Roy Heather: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Roy Heather: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9140] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the Committee stage of the debate. At the outset I would like to say that the Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill is actually a very good initiative for the senior citizens and veterans of this country. My only objection to this bill is the addition of a microchipping provision to the legislation when the background work on that has not been undertaken—against the advice of the Law Society and against the wording of the Privacy Commissioner. I want to continue to talk about that because when it comes to the protection of private information about New Zealand citizens that is a very important issue. 
I wrote a letter to the Privacy Commissioner because her comment has been noticeably absent both at the select committee hearing and in the public arena and I was not sure at all whether she knew about this issue. Thankfully she did and has been doing some work on it but she made some comments generally about the issue of microchipping. She has given me a range of comments and I want to share some of them with the Committee. The Privacy Commissioner believes the introduction of the card needs to be preceded by a proper assessment of the implications and by an opportunity for public debate on the issues. Mr Peters may well sit there bag the media and bag the Opposition for raising these issues which should be debated in the public arena—everybody else is to blame except himself. He could well have instigated a discussion on this issue himself but no getting his precious card through is much more important to Mr Peters than is having a proper and fair public debate. 
 The Ministry of Social Development too was very good in its assessment of the issues raised by the Social Services Committee. I want to talk about one of those issues which I raised at question time today. The ministry’s advisers were specifically asked about the consequences of recommending that the clause providing for microchips be deleted. This is what they said: “If clause 5(2) was deleted from the bill there would be no immediate consequences for the launch and implementation of the SuperGold card.” However it was reported in today’s  
New Zealand Herald 
 that an adviser from Mr Peters’ office had told senior citizens that the card had to have the microchip in order to be functional. That is clearly not true and is a complete misrepresentation of the whole microchipping issue. 
A public debate on microchipping should be held. There is no point in putting in this legislation an amendment that is not just about this card but the introduction of cards under the Social Security Act so that microchips can be used in any card that the department wishes to put forward. The issue of course is that there are many different types of microchips but Mr Peters’ legislation does not specify the microchip type or function that will be used. The microchips that we must avoid at any cost are radio frequency identification tags—“RFID”s. This legislation if passed into law will allow for such tags to be put in place and legitimately used to pass on information from senior citizens and veterans to any John Doe on the street and goodness knows what will then be done with that personal information. That shows a complete disregard for the privacy issues of New Zealanders. 
The Law Society gave a very strong recommendation that a general review should occur around the principles governing the use of high-functional technologies such as microchip technologies and that the matter should be referred to and commented on thoroughly by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. That is absolutely the right process to follow. The Privacy Commissioner should have been involved from the outset and asked to comment publicly about these issues. Mr Peters and the Labour Government have neglected the security of some of their most vulnerable citizens by bypassing basic privacy principles. They are playing privacy poker with other people’s chips and I tell Mr Peters that that is absolutely outrageous. His card does not need to have a microchip. It can proceed as it was planned and in the time frame that was planned without having a microchip. We should take stock of the issues that have been raised both here and overseas. In the last 6 months the United States and the European Union have highlighted the concerns about microchips and have moved away until proper research and consultation are done from using microchips of any kind for human identification processes. That is the right and proper thing to do. 
I will move an amendment that seeks to delete the wording “or a microchip embedded in them” from Mr Peters’ amendment. I am happy for the magnetic strip to stay on the card I am happy about the barcode and I am happy about the optional photograph—I think that is a very good idea—but I want microchips to be removed.