1
Public RegisteRs: Issues Paper
35
throughout the twentieth century, statutes continued to provide for registers
open to the public for example the Music t eachers Act 1924, the Valuers Act
1948, the Patents Act 1953, and the Designs Act 1953. Such registers and others
like the dog registers (first established in the Dog Registration Act 1880) and
chattels transfer registers (first established by thechattels transfer Act 1889)
could be searched and viewed by all persons on payment of a small sum (sixpence
or later, one shilling). t here were however, some restrictions: for example the
adoption registers have always been closed to the general publ
36
In the last decades of the twentieth century, especially following the enactment
of the Privacy Act in 1993, and in the twenty first century, some public register
statutory provisions have been reviewed and amended, and new public register
provisions created to allow suppression of personal information from public
access in some circumstances. this has been partly in response to data protection
concerns and guidelines, and partly perhaps because the amount of personal
information held on public registers has increased over time. For example, early
births and deaths registers contained less information that more recent ones.29
A number of public registers, however, are still almost complet
30
Public registers and open access
37
this brief historical survey of public registers shows that registration had
several purposes originally. In some cases it was to provide revenue for the
state; in some cases it was to provide accurate statistical information for
research and other public interest purposes: for example, population numbers
and movement of population, causes of deaths and the need for medical
research, numbers of motor vehicles and the need for road building and
improvement. In other cases, it was to enable a clear system of land transfer
and indefeasible title to property.
38
Such purposes can be derived from the Parliamentary debates and other
contemporary dicta but, although there is an assumption that the data on the
registers are public facts, there is little overt reference to
39
No doubt the reasons for open access were in many cases the same as the reasons
for their establishment. In the case of the births, deaths and marriages registers,
these would include: to assist medical and statistical inquirers, and to enable
people to trace descendants in order to avoid litigation over disputed property
titles. Open access enabled accuracy of identification of onefs ancestors for
property devolution, of a motorist who had caused damage to onefs property in
the case of the motor vehicles register. In the case of the land transfer registers,
open access was also, in part, to allow any intelligent man to understand the
system, and deal with it in practice gwithout the intervention of persons skilled
29 See Department of Internal Affairs gReview of Public Access to Registers held in the citizenship Office
and the registers of births, Deaths and Marriagesh, May 2005; and also responses to a law commission
questionnaire sent to public register holders, by the Department of Internal Affairs in April 2007.
30
t
he registers in Schedule 2 of the Privacy Act 1993 open to the public, without restriction, (although
subject to the Domestic Violence Act 1995, part 6), include registers maintained under the c
ompanies
Act 1993, t e
t ure Whenua Maori Act 1993, Designs Act 1953,
t rade Marks Act 2002,
l
and
t ransfer
Act 1952, Rating Valuations Act 1998, Friendly Societies and credit Unions Act 1982, Incorporated
Societies Act 1908, Marriage Act 1955, Animal Products Act 1999, gambling Act 2003, and most
registers maintained under the
