Ah that! For sure you can resolve this for many ways. Here is one (it might be a bit convoluted, I admit):

 
my $p = new XML::Parser (Handlers => {Start => sub{hdl_start($tag, $na
+me, @_)},
...
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and

sub hdl_start {
    $_[0] = $_[2];
    $_[1] = $_[3];
}
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What I use here is an anonymous subroutine as the handler, and I've changed the hdl_start subroutine to change it's two first parameters ($_[0] and $_[1]).