Births, Deaths and Marriages - Regulation Impact Statement


Option 1 - Do Nothing

8. OPTION 1 - Do Nothing

If the existing Regulation is permitted to lapse without replacement, there will be no legislative basis for prescribing the level or structure of fees which are levied by the Registry.

Moreover, there will be no legislative basis for requiring people to provide specific data to the Registry in order to satisfy their obligations under the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1995.

During 2000/2001 the cost of running the Registry was $10.9 million. During the same period, the Registry received $13.7 million in fees from its clients and paid a dividend of $1.95 million to the Government. During 2001/2002, the cost of running the Registry is expected to be $12.1 million, the Registry is expected to receive $14.8 million in fees and is expected to pay a dividend of $1.89 million to the Government.

If no fees are prescribed under the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act it can be expected the majority of this revenue will be lost. Any such shortfall in revenue would mean that the Government will no longer receive a dividend from the Registry and may have to divert resources from other services and make up the shortfall by way of a budget allocation. Alternatively, services in the Registry would need to be cut.

Neither option is a viable alternative.

If there was no longer a legislative basis for requiring people to provide specific data to the Registry, they may refuse to provide information and this would put at risk, the quality and consistency of the information which is collected by the Registry.

Costs

The costs of not remaking the Regulation would mean that:

The power of the Registry to collect fees could be challenged. This would have a large impact on the revenue of the Registry and would hamper its ability to fulfil its legislative requirements and fund new products and services;

There is no guarantee that the fees would be levied on an equitable and predictable basis;

Services would have to be reduced to make up for the shortfall in revenue; and

The quality and consistency of the information which is collected by the Registry could be put at risk.

Benefits

The benefits of not remaking the Regulation would be that:

The users of the Registry could argue that they were now free of the legal requirement to pay fees for services provided by the Registry or that they were no longer required to provide all of the information currently required to be provided when registering a birth, death, marriage, adoption or change or name or sex; and

There would be a potential saving in the administrative costs of collecting the fees.

Conclusion

It is considered that the benefits of allowing the Regulation to lapse do not outweigh the costs to the community of allowing this to occur. The people of New South Wales require a reliable registration system. Unless consistent data is gathered, the value and reliability of the registration system would be reduced. If users of the Registry’s services did not contribute to the cost of running the Registry, not only would the Government be deprived of revenue which it currently uses to provide other services, it would have to divert resources from current services to fund the Registry.