Roy Heather: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Roy Heather: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9159] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 That is the silliest contribution I have heard for a very long time in this Chamber. We have the Associate Minister for Senior Citizens in the chair who thinks that this whole debate is a joke despite the fact that those of us on the Opposition side of the Chamber want to defend the privacy issues raised very sensibly by us. Now we have a very silly contribution from a Minister who is supposed to take some interest in these things but who clearly misunderstands the whole of Part 2 of the bill. 
The Minister in the chair seems to think the Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill is about the SuperGold card. Perhaps he would like to flick to the front page of the bill which states: “Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill”. He may like to consider for a moment the fact that we are not actually talking about the SuperGold card here. We are actually talking about a raft of cards that exist or may exist in the future and about putting strict parameters in place so that they cannot be abused and so that the people who are entitled to them receive them and those people who are not entitled to them do not. In fact if we look at clause 8 we see that its effect is to give the power to the Registrar-General of Births Deaths and Marriages to disclose certain kinds of information to the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Social Development in order to verify a person’s eligibility. I would have thought that that was a very important point yet all the Minister can do is to make fun of Ms Collins and those of us on the Opposition side who support that. We should not have to put up with that act of silliness in this Committee. 
The senior citizens who are listening to this debate today should not have to put up with that level of debate when we are talking about a card that they have been looking forward to for some time and that they should rightly be able to look forward to. Instead they are getting the potential for their private information to be passed on to unauthorised sources. Mr Cosgrove talked about gangs space cadets and goodness knows who else. He seems to think it is a joke that people can actually access other people’s information. Perhaps he should live in the real world because radio frequency identification tags have the ability to pass all sorts of information on. If a tag is sitting in someone’s wallet amongst other cards with magnetic strips it can be powered up to transmit not only the information embedded in that microchip but also the information on those magnetic strips to all sorts of unauthorised sources that do not have approval to obtain that information. 
Judith Collins was quite right to raise the issue of what is in these microchips. We have absolutely no idea about that because ordinary Kiwis cannot read them. Goodness only knows what information is being passed on. Government members defended the Privacy Commissioner and said she does a good job—and she does; she is very well respected and I have a great deal of time for her—but today they are sitting here and making fun of her because she has made a point that they want to ignore. She has said we should be very worried about two things: function creep—and I have heard all sorts of ridiculous statements from Russell Fairbrother who is supposed to know the law and from Clayton Cosgrove who is meant to be a Minister who can be taken seriously in this Chamber—and identify theft. That includes identity theft that people do not even know is occurring. That is not right. 
The Minister in charge of the bill should have paid a good deal more attention to the issues when they were raised. He should notify his office about the reality of the situation instead of having people be told that this card cannot be produced without a microchip. That is clearly wrong and was not the information that the officials gave to the Social Services Committee. Superannuitants in this country have been misinformed on this bill. They have not been told about some of the realities regarding the privacy issues raised by this bill. They should be able to look forward to receiving the SuperGold card in the mailbox. Instead of that it might already have been read and their details on the card distributed before they even open the envelope.