Auchinvole Chris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Auchinvole Chris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4963. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 I too would like to express support for this particular bill the Electronic Identity Verification Bill but also comment on the progress of the Government Administration Committee which handled this particular bill. It was a pleasure to be part of that but I think the chair of the committee the Hon Ruth Dyson who has just spoken is being a little coy and a little modest over her part in the whole process. It was inspired chairmanship. Indeed I would concur with her remarks that there was full involvement on the part of all members of the committee. I have always enjoyed committee work but particularly where you get a mix of youth and vigour and experience and wisdom and a fair amount of opinion. Trevor Mallard provided considerable guidance I suppose in the way these processes can emerge and be corrected and Gareth Hughes indeed pursued the point of regulations not impacting on private privilege and that sort of thing. 
I think one of the most interesting parts of all was the response of the officials who took our work very seriously and provided information very thoroughly. The only disagreement I really have with the Hon Ruth Dyson was to suggest that we should have less to do. The whole purpose of a committee to my mind is to shape a bill to give it flavour and to get it right and we certainly had that opportunity. But from the very beginning—and the bill has had quite an extended life to get it to where it is at the moment—it has been well thought of. 
I was just reading the regulatory impact statement which is quite an interesting piece of work and it says: “The enactment of the legislation will preserve the ongoing integrity of the service and will maximise the efficiencies that are expected from its full implementation and use both for the government and for the public.” I think that is one of the principal parts of this particular bill. It is not for the Government in isolation it is for the public to use in conjunction with Government services. 
The regulatory impact statement continues and says: “This is a classic instance of regulation providing certainty for the provision and operation of a government service therefore maximising the benefits that are expected to result both for the public and for government.” So it is a really good match—it is a really good match. 
I know one of the things that particularly appealed to me was that much of our lives from a regulatory point of view are paper-driven. As a JP as well as an MP I am familiar with phone calls from people who have to get documents ready be it for passport applications immigration purposes or any of the myriad of things where we connect with Government. Very often particularly in the case of immigration—I know we are working on that as part of the improvements to the Public Service system—it is a paper-driven policy arrangement so you have a need to verify documents. 
People in a rural situation—and when I talk about a rural situation I often mean people who live say at Otira and have a long way to come before they can get to Greymouth or a centre of government—have to come and have documents copied and this can put them to considerable expense and considerable time constraints. So it is quite good to have a system where we will be able to have an identity verification system through electronic means. 
One of the features that we did take particular note of at the select committee is that we have introduced higher penalties for organisations that commit offences under the bill in order to create a sufficient deterrent and appropriate punishment. I would commend those changes to Parliament because I have been in a situation where my own identity information as a corporate person a company has been sold by the agency that held that information. It just sold the whole file to people who were peddling shares. I used to get calls from New York very persistent people who would say that I was one of the biggest dealers in New Zealand. I would say: “Honestly you have got the wrong guy.” There had been confusion in the records—the records that the agency sold were not even correct. But it resulted in a huge invasion of privacy. 
So when we looked at the costs associated with abusing that information or selling it it really was not going to be a very expensive exercise. The penalties were not very severe. And so we got advice on that and we have certainly lifted the penalties so that people would have to think several times before they engaged. That I think has closed it off and certainly it will make it a very expensive exercise if people do try to commit offences. 
In addition the regulation-making power to specify the duration for which the Department of Internal Affairs can retain personal information if an individual no longer uses the service was another recommendation that we put forward. If people have ceased to use that service we do not want the information at risk. By the same token you do not want to get rid of it too quickly otherwise fraud can continue and you have not got the records to check it back. So we have made tighter controls as a suggestion on that. 
There is an amount of other information that I am sure other members of the committee will bring to the attention of Parliament but it was a very pleasantly non-partisan non-political bill with a lot of involvement on the part of all members of the committee. It is a ripper of a little bill a good one and it will be useful. Thank you very much.