More than 300 men, women and children queued up yesterday at the Coledale Community Centre to register for a free birth certificate.
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The Minimbah Project is the initiative of a group of University of New England law students, who consider the charging of $48 for such an important document a “gross injustice.”
The funding has been provided by UNE and the student lobby group, Enactus, is asking the federal government to automatically provide free birth certificates to all Australian children within 60 days of their birth.
Minimbah Project co-ordinator Will Winter said there were a lot of children within the community who didn’t have a certificate.
“A birth certificate in Australia is the primary document for citizenship,” Mr Winter said
“Without it there can be no bank account, passport, driver’s licence, tax file number, access to schools, the list goes on.
“Most of us take it for granted, and it’s not fair that so many people miss out due to financial restrictions.
“We are also finding that there are quite a few older people who haven’t registered their birth.”
The Coledale Community Centre event was the first of four to be held in northern NSW this week. The next access events will be held at Inverell, Moree and Armidale few weeks.
Mr Winter said the local sign-ups this week formed part
of a long-term national
campaign.