Births, Death, Marriages and Relationships Amendment Bill

I hadn’t followed this bill much, but in today’s HoS a group of historians make a convincing case against it.

Basically the bill will ban access to birth and other records of individuals born within the last 100 years. The purpose is to stop people (cough cough Tim Selwyn) from easy identity fraud, but it will stop historians from from being able to do research from these records.

It also may cover up lies from public figures. A politician could claim they were born in poverty in say the East Coast, and no-one will be able to find out that in fact they were born in a private hospital in Epsom for example.

I suspect it will also make genealogy a lot harder for those putting family trees together.

The bill has gone to select committee and submissions are open to 4 May 2007. This is a bill worth opposing, or more constructively putting up amendments so the work of historians and genealogists are not frustrated by an over-reaction to the problem of identity fraud.

Looking at the Hansard debate on the bill (only National and Field voted against the first reading) I did have to chuckle at Chris Finlayson’s contribution:

Some have, indeed, suggested that Labour is tightening up the procedures so those people can hide their own past because they have ancestors who were pickpockets and vagabonds. Well, that cannot apply to Annette King, who is related to Chester Borrows and me, and we come from good stock. If they have ancestors who were pickpockets—and I do not really care whether they do—then that, of course, is minor compared with the Labour MPs of today, who stole $800,000 of public funds that Labour has not paid back.

Heh.