Sio Hon Aupito WilliamAUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): It was 3 years ago on 6 November 2014 that Mr Phillip Traynor also known as Phillip Smith fled New Zealand on a flight to Chile while on temporary release. He is subject to a life sentence for murdering the father of a 13-year-old boy he had been convicted of sexually assaulting being sentenced in 1996. Prior to this he was subject to a number of charges and he was detained in Brazil on 13 November and returned to New Zealand on 28 November. That is the incident that set off the inquiry and essentially led to this bill being introduced into the House.I think there were initially some concerns from some members of the Law and Order Committee when you look at key aspects of the bill. It inserts into six Acts a definition of biometric information that includes photographs fingerprints and iris scans to identify identity. It amends the Parole Act 2002 the Sentencing Act 2002 the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 and the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003 to allow for the collection of biometric information from offenders special care recipients special patients and restricted patients. When you look at that it just seems really really broad and all-encompassing when it was actually to do something very small—a released prisoner who was somehow able to get a passport and went overseas without any red flags at all at our borders.The bill also amends the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to allow the New Zealand Customs Service to collect use and disclose biometric information about persons arriving in or departing from New Zealand. The other two key things in this bill are that it amends the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 1995 to authorise the disclosure of birth death marriage civil union and name change information with specified agencies for law enforcement purposes and then it inserts new Part 10A into the Privacy Act 1993 to authorise agencies to access and use identity information which includes biometric information that is held by other agencies to verify the identity of individuals. This insertion of new Part 10A by clause 6 did raise quite a lot of questions in the committee and certainly by those who made submissions. Some argued that there were already existing arrangements by Government agencies for sharing information. The concern that was raised there was that this bill seemed to avail extensive powers to a number of Government agencies.In the end I am pleased and happy that the select committee did agree in unison that one way of ensuring that there was accountability was to ensure that new Part 10A was amended by inserting new section 109EA which would require agencies to report annually on the operation of the sharing provided for in the schedule. I think that was critical for gaining unison from committee members because if we did not have that oversight I think some of us would be very nervous about the extensive powers that we were granting to a number of organisations.The Minister has made reference to a number of changes that the select committee recommended one being to the Victims' Rights Act 2002 which requires the Department of Corrections to notify victims of specified offenders or their nominated representative when an offender escapes from prison or absconds from home detention. There is currently no such requirement if an offender absconds from temporary release. I did not realise how a small matter still required legislation to specify and enable that power. That is the one thing that I learnt through this particular committee. So the committee recommended that we amend the Victims' Rights Act to require the Department of Corrections to contact victims of specified offences or their nominated representatives when an offender absconds from temporary release. It is so minor but significant and so that change was made.Also under the Victims' Rights Act a victim may appoint a representative to receive notifications on their behalf and victims might nominate a representative because they do not have the capacity to fully understand notifications or because contact regarding the offender could re-traumatise them and under current law where a representative is appointed information must be provided to the representative rather than the victim. Again I did not realise that you needed formal approval for an agency to make direct contact with the victim if their representative could not be contacted. So again it was minor but still quite important. And so the bill was amended by the committee to provide that victims who had nominated a representative may be notified directly where the relevant agency believes it is necessary for their safety.The point I am making is that by and large the Labour Party supported this. They were changes that were required—minor but necessary. And I suppose despite the concerns that were raised by many of the submitters and raised by some of my colleagues on this side of the House as well it was important that you have that further accountability so that there is a requirement made for agencies to report on an annual basis.The final point I want to make is that the incident involving Phillip Traynor happened in 2014. This bill was introduced 3 years ago and I am still baffled as to why the Government dragged its feet on this bill which we are now passing very very late—2 days before Parliament rises. It is a concern because when you read all the reports that were provided by the officials this was an urgent matter. This was of serious concern and my thought was: Why did they not move quickly enough? What if something similarly happened?" What if there was an escaped prisoner either on release or temporary release and somebody's life was lost? Who would be at fault? Who do we then blame for that? Ultimately it would be all of us. But I would say if anything had happened everyone on this side of the House would be pointing a finger directly at that side of the House because those members have the legislative agenda and they have the power and the resources to either move this quickly and pass it or drag their feet as they have done."