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A proposed Government clampdown on access to birth and death certificates would severely dent the Salvation Army's ability to continue a 120-year tradition of helping people find their relatives, representatives said yesterday.
They told a select committee considering the births, deaths, marriages and relationships amendment bill that such legislation would prevent some of their work.
The Labour-sponsored bill seeks to restrict access to official certificates in a way that has drawn fire from historians, genealogists, media representatives and some politicians.
Parliamentary support is shaky and Labour is going to have to either agree to alter its proposals significantly or be defeated in the House.
Major Bronwyn McFarlane said: "We are often asked to locate close family members to advise them of the death of a relative.
"You're probably unaware that not infrequently the police refer these requests to us, because they've already got a full workload."
The tracing service had also helped buy birth certificates for people wanting to enter training courses, who needed identification but could not afford the fee.
"The bill, as it stands, would seriously impede our work," she said.
The Salvation Army's tracing service receives about 200 new inquiries a year and, in the past five years, had united or reunited more than 560 people with relatives or extended family.
The select committee considering the legislation has received more than 100 submissions.
The Commonwealth Press Union's media freedom committee - which represents newspapers, broadcast networks and magazine publishers - said the bill was a fundamental attack on media freedom.
The chairman of the committee, Dominion-Post editor Tim Pankhurst, said it would stop journalists making legitimate use of public information.
"People are born, they marry, they die," he said.
"These are matters of public record, they are celebrated and mourned in our columns every day. Why should such information be made secret and access denied?"
Pankhurst said births, deaths and marriages were by their very nature public facts, not private facts. There was no mandate for substantial change in legislation and if the intention was to address concerns about fraud, the amendment was a clumsy way of doing this.
Herald editor Tim Murphy said newspapers and other media accessed the registers "with care" and did not go on fishing expeditions looking for embarrassing facts about people.
When needed, the registers were "critical to investigative journalism".
"Our reporters use the registers when there is a need to have incontrovertible facts, on specific issues of public interest."
Greens MP Keith Locke and United Future leader Peter Dunne opposed the bill. They said they also had the support of the Maori Party and Act.
Mr Dunne labelled the legislation as something akin to using a "sledgehammer to crack a walnut".
Labour says the amendment will stop identity theft. It stems from a failed attempt by two suspected Israeli spies to get a passport using the birth certificate of an Auckland tetraplegic with cerebral palsy.
But Mr Dunne questioned the strength of the identity theft argument, drawing attention to figures showing the number had fallen in recent years with only eight occurring last year.
He said the information was available publicly in different forums anyway.
FINDING LOST ONES: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
A man dying of lung cancer in the UK wanted to find his son, Andrew, 36, who had been taken to New Zealand by his mother 20 years before.
All contact had been lost between the father and son four years after the move. The father wanted to know if his son was alive and well and settled with a family - for his own peace of mind during his final months.
Prolonged searching by the Salvation Army's tracing service failed to locate the man until a printout of a marriage registration was purchased and, eventually, a name change was discovered.
Andrew was found but, unfortunately, not before his father died. Andrew was thrilled to know his father had wanted to contact him.
The Salvation Army argues that such an outcome would never have happened if the access restrictions being proposed by Labour become law.
