the same file as the person’s birth, marriage, or civil union details. If someone goes to the Department of Internal Affairs for a passport, plenty of questions can be asked of a fraudster to check them out. Some defenders of the bill in its original form said that might be true, but what about the private firms, banks, and various agencies that might be deceived about someone’s identity if information on births, deaths, and marriages is too readily available? Well, if they do not do the proper checking, it is their lookout. We do not need to close off the records because of their incompetence.

There are a couple of new checks and balances in the revised bill that are not too onerous and will give people some protection against fraud. First, people accessing information have to provide some identification and their access to a particular subject’s files will be recorded on that subject’s access register. Secondly, if people have some worries that a particular person might be trying to get at their details with ill intent, they can check their access register regarding their own birth, marriage, or civil union details. The death details are outside this process, for obvious reasons—it is a bit difficult for a deceased person to fill out the relevant forms. Thirdly, the identification criteria for the person accessing records will presumably not be too onerous. The requirement is for any means of identification that are reasonably necessary. It will not be watertight identification but it will make it easier to track down harassers and fraudsters.

Presumably, it will not be necessary for bulk users, like genealogists, to go through a lot of hassles and repeatedly lodge ID. They might be identified by a particular email address for repeated searches. Cost and ease of access is rightly important for many genealogists. They are often retired people, without much income, who often have to go up many paths to track down forebears. The computerisation of records should make it easier for them to get printouts, and hopefully will be cheaper for the recipient, in that there is a much lower administrative burden on the Department of Internal Affairs with computerised records compared with paper records. What are known as historical records will be readily available—that is, where the person was born 100 years ago, and the like.

There is a provision in the bill for the Department of Internal Affairs to provide information on whole categories of people, in an easy form. This could be very important for some historical research. For example, one researcher did a project on what types of people were most affected by the 1918 flu epidemic in New Zealand, and where they lived. A comprehensive look at the death records during the several months of the flu epidemic was obviously required. The downside for researchers is that the Government will not now be providing sets of hundreds of people’s records, or summaries, often called indexes, in the same way it did previously. People will not be allowed to put whole sets of records on the Internet. How this will work in practice is anyone’s guess, because the long arm of the New Zealand law does not necessarily get to Internet jurisdictions on the other side of the world, where foreign websites may host the mass genealogical records of New Zealanders, which currently exist. This question of whether a mass of records, or summaries of them, should be available on the Internet, and the practicalities of preventing it, is one we will have to work through over the 5-year test period of the legislation.

In finishing, the Green Party thanks the dozens of submitters to the bill who were instrumental in paving the way for this bill to be changed to allow open access of records. Mr Locke says it was also nice to see the two Tims—the two previously faceless editors of the New Zealand Herald and the Dominion Post—Tim Murphy and Tim Pankhurst, pop their heads above the parapet and jointly make the case to the select committee for freedom of information. The original bill was very unpopular. As the Green MPs talked about it around the community we discovered that almost every second person appears to be a genealogist, which is great not only for family histories but also for the refining of our nation’s history. We praise these genealogists, just as we praise the historians and biographers who will gain greatly from the changes in this bill. In the main, genealogists, historians, and biographers work long hours, month after month, year after year, generally unpaid—in fact, spending money out of their own pockets quite often—just to bring some enlightenment to their families and their nation.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) : Kia ora tātou katoa e te Whare. This Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill is important to a lot of people for many reasons, but it is very important to Māori because it deals with information that is an essential element of whakapapa, and whakapapa is a very, very special part of being Māori.

Whakapapa is not something introduced through 21st century computer-based family tree programmes or family history websites. Indeed, whakapapa is not even just about genealogy; whakapapa is far, far deeper than that.

Nearly 80 years ago Sir Apirana Ngata presented a paper to the Wellington branch of the Historical Association in which he challenged the prevailing practice of depicting genealogy and history as having started in this country only with the arrival of the European settlers. Ngata referred the historians to the minute books of the Native Land Court, describing them as containing “the most diversified use of the genealogical method, as illustrating the Māori customs relating not only to land tenure but also to birth, marriage, death, war, peace-making, conquest, gifts, mana, chieftainship … and other aspects of pre-pakeha life of the Maori people.” Whakapapa is the basis of our history, the basis of kinship underpinning the whole concept of whānau, hapū, and iwi, and an essential element in how Māori see ourselves as tangata whenua here in Aotearoa.

