Goudie Sandra: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Goudie Sandra: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16660] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I make it quite clear that National stands for freedom democracy openness and transparency. Openness and transparency is one of the hallmarks of democracy and New Zealand is hailed worldwide as being one of the best examples of openness and transparency. What are we doing with this particular bill? We are in actual fact shutting down that openness and transparency. I call that the death of democracy by a thousand cuts and the population at large sees it unheralded. 
Most of the people who were involved with this Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Billin its original form opposed it— completely opposed it. And there were a number of very excellent reasons why. One of the first reasons was that there was no direct correlation between identity theft and access to the Births Deaths and Marriages register. If members took the time and trouble to read the KPMG report they would see that for themselves. It was never proven that the premise of this bill which is around identity theft was valid. That was found quite clearly during the select committee process and it was clearly enunciated to all the committee members including those of the current Government. 
The Press Council amongst others stated quite clearly that everyone is entitled to privacy of personal space and personal information and that these rights should be respected. However the council also said that the right of privacy should not interfere with publications of matters of public record or of obvious significant public interest. And quite frankly much of the information is on the public record. In actual fact by law records of nuptials are meant to be held in a public way so that everybody is very aware of them. That is what the law requires. So although the bill has been watered down it still means that we will be jumping through hoops to get access to information that is publicly available in a whole lot of other forums and there is absolutely no reason why it should not be available in this forum. 
I could talk about a number of different submissions not the least of which was one by Sir Geoffrey Palmer who had concerns about this bill and rightly so. Those concerns were expressed and seemed to have been ignored. I would like to mention the submission of David Grant chairperson of the Trade Union History Project who also had grave concerns about this bill. In respect of privacy he felt that much of the information was already public and that there was no need to shut that access down or to restrict it in any way—which is clearly being done by this current Government without real justification. 
One of the problems that this Government finally came to recognise but used a sledgehammer to fix was that if one goes to the Births Deaths and Marriages register and asks for some information one can get a copy of an authenticated certificate without any requirement for identification. That is absolutely wrong. It has been practised for many many years and should have been clamped down on long ago. But when this Government tries to do something it does it with a sledgehammer rather than trying to fix it by some other means. One would have to ask what the problem was that the Government was trying to fix. It certainly did not clearly identify that hence the need to go into a negotiation process about what the bill would actually contain. So because the Government did not practise good problem definition in the first instance—and I have to say that most of its legislation bears the hallmark of poor problem definition—the bill is quite convoluted and requires a lot of substantive changes. Those changes still retain the hurdles for access to information for births. One is excluded from having that information unless the birth took place 100 years ago or more and for still births it is 50 years ago or more. Marriages and civil unions must have taken place 80 years ago or more before one can start accessing that information. That still means that one has to jump through hoops to get that information. 
A number of the reasons that were given by many submitters are very very valid. There are moves around the world to free up information following New Zealand’s example but here we are going in the opposite direction. Why is that? It is because this current Government thinks in the words of the Privacy Commissioner that this is “privacy pollution” and that we should not have the ready access that we have had for many many years. That access to the information also means that private investigators banks and genealogists—everybody who has ready access to that information—can actually correct that information. Eighty-six thousand corrections have been made over the years not by the Department of Internal Affairs or registrars-general of Births Deaths and Marriages but by external individuals and agencies having ready access to that information. They should still have access to that information. 
As I said before for the benefit of New Zealand First openness and transparency is one of the hallmarks of democracy and it should be retained and not lost at all costs. This was recognised by the majority of submitters to this bill yet that ready access will now be denied in spite of the changes that have been made to the bill. This is the reason why National continues to oppose this legislation. It is a sledgehammer to crack a nut and there could have been other ways to fix the problem without going to the extreme of what has been done here. There is already a raft of legal and regulatory measures to protect people’s privacy and we know that the Privacy Commissioner is now looking at all the other registers across Government that contain information and looking at how the Government can shut down people’s access to that information in those registers as well. As Sir Geoffrey Palmer pointed out this particular bill is the tip of the iceberg and it will now roll on to all of those other registers. 
Again I say that openness and transparency is one of the hallmarks of democracy and we should defend that strenuously. Members should not forget that this debating Chamber is a memorial. Our armed forces our Anzacs and the people from our Returned Services Associations fought and died for our freedoms and our democracy. That is what we should be defending in this House right to the bitter end. We should not let that go unrecognised. Of course this is the new battleground. Our democracy and our freedoms are being undermined little by little without the public really being aware of it in a number of pieces of legislation. This is a constant battleground. We have to be aware of those changes and we have to fight to protect our democracy and our freedoms and this is one of those cases. 
David Grant in his Trade Union History Project submission said that there would always be a balance between what is public information and privacy that it is very hard to see how information about the date and place of a birth marriage or death and the full name of that person or persons compromises their privacy and that it is also hard to see how the confirmation or other of parentage could be deemed a privacy matter for those other than a direct relation. Researchers often access information about all sorts of people they are not directly related to. That is one of the essential marks of historians and that is why David as chairperson spoke pretty strongly on behalf of the Trade Union History Project and opposed the changes being mooted by the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. 
The media were very concerned. They felt that this bill was also an attack on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that it breached the freedom of the dissemination of information. Another submitter James McAloon associate professor of history at Lincoln University said the bill failed the test of reasonableness. There was submission after submission that gave a range of valid reasons for opposing this bill. The reasons have been reiterated in this House time and time again by National members but have still been ignored by the rest of the House. 
It is very disappointing that nobody values our democracy and freedom as much as the National Party. We will continue to do that and continue to fight for that in this battleground here in the House. I am very proud to stand here on behalf of the National Party and oppose this legislation.