Fenton Darien: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Fenton Darien: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16659] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 As I was saying before the adjournment the purpose of this bill is to strike a balance between protecting personal information from those who might wish to abuse it and maintaining freedom of information and the right of the public to access the registers. The registers are a source of information about demographics health mortality and other important information. They also provide an official record of events such as births deaths marriages civil unions and name changes that can be used as evidence of those events along with age identity descent whakapapa and New Zealand citizenship. The registers are not there just for the media to gain information or for historians to do their work. They are there for families for communities and for all of us because public registers such as these are an important taonga for New Zealand and they should be treated as such both in law and in practice. 
Although identity theft was one of the drivers behind the bill that was not its primary purpose and those members opposite who have tried to play down the significant responsibility of the State in protecting the public records from such abuse have not taken their parliamentary responsibility seriously in my view. It is even more extraordinary to have these denials going on knowing that the member Sandra Goudie who is a member of the select committee that considered this bill and who has been most vocal in her ridicule complained to the Minister earlier this year about a woman who had fraudulently obtained a birth certificate of a child and used that identity to claim over $31000 in welfare benefits. Then she said there was no problem. 
David Bennett the member from Hamilton East wrote to the Minister in October 2007 about someone using a false birth certificate to obtain a driver’s licence. He asked the Minister: “When would the requirements for applying for a birth certificate become more stringent?”. Well duh! That is yet more evidence that National Party members do not talk to each other. As recently as last week I heard another National Party member expressing his concerns about identity theft because one of his constituents had experienced the repeated abuse of someone stealing that person’s identity through birth records. 
Over the weekend the  
New Zealand Herald  
reported that identity theft is on the rise in New Zealand with 900 cases of identity fraud relating to 400 identities having been uncovered in the past 12 months. The police say that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So in my view we would be really stupid to ignore international trends that show identity theft is a growing problem. There are reports from Britain that identity fraud has risen by more than 60 percent in just the past year and there is no reason to believe that New Zealand will not follow this trend. Therefore it makes sense that the risks associated with open access to registers should be examined and this is one of the reasons why the bill came to the House in the first place. The call of National Party members to prove that there is a problem rather than preventing the problem is quite bizarre. It is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. This Government does not believe that that is good enough and is acting responsibly in bringing this matter to the House’s attention. 
The whys and wherefores of the changes made through Supplementary Order Papers have been well rehearsed in the debates on this bill and I do not want to repeat them yet again although I am sure the member Sandra Goudie is dying to have a go. But it has been an astonishing experience for me. I have mentioned in previous speeches my astonishment at the criticism from the Opposition about the select committee process but I think it is a tribute to this Parliament that a bill that had opposition from some quarters and frankly a bit of a hysterical reaction from others has been amended to meet their concerns. I feel proud to be part of a Government that is prepared to listen and take on board public concerns and to work as part of an MMP Parliament to reach a compromise. 
I believe that the bill we have in front of us now is a result of that good process of listening to the concerns of submitters and of collaboration between the parties other than the National Party. I find it really regrettable that some members have impugned the work of the majority of parties in this House in their cooperative efforts to make this bill one that we and the nation can support. We have seen some amazing hissy fits from National Party members. It is the usual populist “engage the mouth before the brain” rubbish that we see day in day out from that party. There is a good saying and I will repeat it for the benefit of National Party members: “If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.” and that is what we are seeing from the National Party. 
The final bill is a good compromise between the balancing act that Parliament must strike between the obligations of the State to protect personal information from fraudsters and maintaining freedom of information and public access. It modernises the Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Act to take account of technological and social developments and provides some protections against fraudsters seeking to obtain personal information for illicit purposes. I am delighted to support this bill in its third reading.