Connell Brian: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Connell Brian: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:15905] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 I rise to reinforce the fact that National strongly opposes this bill. We do so for two fundamental reasons. One of them I will canvass in some detail and one of them I will just touch on. 
The latter reason is that the argument put forward by the Minister of Internal Affairs and by the Labour Party specifically is that this bill is about identity fraud. Well that is a smokescreen argument. A cursory glance at the statistics demonstrates to all those who are interested in consulting statistics that the number of identity fraud cases in this country has dropped off markedly. I will come back to that a little later. 
The key reason we object to this bill is that it implies restrictions on access to information. The National Party put these arguments in a very coherent fashion to the members of the Government Administration Committee and I am convinced that the Labour Party members felt that those arguments had merit. I am of the view that they went back to the Minister and presented these views to him but the Minister for some reason best known to him simply would not accept those arguments. So the National members were forced—and we did it reluctantly—to put our position in the commentary on the bill. 
I want to touch on that commentary because I think that after the Minister had read it he started to think that maybe he had made a mistake and that that led to our now having two more Supplementary Order Papers before the House. That would have been totally unnecessary had the Minister listened to our arguments because embodied in the Supplementary Order Papers and in one in particular are the arguments that I want to put before the House. 
The first reference I want to make as I said is to the National Party’s commentary. It reads in part: “The Government failed to consult widely on the bill prior to the bill being introduced to Parliament and consequently struggled to get widespread community support.” I will demonstrate to the House through the course of this debate that that argument is meritorious. 
The second thing we want to say is that a significant number of submitters raised this concern as well. They went on to add that they felt that the key component leading them to object to this bill was the access restrictions. The National Party’s commentary goes on to say: “It is the view of National members that these restrictions will continue to hamper academic and genuine genealogical research and other legitimate purposes needing access to births deaths and marriage information.” The National Party members on the select committee argued that our party supported openness and transparency that we believe that they were being denied to the public and that our position was not being taken in isolation. 
A number of academics of renown also take that view. One in particular comes to mind and that is Professor Geoffrey Rice from Canterbury University who heads up the history faculty there. He took the time to write a detailed submission to the select committee. I want to refer to just one paragraph of that submission because his argument is compelling. It sums up why this bill did not get public support why the Government at a million miles an hour started to back away from it and why we have a Supplementary Order Paper before the House right now. He said in part: “If passed this Amendment Bill would render the writing of New Zealand’s twentieth century social history well-nigh impossible.” Which select committee members who were in their right mind could deny when confronted with that statement from someone of such renown that this bill was something that needed further discussion? 
I then said to the members of the select committee that we should have Professor Rice and the other academics who had taken the time to write to the select committee expressing their concerns come in front of the select committee to put their positions because on the one hand we were getting petitions from petitioners and on the other hand we were getting advice from the Government members and officials that those people’s concerns were wrong. I argued that we should have those academics come in front of the select committee so that they could put their position to it. The Labour Party members backed off that proposition at a million miles an hour. 
Professor Rice went on to say: “The value of such data for genealogists family and local historians has been invaluable and their work has contributed enormously to the enrichment and understanding of New Zealand’s heritage.” He also went on to say: “The Minister of Internal Affairs Mr Barker referred to the prevention of ‘identity theft’ as one of the aims of the amendment but such cases are rare in New Zealand”—which is a point I have already made—“and this legislation will not prevent them.” The most compelling sentence of his whole submission is this: “Here is an example of a bad law being proposed to remedy a very small problem.” 
Again I made the offer to the members of the select committee that we have these academics come in front of the select committee so that we could understand their concerns in more detail so that we were in control of all the facts and so that we could put together coherent legislation. As I have already argued and articulated in the House the Labour Party members were opposed to that proposition. 
And those are not isolated examples. That socialist rag that tabloid in Christchurch that some will know as the Christchurch  
Press 
 which will do anything to pursue a populist theme took the time to write an editorial and I want to quote to the House a couple of sentences from it as well because it sums up public opinion on this legislation. It starts by stating: “It is not often that historians and researchers get stirred up about a matter that makes it into the newspapers. But an innocuous-sounding bill quietly put before Parliament … ” has done just that. The emphasis there is on its having been quietly put before Parliament. The Minister argued earlier in the House that there had been widespread consultation on the introduction of this bill and that is simply not the case. The Christchurch  
Press 
 on this occasion got it right. It went on to say that the bill “would almost close free access to public registers that have been open to everyone since not long after colonial government was established in New Zealand.” It goes on to say: “There is no compelling need for the secrecy provisions of the bill and certainly no sign of any public call for them. … it is yet another encroachment that chips away at information that should be publicly available to all.” The last sentences are these: “These registers have been public information for centuries long before they were kept by governments. No other free society has this kind of restriction. There is no need for it here.” 
What is driving the argument on the behalf of the Government? It is a silly misconstrued argument that people will have their privacy interfered with if other people go about their legitimate business of accessing data so that they can pursue social histories family tree histories genealogy and accurate historical accounts of where New Zealand has come from. This bill will impede good scholarship and National has to oppose it. Any person with any dignity— 
Peter Brown 
: You’ve got it wrong. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Unfortunately Mr Brown has not been listening to the evidence that has been put before the House. The Christchurch rag got it right Professor Rice got it right and the 164 submitters who submitted to the select committee got it right. But Mr Brown stands up and says that we have all got it wrong. 
Mr Brown will do anything to support the Government because he knows that in a few months’ time things will get a bit—well let me just say that he probably will be dusting off his CV along with a few other non-Government members who continue to vote with the Government. I know that that will mean a huge loss of quality in this House but unfortunately that is the way things are starting to pan out. That is the cost of their voting with the Government. The logic of what is being suggested by everyone who is opposed to this legislation is starting to catch up with some of my colleagues.