Anti-stalking bill to protect company directors’ home addresses passes unanimously

Thursday, 13 November 2025

An anti-stalking bill that would allow company directors to have their home addresses removed from the Companies Office Register has passed with unanimous support, but MPs didn’t think it went far enough.

Once it passes into law, the Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill would create a simple process which directors who felt under threat of harm could use to ask the Registrar of Companies take their home addresses off the register, replacing it with an address for service.

Under current law, company directors are required to list their home address on the internet-searchable register, and the process for proving they had a valid reason for it is long and tortuous.

The bill was tabled by former Labour MP Sarah Pallet, but was shepherded through Parliament by senior Labour MP Deborah Russell after Pallet lost her seat at the last election.

However, even though the bill will now become law, it was not expected to come into force until next year, and MPs acknowledged that there were directors breaking the law by withholding their home addresses already.

Russell would have withdrawn the bill if the Government’s long-promised bill to reform the Companies Act, including allowing director home addresses to be kept confidential, had been tabled.

However, the process of drafting that bill had taken longer than expected, and MPs of all parties supported what National MP Vanessa Weenink called a “stop-gap“ solution, until the wider reforms were brought in.

Speaking at the third reading of the bill on Wednesday evening, Russell described why the bill was needed and she shared stories of harassment and stalking of women company directors.

“If you know someone’s name, and you know they are a director of a company, then it is a matter of a simple Google search, a matter of seconds to bring up their home address,” Russell said.

Back in pre-internet days when the current law was written, people who wanted a director’s home address had to travel to the company’s head office, and ask for it in person, she said.

“There was a bit of a barrier there. Today an anonymous Google search does the trick,” she said.

That had led to some very real problems for people being stalked and harassed, she said. “We need to change that.”

Russell raised the case of Auckland company director Susan Templeton who was stalked, and Russell read out parts of a letter from Templeton to Pallet, in which she told of her experiences after her home address was published in the Companies Office register.

“I soon noticed on my morning walks that a car would pull up behind me very slowly on the street, and when I turned to look, they would speed off so fast I never caught the licence number,” Russell read.

When she did get, and trace the licence plate number, it was indeed the man who she feared was stalking her, a man who had previously subjected her to violence.

He had found Templeton because her address was available on the Companies Office Register, Russell said.

Business groups like the Institute of Directors, Business New Zealand, Chapman Tripp, and law firms supported the change Russell’s bill would bring in, however, they would have liked it to go further, and allow shareholders to also keep their home addresses private, if they felt they, or their families, were in danger.

They could get their way.

The Government’s plans to reform company law were being carried forward by Andrew Bayly, however, Bayly resigned his post as minister in February, and the work he started has not yet resulted in a bill being tabled.

Bayly favoured a system under which every director would have a unique identifier number.

This would allow them to be identified on the register, even if their name was very common, like “John Smith”, or they used multiple aliases, or spellings, or versions, of their name.

Unique identifying numbers would allow people doing due diligence on directors to easily track directors’ history and business dealings. All directors would have to provide an address for service, however, so they could be served with legal documents.