I recall just last year a good mate of mine by the name of Joe Te Rito gave another perspective on the complexity of whakapapa research. He talked about how he was trying to trace his whakapapa all the way back to Papatūānuku, with particular interest in the 16 generations from Rongomaiwahine, high chieftainess of Te Māhia, down to himself. Joe drew on Ngata’s legacy to explain the concept of whakapapa as a genealogical story told layer upon layer, ancestor upon ancestor.

He also talked about the many different ways Māori had to describe the detail and the history of births, deaths, marriages, and relationships, such as the notion of whakamoe, or intermarriages within a person’s lines of descent; the concept of taotahi, or listing ancestors’ names without including those of wives or husbands; tararere, or tracing a single line of descent without showing intermarriages or other kinship relationships; and the notion of tāhū, or setting out the main lines from the progenitors of a tribe—ancestors, for example, like Ikanui and Wheeru for Te Aupōuri, Tūwhakatere for Ngāi Takoto, Rāhiri for Ngāpuhi, etc. So members can see how identity and having access to the records of that identity are crucial in enabling people to better understand their history, their place in today’s world, and their potential for the future.

I recall, for example, when I first came to Parliament I was asked what name I would like to have on my door. So, naturally, I told them that my name was Hone Pani Tamati Waka Nene Harawira. Just as naturally, Parliamentary Service told me that it could not do it, that I could not have my name on my door, that it was too long. Did I have a shorter version? Would I mind if one of my names was dropped? But the reality is that my name defines me through mana tupuna and mana whenua as well. Indeed, with a name like Tamati Waka Nene it would not be possible for me to be anything but a member of Parliament for the mighty Tai Tokerau. I carry my name with pride in my ancestry and pride in the relationships I have through my tūpuna to a goodly number of other MPs in this House, including MPs from Labour, National, New Zealand First, and the Māori Party.

Peter Brown: Are we on that computer?

HONE HARAWIRA: I say to Peter Brown that he is not, but members of his party are.

Far be it from me to risk causing offence by chopping off one of my names, because through my whakapapa I am also the living image of those who have gone before us. So rather than agreeing to chop one of my names off, I simply asked that Parliamentary Service work it out, and, lo and behold, it came to pass.

Whakapapa can be complex, it can be frightening, it is always keenly watched by observers, and it is a mark of maturity in those who are able to capture its essence, albeit at wildly different levels. The recalling in proper order of whakapapa is one of the greatest skills of our most treasured orators—our kaumātua—and, increasingly, the young sharp minds of our rangatahi.

There is nothing like listening to a master in the art of whakapapa, and I have been privileged in my time to hear some of the truly great orators of the north, including the Rev. Māori Marsden and Sir James Hēnare himself, who used whakapapa to build connections between people who had no idea of their relationship to others in the same house, who used whakapapa to define the value of historical links between hapū and iwi who might have been at loggerheads with one another, and in a truly masterly display Sir James Hēnare used whakapapa to completely destroy the arbitrary boundaries laid down for Ngāpuhi, by highlighting the deep whakapapa connections between hapū inside and outside of that arbitrary boundary line.

I was speaking to Angeline Greensill, the Māori Party candidate for Hauraki-Waikato, about this very bill just last week, and she said that it was really, really important that the Māori Party supported the right of tangata whenua to be able to access information about births, deaths, marriages, and relationships, as it is one of those essential aspects of our whānau, hapū, and iwi that must be preserved. I followed up that discussion by making a call to Monty Ōhia, the Māori Party candidate for Te Tai Tonga, to see what his thoughts were, and I was not surprised at all to learn that he was of the very same mind. Indeed, he said that the Māori Party should also support the right of all other New Zealanders to have access to that information for the same reasons, because he believed that genealogy helped people to build awareness of themselves and their relationships with others, through knowledge of their own ancestry.

And Derek Fox, the Māori Party candidate for Ikaroa-Rawhiti, added that the concept of mana tupuna was equally important in helping Māori to define our status as tangata whenua and as a distinct people. He said that mana tupuna was the bridge that linked us to our ancestors, that defined our heritage, and that gave us the stories that defined our place in the world.

