The closing date for submissions was Friday, 4 May 2007.

The bill aims to amend the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act 1995, which provides for the registration of information about births, adoptions, changes of name, sexual assignment and reassignment, marriages, civil unions, and deaths. It also provides for public and government agency access to that information and for the issue of birth, death, marriage, and civil union certificates.

The bill seeks to introduce amendments that aim to improve the ability of the Registrar-General to collect and verify information for the purposes of the Act, regulate access to that information (incorporating appropriate privacy safeguards and recognising that there are a range of legitimate reasons why people want to access the information), and to modernise the Act to take account of technological and social developments.

Copies of the bill can be purchased from Bennetts Government Bookshops.

The committee requires 2 copies of each submission. Those wishing to include any information of a private or personal nature in a submission should first discuss this with the clerk of the committee, as submissions are usually released to the public by the committee. Those wishing to appear before the committee to speak to their submissions should state this clearly and provide a daytime telephone contact number.

Further guidance on making a submission can be found from the Making a Submission to a Parliamentary Select Committee link in the in the ‘Related links’ panel.