Mapp Wayne: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:647;Page:16121] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I have been listening with considerable interest to the debate tonight. I am aware that we have discussed the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill in our caucus over the last few months. Various arguments have been put to our caucus about why it should not be supported. 
I have to say that listening to this debate reading the bill and reading the report I find that it is completely clear why this Government is in such a state of terminal decline. It is extraordinary is it not that valuable parliamentary time is taken up with this interfering busybody legislation. It is symbolic of the nature of this Government that this bill is the best it can come up with. 
Every day on the North Shore—and I know that my colleagues hear the same thing up and down the country as well—one of the major complaints I hear about this Government is that it interferes in people’s lives and conducts a nanny State type of policy. Often people will not necessarily have a particularly good set of examples to explain it but they get a sense of interference of restrictions on their freedom and of an inability to go about their lives freely and without restriction. This bill in its small way—I have to admit that this is quite a narrow bill—is completely symbolic of that fact. 
You know thousands and thousands of New Zealanders take great pleasure in researching family records. Of course they take an extremely broad approach. They are not confined just to the narrow circumstances of their parents and grandparents; people follow all sorts of little byways and highways. It is a very active part of social life and social discourse. In fact it is actually one of the largest categories of Internet research. Reading the report and indeed listening to my colleagues today and also to caucus discussions I see that it is clear that this bill will interfere with those rights. That is what it will do. It will interfere with the rights of people to do extended research that as I say takes them far beyond their close family relatives. 
One has to ask oneself why a Government would even want to do that. Why would a Government be bothered introducing legislation that would have such an impact unless the fundamental motivations of such a Government are to interfere in people’s lives? When I look across at those members on the other side of the Chamber—many of whom I suspect will no longer be here in a few months’ time—I see people who think they know better than their fellow citizens and who take it upon themselves to say that they know best and that they know what is good for people. Well the citizens of New Zealand are heartily sick of that approach. 
The clearest possible demonstration of that was the debate on the Electoral Finance Bill. That debate was completely about restricting the freedom and choice of New Zealanders about restricting the ability to get engaged in public debate. In a small way this bill represents exactly the same kinds of tendencies and impulses on the part of the Labour Government. 
National took this bill very seriously. We had numerous discussions in our caucus on it. We looked at the details of it. We heard numerous reports from our colleagues and they were clear on it. It was a restriction on freedom it was a restriction on choice and it was a restriction on the fundamental right of New Zealanders to live their lives without excessive interference from the Government. My colleagues who have spoken on this bill so far have made those points absolutely clear. 
If New Zealanders want to look at a whole range of busybody interfering statutes they can do no better than to look in the dying days of this Government at the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. They will say: “If this is what this Government is doing then it is time for this Government to go.”