And although we accept the importance of security measures to protect personal details from abuse, it is because of the critical importance of whakapapa to Māori and the safeguarding of the art of whakapapa as a key asset in the survival and renaissance of Māori as tangata whenua that the Māori Party will be supporting the right of whānau to continue to have access to registered information on births, deaths, marriages, and relationships, for the legitimate purpose of discovering more about one’s whakapapa and all the relationships that flow from that knowledge and those connections. Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) : I want to take a short call on this matter to highlight the inconsistency of the National Party’s opposition to this bill. This bill, of course, is aimed at moving births, deaths, and marriages registration into the 21st century, and the hallmark of the turn of the century has been the increase in the information age and the accessibility in electronic form of much data. The price of that, of course, has been a greater vigilance of privacy, and one cannot have the ease of access through information technology without revising the barriers in order to protect privacy. So this bill seeks to achieve a greater degree of accuracy by facilitating the interdepartmental swapping of defined information so that the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages has an accurate register.

At the heart of this bill is the search for accuracy. Of course, that makes ironic the comment by the National Party members, if one listened to them this evening—and as far as I can tell, this seems to be summed up in the National Party’s view in the Government Administration Committee report, when it could not agree on any changes to the bill—that the restrictions proposed in the bill will hamper academic and genuine genealogical research and other legitimate purposes for which access is needed to information on births, deaths, and marriages. Well, let us just look at that. If the National members want to have an Act that continues to rely upon inaccurate information, then the whole pyramid of academic research and genuine genealogical information is a house that is built on sand. It is a pyramid of no substance. What better basis could there be for academic research and genealogical analysis than accurate records?

This bill simply moves the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act into the 21st century, even though Sandra Goudie is still walking on the streets of the 18th century. This bill seeks to impose high levels of accuracy on the registrar-general, and it recognises the effect of our information technology on the recording and exchanging of that information between the various Government agencies and individuals who possess it. The bill enables individuals to accurately describe aspects of their identity. It enables some individuals in sensitive occupations to suppress their details, and it restricts the unlimited access of those with prurient interests. But the bill also opens up the right for individuals to give consent to further research, and after 100 years, of course, it opens up the books entirely for proper research.

So at the heart of this bill is a search for accuracy, and that search for accuracy, of course, puts a lie to the National Party’s opposition when it wants to retain outdated and inaccurate records, using the claim of academic freedom.

COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) : It is good to get an opportunity to speak to this bill, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. Just following what the last speaker said, I think probably the point that needs to be made and restated is that there has been a lack of consultation within the process of developing this legislation, and that displays a level of arrogance that is borne out in most of the legislation that comes forward from this Government. We have only to think about legislation such as the Electoral Finance Act, which has been put there for a purpose but was not consulted widely enough on and will not survive. Really, when we look at the process of democracy inside this country we see we are starting to understand just how thin a veneer of democracy we have left under this Labour Government.

That was also borne out by this Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill when the original version of the bill that came before the House was poorly conceived. That certainly did raise the hackles and ire of the genealogists, and the process of hearing submissions by the Government Administration Committee certainly raised that issue. The point I make is made again in an editorial in the Christchurch Press that said: “The idea appears to have been one cooked up by bureaucrats in a closed circle in which they consulted only other bureaucrats. It came about after a policy review, but although 15 government departments were able to have their say on it, no outside opinions seem to have been solicited. The bill will go to a select committee,” but, as it says there, the opportunity to make submissions will be quite limited.

When we look at the size and substance of the Supplementary Order Papers, it is quite easy for us to say yes, we have got it sorted. But I do not think we have. I mean, once something has been made crooked, it is very hard to make it straight. I have absolutely no confidence that the Labour Government has been able to get this matter sorted. The information that is quite relevant is that 68,000 corrections have been made by the public to the information on births, deaths, and marriages. The Department of Internal Affairs would not have the capability even to be able to access and source that information and to keep it correct.

When we look at this bill we have here before the House, with its associated Supplementary Order Papers, we can see that it is in the johnny-come-lately style we have become very used to from this Labour Government. It is certainly not what the National Party would call creditable Government. On that basis, it is still very appropriate that the National members are opposing this bill, because once something has been made crooked, it is pretty difficult to argue that it can be made straight purely by putting in a couple of Supplementary Order Papers. Restricting the public’s opportunity to see the full substance of the bill originally was a denial of people’s democratic rights, and democracy is something we must value at all costs.

The thoughts about identity fraud are a typical example—a very lightweight excuse, sort of thought up on the fly to justify this bill. When we look at the access restriction, we see is a very serious matter. We had the member from United Future before talking about how he was able to build up a pretty complete picture without going anywhere near the registers of births, deaths, and marriages, but that is not necessarily always the case.

