Adams AmyENHANCING IDENTITY VERIFICATION AND BORDER PROCESSES LEGISLATION BILLFirst ReadingHon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move That the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider the bill. This bill will provide key Government agencies with more of the information and tools they need to keep New Zealanders safe. It will improve the safety of New Zealanders by streamlining how agencies work together to establish and share the identity of offenders and use that information to ensure their sentences are properly carried out. It implements a shift away from name-based records held by individual agencies to a single shared anchor identity based on unalterable information. It implements the remaining aspects of the Government's response to the inquiry into the matters concerning the escape of Phillip Smith/Traynor. That inquiry called for a step change in the way identity is verified and shared in the justice sector. That step change is delivered through this bill.Before I discuss the bill it is worth casting our minds back to the events that led to the inquiry. Phillip Smith was a serving prisoner convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and convicted and sentenced for child sex offending extortion and kidnapping. While on temporary release from prison he went missing and was able to leave New Zealand on a flight to Chile unimpeded. Had it not been for a single sharp-eyed staff member in a Brazilian youth hostel he might even now be unaccounted for. That is totally unacceptable. The public quite rightly expects the Government to be able to collect and share identity information quickly and accurately to protect them from the risk of harm.The subsequent independent inquiry made it quite clear that justice sector agencies have coped with constraints on their ability to share knowledge manage information and exchange data with one another. But the constraints created risks for them and other agencies and stakeholders." It is therefore not surprising that the inquiry saw the lack of information sharing as a failure to protect the public against risks particularly those arising from confusion about criminal identities. The inquiry highlighted that this incident was more indicative of systemic failings to share information between relevant agencies.There have been a number of changes to operational practice in the way serious offenders are managed but we also need an improved legislative mandate to ensure that other offenders and mental health patients subject to the criminal justice system cannot exploit the same weaknesses in the system. This bill enables justice border and identity sector agencies to manage the ongoing risk posed by offenders. It enhances border processes to better identify people who are not permitted to leave the country.The first of the changes in the bill that I would like to highlight is the authorisation for specific agencies to share identity information with one another. The inquiry outlined the need for agencies to efficiently share and manage identity information to address the risks associated with multiple identities being used by offenders and others subject to travel restrictions. The bill provides clear authorisation to share and use identity information to verify people's identity in certain circumstances. These provisions focus on identifying people who are subject to the criminal justice system to ensure they cannot breach their conditions or mislead Government agencies. This includes where the police are charging someone where the Department of Internal Affairs is issuing passports or other identity documents and where an offender is attempting to abscond from New Zealand.We need to move away from name-based records held by individual agencies to a shared anchor identity that is based on unalterable information. Accordingly the bill enables the use and disclosure of a range of identity information including biometrics such as photos fingerprints and facial recognition.I would also like to draw the House's attention to amendments that will enable specified agencies to access key identity information for harm prevention and law enforcement purposes. Both the driver's-licence database and the births deaths and marriages database have important identity information. The inquiry noted that access to this information for law enforcement and harm prevention purposes is unduly restrictive. The bill makes the changes needed to ensure that agencies are authorised to access the information they need to protect the public and enforce our laws.The information-sharing provisions in this bill have built-in safeguards to protect against inappropriate sharing. The primary safeguard is that the bill sets clear parameters for the circumstances in which information can be shared. It has a clear focus on maximising public safety through effective verification of offenders. It means the bill will not allow the trawling through the records of New Zealanders who are of no interest to the criminal justice system. Alongside these safeguards existing privacy protections will continue to provide information security and management safeguards. This means Government agencies will have to protect information from unauthorised access and they will have to take reasonable steps to ensure information is accurate before they use it. They will have to take care not to attribute the wrong identity to the wrong person.The bill also introduces explicit provisions that offenders being managed by a probation officer must not leave or attempt to leave New Zealand without the prior written consent of their probation officer. This amendment gives the operational practice established following the inquiry the force of law. This law change is necessary to ensure that offenders can be effectively managed while on supervision. The bill will make this prohibition on travel without approval a standard condition for offenders on certain conditions including those on parole intensive supervision and home detention.In the same vein the bill will also make it explicit in law that mental health patients subject to the criminal justice system and held under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act and the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act may not leave hospital or depart from New Zealand without permission. These individuals are held in secure facilities to protect themselves and the general public from harm. Mental health providers will be clearly authorised to prevent these individuals from travelling unless they are granted leave.We cannot allow unduly restrictive privacy laws to operate to prevent our border and criminal justice systems from knowing who they are dealing with. We must ensure that the imposed sentences cannot be defeated through the use of multiple aliases. The inquiry made clear what needs to be done and this bill makes the necessary legal changes to allow Government agencies to work to prevent such incidents from occurring again. I commend the bill to the House."