Curran Clare: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4977. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I would like to take a call on this bill the Identity Information Confirmation Bill. Once again I say that I did not sit on the Government Administration Committee which examined this bill so I have been poring over the submissions in great detail and understanding all the important issues. I would like to commend this committee for the work that has been done on this bill and the previous bill before it the Electronic Identity Verification Bill because they both address important issues and as I said in the previous speech they are dragging us into the internet age. Whether I would describe it as a grunty little bill as opposed to a little ripper of a bill I am not sure. It must be great fun on that select committee I think. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: What did the member call it? A bifurcated bill? 
CLARE CURRAN 
: It is more the “David Garrett ( 
The Day of the Jackal 
) Bill” really. But the fact is that there are some significant issues behind this bill and I think that it is important to put them on the record in the House today. I do hope that the Privacy Commissioner is paying attention to the debate—as I am sure the office is—and paying attention to the importance of these issues. 
The key thing about this bill is that it is a consent-based service. My antennae wave when I hear the phrase because although it a good thing that it is consent-based service the issues will be in the implementation and how the consent actually is gained whether there is any coercion around gaining that consent and whether that consent is freely given. So I think this is an important bill. 
There is no doubt that we have to take a responsible position on this as a House and therefore although I have read what the Greens in the first reading debate said about their concerns around the privacy issues and the surveillance issues I think that the most important thing is for us to be responsible about ensuring that identity fraud is not happening and that as much as possible we are doing what we can through legislation to ensure that it does not happen. That is the responsible position because there is identify fraud happening and there will continue to be identity fraud happening through other means that this legislation cannot protect against. I think that the TradeMe submission which was quite a good submission pointed that out. For instance on many social networking sites there is identify fraud happening and this legislation does not cover that. People’s identities and information is being taken and used in all sorts of different ways across the internet and we must be mindful of what we can put in place to protect people. 
But we must also be mindful on the other side of the equation of the importance of people being able to go about their business and not feel as if they are under surveillance. This Parliament has the role to be responsible around this issue and it also has the role to be responsible about any measures that involve any regulation of the internet. I want to repeat here today what I said in the debate on the previous bill and that is a plea to every member in this House particularly on the Government benches that you pay attention to the issues that lie behind any legislative measures around the internet and that freedom of expression and the ability to provide information out there are just as important as trying to prevent people from accessing and using information inappropriately. 
There is an important report that has come out from the Law Commission. It deals with a whole lot of issues that could have regulatory impacts on how the internet is used in New Zealand and there are recommendations that all publicly funded agencies should be subject to the Official Information Act. That debate is yet to be properly had in our country and in this House. So I would ask every member to seriously do the research on these pieces of legislation and not just read the notes provided to them. I ask them to do the research and think about the issues because they do have implications for all of us. There are implications around protecting the rights of individuals to not have their identities used and abused protecting individuals so they are not bullied and harassed but also ensuring that we are not trying to control what people are doing and saying in this most important medium.