The arguments that have been put forward by the National Party are very relevant. The Government has failed to consult. That is a pretty serious indictment, when we consider that the public have every right to be able to submit on something. The ability to put forward Supplementary Order Papers—this has become the custom of this Government—at the very last hour denies the public their right to be able to articulate their views, and to ensure that our lawmaking in this House is well considered and that the public are well and truly engaged. The fact that the majority of submitters opposed the structure of the original bill was bad enough in itself. It is important to recognise that in relation to the history of this country, as has been related in this House, it is important that we are able to carry out accurate research with regard to our genealogies. That is something we all take very, very seriously.

So the National Party, I believe, is certainly in the right space on this bill. Openness and transparency were denied to the public. The Government’s continuing custodial role is therefore brought into question. It is quite clear that the Minister of Internal Affairs referred to the prevention of identity theft as one of the aims of the bill, but such cases were considered to be very rare, according to the submission that was put to the select committee. So let us not forget the experiences that we are having from this Government, as it works its way through a very lightweight Order Paper. We have to realise that democracy in this country is being challenged by virtue of the fact that we are constantly seeing the public kept out of the discussions around how this country is run. This bill, on that basis, should not progress, and the National Party is quite rightfully in the position of objecting to it. Thank you.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : Unfortunately, I missed my turn for my call, so I am taking a tail-end Charlie. I have to say that the contribution of the member who has just resumed his seat, Colin King, was quite disappointing. I usually listen to him with some interest because he usually talks common sense, but here he was talking gobbledegook—absolute gobbledegook. When this legislation was first introduced by the Government it all seemed very, very straightforward, and New Zealand First supported it going to the Government Administration Committee. But shortly thereafter we found a number of flaws were identified by the genealogists, the historians, and the people who represented adopted people. They all registered huge concerns. A number of submissions outlined the details of those concerns, none more so than that of the Hon Peter Dunne and Keith Locke, where they combined together and outlined their concerns.

In order to ensure that the select committee took on board the submitters’ concerns, Sandra Goudie—and the member can tell me whether I am correct—got somebody to extract the records of, I think, her own family, without anybody whatsoever challenging it. She came back to the select committee and told us how loose the system was.

Sandra Goudie: I don’t have a problem with that part.

PETER BROWN: The member does not have a problem with that part, but she will vote against the bill. She will vote against it. She identified quite clearly that there was a problem in the current law, and the National members will vote against the bill.

But I say “fair go” to the Minister, because he took on board all the concerns and realised that the legislation was not doing the job that he thought it would do. It needed amendment, and he has produced a Supplementary Order Paper to address all the concerns. The Minister needs to be complimented on that. He wrote to the select committee addressing all the concerns, and I have a copy of his letter here. [Interruption] One of the concerns—and it is the concern of the member opposite, who is going into hysterics as I speak—was that if Joe Blow goes along and asks about the background on, the criteria on, or the information about a certain person, then Joe Blow is captured on an access register. Under the legislation as it was originally written, there was nothing, and that is considered to be a solution.

Sandra Goudie: That wasn’t a concern.

PETER BROWN: Oh, the member is agreeing with it.

Sandra Goudie: No, I said that wasn’t a concern. I don’t mind people having access to the information, but the member actually doesn’t understand the issue—nor did the Minister.

PETER BROWN: The member is quite confused. She is opposing this bill, and she knows that the current law is inadequate. The member knows that the current law is inadequate. She was a member of the select committee—a rather vocal member of the select committee—and she is advocating that the National Party does nothing. She knows that there is a problem, and she wants nothing to be done.

New Zealand First thinks that the Minister has taken all the concerns on board. He has produced a Supplementary Order Paper to address the concerns that the public raised before the select committee, and New Zealand First will be supporting it.

I am conscious that I am running out of time, but I just want to talk a little about another concern of New Zealand First. When one goes for a death certificate when a person has died, it states whether that person is buried or cremated, but if one goes for a computer printout, it does not state whether the person is buried or cremated. It does not use those terms at all; it states where the body was disposed of. Many people, many New Zealanders, find that to be insulting. They find that to be insensitive. We made representations to the Minister and to the select committee, and that wording will be changed in this legislation. That is a significant improvement, and I compliment the Minister on listening to that concern and taking it on board. Thank you very much.