Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Can I say at the outset that there are a couple of intersecting issues that you have raised. One is dealing with the change of name. As we know, births, deaths and marriages are state responsibilities, and they deal with them, so deed poll changes are not a matter for the Commonwealth as far as I am aware. But if I am wrong about that then I will correct the record. In terms of privacy, it is not a privacy matter per se if you want to change your name and deal with births, deaths and marriages in a state registry. They may require and have to keep privacy issues surrounding births, deaths and marriages and those matters. So I am just attempting to separate the two issues out. In terms of privacy, of course, this government has significant reform in this area. We have already announced the first tranche of reform of the privacy legislation.

Dealing with the specificity of your question, however, the issue around how you effectively couple up states around births, deaths and marriages to ensure that criminals cannot take advantage of the system by how you have described it, and the evidence that has been provided, is a matter that I think falls more correctly within the Attorney-General's portfolio, dealing with the type of response, the type of sharing of information and the ability for the Australian Federal Police to work with the state police to ensure those loopholes are closed. But, to the extent that I can take that on notice and get further and better particulars in relation to the primary issue, I will.