Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): It's a privilege to speak on the first reading of the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill. This bill updates the 1995 Act which provides the overarching framework that governs how information on births deaths marriages and civil unions is registered in this country. It aims to provide more timely access to birth and death information and rapid access to historical records in the digital age.Having spent over a decade in child and youth health research I was a frequent user of births deaths and marriages information. One of the biggest issues we had was timeliness because it was often a two-year lag between when somebody had passed away and when we could access the death registration data. Also for birth registrations it was often several months—up to six months—before we could access that information. That made it really difficult when you're trying to look for emerging trends—for example clusters with suicides; or if you've got interventions like wahakura or pēpi pods for cot death it was very difficult to be able to see what impact that was having in the region. Also just things like some of the deaths from child abuse and with the intense interventions that we've been doing within the health sector thinking about whether that was having any impact—because it's the ability to tailor what you're doing to what you see in the data and that's not really possible in the current situation.The other thing we had with the delays in the birth registration data was we couldn't really assess how many births were happening each year and so it was often difficult when we were trying to calculate accurate infant mortality rates—again key to some of our monitoring. So what this bill says is that a preliminary notice of birth has to be provided to the Registrar-General within five working days following a birth and a preliminary notice of death has to be provided by the doctor within three working days of giving a death certificate thereby creating some more streamlining in the process. A lot of the changes in this respect address the recommendations of the 2015 Law Commission review into deaths burial and cremation. So it's a fairly evidence-based approach; it's been based on a very very thorough review of the area. Many others—like my father who's a family history buff—use births deaths and marriages data for family history research. I often remember him having to write away each time he wanted a copy of a historical marriage certificate or a death certificate and then having all these big folders in his study downstairs where he laboriously recorded all of that on paper-based copy. What I really remember is that it's an absolutely time-consuming process if you have write away for paper-based certificates and print-outs. What this bill aims to provide is greater electronic access to historical information. It allows people to request electronic access to pre-1998 registers that contain historical information about a named person. Still that provision is there—that you need to know the name of the person that you're requesting the data on rather than just having open access in that space. Moving to an online format will significantly speed up access to that historical births deaths and marriages information for family history research. The bill though preserves the concept of historical information and a differentiation between what you can access on non-historical information that relates to people who have passed away or been married a long time ago. In some cases it shortens the time periods required. So for example for accessing marriage information it shortened that to 75 years or more since the marriage occurred rather than the pre-existing 80 years.The other thing that the bill preserves is the requirement that people need to confirm their identity to be able to access births deaths and marriages information. Again though this can be done online via a RealMe identity which means people can go online confirm their identity and then have access to this information in a very timely manner. Many of these changes—in terms of improved access—address the recommendations of the Department of Internal Affairs 2016 review of access provisions.This bill in summary aims to improve both the timeliness of and the access to births deaths and marriages data. It's also going to tidy up the 1995 Act and make it more flexible and futureproofed because we're now operating in that digital age. I'm also reassured by the fact that this bill is based on the work of two very substantive reviews in this area one based on the Law Commission's review looking at the death registration information and also when we're looking at access in terms of that review it recommended that we move to online formats so that people can get greater access to this information.So given the information is incredibly useful for researchers—like my past role—because it gives us that overall ability to assess what's happening in our community and to then make decisions in the health sector based on an understanding of what's happening on the ground and also because it's absolutely so valuable for family history researchers I'm very happy to support this bill and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.