Ardern Shane: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Ardern Shane: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16579] 
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.