Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Good afternoon Mr Deputy Speaker and congratulations to you Mr Coates on your first speech in the House post your maiden statement. It was a good contribution. We also support this bill going through its first reading and to the select committee but we support it with some reservations. We want to really underline that because our continued support will be determined by the outcome of the discussions in the select committee hearing from those vested groups and those affected people. There are a potential number of points that could be quite contentious. However New Zealand First sees the pragmatism of dragging this Government into the 21st century now that we are 16 years into it and it is certainly a good prospect for the future. But if I could start I guess by giving an articulation of the bill I do think that Minister Dunne has done a great job this afternoon of putting that quite plainly and simply but let me see whether I can do the same thing. The bill is an omnibus bill. It does project itself over three ministries—the Department of Conservation the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and the Department of Internal Affairs which this bill has been headed through. The whole idea is about connecting people and businesses better with Government departments and that obviously is through the digital age through the Electronic Interactions Reform Bill which we have here in front of us. On the surface it does seem rather innocuous. It is not until you actually delve down into it that you see some of these problems. The bill is broken into four parts with Part 1 relating to enabling electronic applications. On the surface of things we do not take too much umbrage with that. Of course the amendments to the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act are simply the registration of a name change to provide a statement that is verified electronically as an alternative to the existing requirements to provide a statutory declaration. That is in clause 4 which amends section 21A. Subpart 2 of Part 1 amends the Civil Union Act 2004 and permits notices of intended civil unions to be given and verified electronically. That does make sense. And then of course we have got Subpart 3 which amends the Marriage Act 1955. Clause 19 amends section 9 to permit applications for approval as an organisation that may solemnise marriages to be made electronically and any signatures to an application to be verified electronically. Part 2 of the bill which gets into enabling the use of electronic identity photographs for identity cards licensing and public registers is where we have some concerns. We certainly look forward to the submissions during the select committee process. Just this morning on Morning Report at 7 o'clock there was a situation and although not directly related it relates in so far as an identity was stolen from a picture on Facebook and used on a Russian dating website. The photo that was used was of a New Zealand woman. Her name was not given and I do not blame her for not wanting to give her name out. These are the sorts of activities that are going on and have been made very easy through the internet. Although the internet is making our lives a lot easier in some respects it opens up some serious security problems because access to information and the use of photographs the use of people's information and data to fraudulently obtain things that they might want to get—passports and so forth—becomes a lot easier. So we want to make sure that the provisions that this bill has prevent that from happening. I note that Mark Mitchell has brought forward a couple of points about there being new offences that have been brought into this bill and whether or not they go far enough and we will certainly be scrutinising this part more closely. It is certainly a part that we have some serious problems with. In terms of the Department of Internal Affairs as I have already mentioned there are amendments to allow certain services offered by Births Deaths and Marriages to be done electronically and there is the removal of some restrictions on the use of photographs stored in the identity verification service provided that the consent of the subject of the photo is given. Again consent is given but you need a person to verify that that consent is ongoing—whether you use your thumbprints or you have a live feed where a person on the other end can actually say: Right this is you let me see your photograph. Let's take that photograph now and let's put it into the system." Other than that we could be opening ourselves up to a can of worms. There are amendments that relate to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. The amendments relate to the requirement to appear before Government agencies in certain proceedings. This can now be done by videoconferencing and that is a pragmatic way of getting through the workload and making sure that we can get some positive outcomes but the second part is a serious concern. I turn to Part 3 which concerns giving evidence and notice by electronic means. We do not take umbrage with the giving of evidence but clause 45 amends section 102 of the Commerce Act to permit notices or other documents to be served or given by email. A notice or document that is emailed to a person is to be treated as received on the second working day after emailing unless the person proves otherwise. This is a situation where you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. I can give you dozens of occasions when people have sent me emails and it has been 10 days before they have actually come through on my computer. It could be just that the Good Technology service has fallen over once again or it could be a number of other issues that your computer system is having and you will not know. Now it is up to you to prove it. We in New Zealand First have some difficulty in accepting that you have to prove your innocence in a situation where somebody has sent you an email. I am sure through the select committee process that some of these issues can be ironed out but that is certainly another part that we have some difficulty in working through. Part 4 is about enabling electronic licences and electronic voting and this is a good position to take. It certainly is the way of the future. The future of online voting has been discussed for over a decade now and being able to get licences electronically through the Department of Conservation might be a sound step forward in the right direction. There are amendments relating to the online sale of game hunting licences—again we would not want to see hunting licences not being able to be gained practically by going into your hunting store and gaining that licence but enabling an easier access to those hunting licences online certainly does make sense and New Zealand First will be supporting that. Voting in Fish and Game councils is something I have already touched on. There is very little issue with that although whether you have got your virtual private network numbers with regard to your computer there are ways of fudging those voting figures and that would need to be looked at through the select committee process. We certainly would not want to see people voting more than once online which you can do. I could not do that. I do not know how to do that but I certainly could find the people who know how to do that. This is a good bill I think that needs to be pulled apart and put back together. I am sure there will be some opportunities to amend some of these shortcomings in the bill. The idea is sound and again New Zealand First will be supporting this through to the select committee. In terms of whether we can continue with that support we would like to leave that open for discussion and see what solutions can be made for some of those problems that we have outlined here today. Thank you."