Hayes John: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hayes John: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:647;Page:16119] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I would like to stand with my colleagues in total opposition to this piece of red tape and box-ticking led by a Minister who is totally confused by the issues. Let me try to explain this simply. There are two parts to the problem. The first bit of the problem is this. The public are entitled to access the records of their lineage and their genealogy. Plenty of people want to sort out their whakapapa. I might want to sort out my particular lineage—plenty of people in the Wairarapa want to do the same and they do not want to be obstructed by unnecessary information. [ 
Interruption 
] If the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker would stop talking so loudly we could hear ourselves think. 
The second part of the problem is this and this is where the Minister is totally confused. What the Minister’s officials are doing is giving away legitimised original documents to his Israeli friends and that is the wrong thing to do. One must have a requirement in the legislation that for someone to collect an original document—a certificate of authenticity from the State about a birth a death a marriage a passport or whatever—that person must provide proper identification as happens with a gun licence and as happens with a driver’s licence. That is all one has to do. One does not need to shut down the whole system and lock it down behind great bureaucratic walls for people who want to get access to ordinary information. 
There is no reason people cannot get the information. If a person had syphilis so what? If a person died of cancer so what? That is a matter of public record and that is how it should stay. If one wants to sort out one’s birth record one can go to any church in the country look up who did what to whom and produce a particular record for a person. That information is in the public record. One cannot lock it down. This is totally unnecessary box-ticking red tape and the sort of legislative arrangement that this country is going to tip this Government out for because it is bad because it is wrong and because it is absolutely misguided. This Government needs to differentiate; if an agency is going to give someone a legitimate certificate that states where he or she was born or whatever it is done on the basis that the person getting the certificate provides identification. The State should not cut everybody’s access off to the whole system. 
The second fault of this bill brought to my attention by a resident of Carterton is that a person who has had a gender change cannot go back to alter his or her birth certificate to provide for that change. I think that that is a hole in the legislation. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: The member is misguided and has been misinformed and confused. 
JOHN HAYES 
: No no the Minister is the one who is confused here. I will again explain to the Minister the confusion he has. There are two issues. One is public access to the public record and nobody should be denied that. That is why we are opposing the legislation. The second part of the equation is that if one wants to go to the State and get a birth certificate or whatever then one must provide identification to do that as happens with a gun licence a driver’s licence or anything else. But to shut down everybody’s access to this information is totally wrong and that is why the National Party is standing against the Government on this. This is why we think that the Government’s legislative programme is poorly thought-out is wrong is confused and is totally unnecessary red tape. I tell the Minister that this is what our community does not want. It wants very clear simple systems. The select committee process was very unsatisfactory. Many submitters came to the committee including Geoffrey Palmer and said: “Look Minister with respect you’ve got this wrong.” The Minister has not listened to any of their suggestions.