Births, Deaths and Marriages - Regulatory Impact Statement


Increasing Costs and Changes to Fees in Recent Years

6. INCREASING COSTS AND CHANGES TO FEES IN RECENT YEARS

The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages has not increased its fees since 1 September 1996. Since that time, there has been a cumulative increase of 11.5 percent in the Consumer Price Index.

In addition, the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax has had an impact on the operating costs of the Registry. To minimise the impact of the GST on its clients, the Registry acquired GST exempt status for all fees that were set by Regulation apart from the miscellaneous service fee. At the same time, the Registry now pays GST when purchasing goods and services which were previously obtained on a Sales Tax exempt basis.

The Registry’s operating costs have increased from $9.078 million in 1996/97 to $10.9 million in 2000/2001.

Despite the increase in its operating costs, the Registry has initiated a number of projects designed to improve the level of service provided to the people of New South Wales. These projects include:

• converting paper records to digital records in order to facilitate client access to these records and to prevent deterioration of the paper records;
• providing an on-line certificate validation service to minimise the fraudulent use of birth certificates;
• providing internet access to birth, deaths and marriage indexes, and allowing family history certificates to be ordered on-line;
• establishing a wills register which allows members of the public to register the fact that they have made a will, when it was made, who is the nominated executor and where the will is kept; and
• developing initiatives to improve the level of reporting of indigenous deaths, births, patient admissions and mortality.

While the Registry has been able to absorb the costs of developing these new initiatives to date, additional revenue will be required in order for the Registry to maintain its existing commitments and for it to be able to continue to implement new projects.