Barker Rick: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships  Registration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Barker Rick: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships  Registration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15560] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
: 
 As we were discussing last time the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill was being debated I was getting to the end of my presentation and it had the Opposition riveted. Those members were very interested in the section that I was talking about which related to both parents being required to sign the birth certificate. This is currently not a requirement and it was quite surprising to me as to why the department recommended this. It is because often there were genuine debates over the naming of the child. The parents would ostensibly agree on what the name was and one parent would register the name then some time later he or she would find out that the details were different. For example instead of it being Mary Jane it could be Jane Mary or some other name could have been slipped in. We will now require both parents to sign their signature. 
There are cases where both parents are not able to sign the form and I have outlined most of those. The last one I got to before the interruption of the debate was in the case of only one parent at law—for example where the child had been conceived as a result of an assistive reproductive procedure and born to a mother who does not have a partner. Only the mother’s details would then be registered. It is worthwhile noting that under the registration regime in the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act which was passed by this House in 2004 children in those cases would be able to find out about their genetic heritage and other genetically related siblings who were born as a result of donations made by the same donor. That sorted that issue out. 
The interesting thing about this bill is that is has generated quite an amount of debate. I think people have on occasion missed the purpose of the bill. For hundreds of years our records for births deaths and marriages have been paper-based; they have been in registries. When anybody wanted to know about that information he or she had to present themselves in person and the registrar—often the court registrar—would know exactly who the individual was who fronted up and would know all the details about that person; there was knowledge of each other. We were an intimate society but we have changed. Society has become less intimate. The information will be held in a digital form and therefore people will be able to access these records from anywhere. For that purpose it is more important to protect this information because it is more liable to be used for bad purposes where people might want to steal an identity and do some other things with it. 
The balance of this legislation is to protect the identity of the individuals whose information the State holds whilst giving people open access to court records. The bill will enhance and modernise the functions of Birth Deaths and Marriages and it will ensure the registrar continues to be trusted with the stewardship of life events recorded in it. I commend the bill to the House.