Barker Rick: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Barker Rick: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16577] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
: 
 I move  
That the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. This bill puts into place important measures to regulate access to registered information about births deaths marriages civil unions and other relationships. Those measures will help to increase an individual’s awareness and control over how his or her personal information is disclosed while balancing the public’s need to access this important information for a range of legitimate purposes. 
The bill also improves the ability of the Registrar-General of Births Deaths and Marriages to collect and verify information to ensure the official records are accurate and it modernises the law to take into account all relevant technological and social developments. At present individuals generally have no idea who might be accessing their records or the records of their children or family members or for what purpose. In most cases of course people who are accessing those records will be doing so for reasons that may be regarded as benign such as for family history research. 
In other cases people may be using the information from those records as a basis for applying for false documents and conducting fraudulent transactions. Those kinds of people can get the information either from an authenticated certificate or from unofficial printouts from the records. Information is being misused and we see frequent reports of offenders being convicted and sentenced for identity crimes. The impact on those whose identities have been stolen and on their families is well known—contrary I might add to the claims of some others who have spoken in this debate and claimed there is no issue around identity theft. 
I will give several examples of identity theft. One sample analysis involves 33 proven false passport applications made in a 3-year period from 2004 to 2006. It was found that in three-quarters of those cases the offender had accessed the victim’s birth record prior to submitting a passport application. The birth certificate gave those offenders enough information to complete the passport application in each case. 
As another example I remind the House that David Bennett the member for Hamilton East wrote to me on 15 October 2007 about a constituent whose brother had allegedly obtained a driver’s licence using the constituent’s birth certificate. Mr Bennett was rightly concerned about this and asked me when the requirements for applying for a birth certificate would become more stringent. I agree with him. This bill does exactly that. 
A third example is that of Laurelyn Smith who was convicted and sentenced at the end of 2007 for impersonation and forgery. She used the birth certificate of a New Zealand infant who had died at birth in 1962 to get an Inland Revenue Department number and to set up a bank account. She then used the child’s identity to claim over $31000 in welfare benefits. Sandra Goudie was concerned about this case and on 29 February this year she asked me how Laurelyn Smith acquired the birth certificate of that dead girl. The answer is that currently anyone can generally access anyone else’s records without any sort of protection for the subjects of those records. 
The Law Commission noted in its report on public registers released earlier this year that in our computerised age the ability of people to search for and gather personal information about a large number of individuals or about particular individuals has rightly led to public concern about the potential for abuse of this information. 
The bill now maintains a general availability to access anyone else’s records but it puts in place three key safeguards. People will be required to present reasonable identification when applying to access someone else’s records and their names will be recorded and made available to the subjects of those records on application. These measures are intended to act both as a deterrent to people who wish to access another person’s record for mischievous purposes and as an incentive for people to act with respect to others by encouraging people to notify the subject of the record they are intending to access. 
This approach is already followed as a matter of good practice by many people. When my aunt was researching my family’s history she wrote to me asking whether I would mind her accessing my record and the records of my children. I was quite happy to allow her to do that. Even if I had not been at least I found out how my personal information was to be used. 
These measures provide a good measure of protection while ensuring that people continue to have generally open access to the records that currently exist. However in cases where there is a recognised need for individuals to be protected the bill will allow people to request that their records not be publicly disclosed for a certain period of time. It is recognised that the circumstances in which individuals may require such protection may change over time and the bill’s flexible framework ensures that a responsible approach can be taken as those changes arise. 
At the same time the bill makes it easier to access registered information where it is appropriate to do so. Genealogists historians and other members of the public will benefit from the ability to search for their family history records online when the Registrar-General’s website publishes information from historical records. 
Researchers will be able to request access to a greater range of information including identifying information about groups or individuals. Such access will also be extended to people undertaking historical research. Currently researchers can access non-identifying information only for health demographic or statistical research. Private sector organisations will be able to use information about deceased individuals to ensure that databases are up to date and that correspondence is not being sent to those individuals and causing pain to family members. 
Government departments will be able to receive better information for authorised information-matching programmes and reciprocal arrangements will be able to be put in place between New Zealand and overseas registries to ensure that records are kept up to date with details of relevant deaths and name changes that occur in each place. 
The bill’s other measures are important too albeit relatively technical. Usually requiring both parents to sign a birth registration form will help improve the accuracy of the information provided and will reduce the claims that a person was wrongly named as a parent. Increasing the ability of the Registrar-General to obtain and use information from other sources will help improve the comprehensiveness of the official record and the accuracy of the information. For example the Registrar-General will be better able to trace mothers of unregistered babies and ensure children born as a result of assisted reproductive procedures and their donors can identify each other with the most up-to-date information. 
The bill was considered by the Government Administration Committee and again I would like to thank the members of that select committee who made workable suggestions to amend the bill’s provisions especially those relating to the registered information held by Births Deaths and Marriages. I also thank those who took the time to make submissions on the bill. I commend the bill to the House.