Sharples Pita: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Sharples Pita: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7817] 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 The world of Maori is rich with metaphor and allusion as to the connections between birth and death and everything in between. We have many ways of saying “As one day ends another one starts”: Ka to he ra ka rere he ra—“When a sun sets another rises”. Although this is literally applied to the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon it also refers to the cycles of life. And then of course there is a more familiar whakatauaki: “Hinga mai ra he tete kura ara mai ra he tete kura”—“As a dead frond falls off the fern a young shoot uncoils.” This is taken to mean in Maori: “As one chief falls another rises.” 
As we come then to the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill it makes perfect sense to us the Maori Party to be discussing it in the context of cycles of life and the interconnectedness of people land and ancestors. These matters of life and heritage of mana tupuna and of whakapapa are utterly central to any understanding of what it is to be Maori. 
 Our identity in 2007 is intimately and regularly connected through to those from whom we are descended and with that our obligations to those who come after us. Our people treasure the capacity to recite whakapapa genealogy tracing descent from Te Kore te Po and eventually through to Ki Te Ao Marama. 
In such a world view issues of identity are incredibly complex and it is debatable whether any legislation will be able to deal adequately with the delicate nature of real-life situations. Take for example the broadened powers for the Registrar-General to obtain evidence that a registrable event has occurred and that accuracy must be verified. 
In the situation of birth the bill stipulates in the new section 9 that both parents must notify a birth unless there are exemptions. These exemptions include that the other parent is unavailable or that requiring the other parent to sign the register would cause unwarranted distress. Unwarranted distress is an interesting concept. What sort of unwarranted distress could one imagine a child who does not know one of his or her birth parents goes through? How does one weigh up whether the unwarranted distress of getting an unwilling parent to sign a form is worth incurring if it prevents the unwarranted distress of a child who believes he or she is parentless? 
Another definition that stood out is that pertaining to the interpretation of a child having only one parent at law. This is further explained as a child being born as a result of an assisted reproduction procedure such as donor insemination. It becomes even more complicated if the other parent is deceased or missing which again justifies grounds for an exemption. Surely a deceased or missing parent does not cancel out that parent’s whakapapa or connection to his or her child nor the child’s need to name and claim that parent as his or her own. 
These are very complex issues. Exempting parents from the signing of birth registrations will in effect deny the child’s entitlement to his or her own whakapapa. Is this in the best interests of the child or is it in the best interests of the adults involved? Although we can appreciate the many variables introduced as exemptions in this bill we cannot allow discussion of this bill to take place without emphasising the sacred significance of one’s genealogical blueprint. 
Yet it is because of the unique status of one’s whakapapa that we will be supporting the bill through the first reading to enable privacy safeguards to be established which is the stated purpose of the bill. The rapidly increasing problem of identity crime identity fraud and identity theft is being demonstrated in the gaining of money goods drugs and other benefits through the use of false identity. A recent fraud report from KPMG describes identity crime as being one of the most pervasive developments occurring in Aotearoa in recent years. Indeed it is so pervasive that the security index survey commissioned by information technology company Unisys found that more than half of New Zealand respondents were most concerned about identity theft and about people getting hold of their credit card details and misusing them. 
Modern technology allows people to more easily create sophisticated alter identities faster and online. As was discussed last night for the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill it has become a simple matter to falsify documents over the phone or on the Internet. The Maori Party is always willing to upskill and share our new knowledge accordingly. In researching the background to this bill I uncovered a whole new phenomenon called phishing—with a “ph” not an “f”. Phishing websites trick people into giving out personal information. According to Visa the number of such websites has tripled over the past year. Phishing attempts—emails purporting to be from banks or auction sites in order to steal people’s identify information—are reaching about 15000 a month across the world. 
True to our number 8 wire mentality New Zealanders up and down the motu are doing what they can to avoid being victims of identity crime. According to Baycorp Advantage—now Veda Advantage—three in four people now take steps to protect themselves from identity crime and the ideas are nothing if not innovative. New Zealanders are locking their letterboxes using shredders to dismantle household paperwork before it is chucked in the bin or simply guarding their purses and wallets with more vigilance. In fact the sale of shredders by the Warehouse has been rising by 25 percent each year with the intensified need to chop precious papers into tiny flecks. 
The key issue behind identity fraud is of course the corruption and offensive nature of the crime. It is a crime that is extremely costly both in terms of invading one’s personal identity and on a purely financial level. In 2006 respondents to a KPMG fraud survey reported some 546 cases of fraud by loans gained through falsified identity. All in all these cases totalled a value of $2.8 million. 
I started this call tonight referring to the intrinsic value of identity as the jewel in the record of whakapapa. Conversely to abuse and misuse identity through fraud and identity crime is a breach against whakapapa. We absolutely support the need for full information to be available at the time of the registration of births deaths marriages and relationships. We believe it is critical that Maori are able to access information about whakapapa and would hope that in the bill the notion of whanau—in the sense Peter Brown mentioned—can sit alongside that of “immediate family” for this purpose. 
We also want to place on record the importance of being able to access such information for family historical research and genealogical study. We will therefore vote in support of this bill and in doing so hope that the very sensitive and complex issues we have raised about the tracing of whakapapa and the due access to records will be given sufficient attention before the bill returns to this House. Thank you.