Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (Minister of Veterans' Affairs) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move That the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill be now read a second time.Grant Robertson: Keep going.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Ha ha! The changes in this bill uphold public safety and help to ensure that offenders meet the sentences or conditions placed upon them. The bill enables better information flows between key agencies so that offenders can be effectively identified within the criminal justice system and out to the border. This bill is part of the Government's wider response to the inquiry into the escape of Phillip Smith/Traynor. This bill complements the implementation of better operational practices that has occurred across the justice sector following the event. I would like to begin by thanking the Law and Order Committee for its diligent consideration of this bill. The committee has recommended it proceed with amendments. Before I discuss the bill and the changes the Law and Order Committee has recommended I would like to remind you about how this bill came about. Phillip Smith was convicted of murder child sex offending extortion and kidnapping in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In November 2014 while on a 74-hour temporary release from prison he was able to board a plane bound for Chile using a passport he had obtained issued under his birth name Phillip John Traynor. He had a ticket for onward travel to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where he remained at large for 4 days before he was recognised and deported back to New Zealand. I want to reiterate that this is totally unacceptable.The Phillip Smith inquiry was established in order to investigate the events and processes that enabled Mr Smith's escape. In addition to highlighting some operational weaknesses in law enforcement and border processes the inquiry identified a series of legislative gaps in the way that information particularly identity information is shared and managed between key justice sector agencies. The purpose of this bill is to address these legislative gaps and ensure that justice sector agencies can effectively and efficiently perform their functions related to law enforcement.I would like to briefly touch on some of the key provisions of the bill. First the bill allows specific agencies to share real-time information with one another in order to verify the identity of individuals who are subject to the justice system. The bill specifies the circumstances in which this verification can take place. These circumstances are key situations where identification is needed to ensure an individual complies with their sentence provisions and does not mislead public sector agencies—for example the Department of Internal Affairs will be able to verify the identity of anyone who applies for a passport by accessing identity information from Police and Corrections.Phillip Smith's use of an alias highlighted the need to anchor identity verification on unalterable information. This bill accordingly enables certain public sector agencies to collect use and share a wider range of information including biometrics such as fingerprints. A third key change contained in the bill will enable key agencies to access the driver licence database and information about births deaths marriages civil unions and name changes for the purpose of protecting the public and enforcing our laws.I would like to now bring to your attention the changes to the bill that the Law and Order Committee has recommended. The committee has made recommendations relating to the collection and management of biometric information. The first of these is a recommendation that purposes for which biometric information can be collected be expanded to include the management of offenders and protection of public safety. This would be in addition to the two other purposes already included in the bill—namely identifying offenders at the border and preventing offenders from leaving New Zealand without written consent from a probation officer.The committee has also recommended expanding the scope of the bill so that offenders undertaking community work can be required to submit to the collection of their biometric information. Offenders undertaking community work are not subject to the biometric information provisions as introduced but the committee found it logical to allow this collection in order to align treatment of all offenders serving sentences or community work orders.The committee has also made recommendations relating to the management of offenders seeking to leave the country. The bill as introduced would require any offender serving a sentence of supervision to get written consent from the probation officer before leaving the country. This would require a border alert when any one of these offenders attempted to leave the country so Customs could check that they had required consent. With around 8000 offenders subject to supervision sentences at the end of last year the committee considered that this would put too much strain on border processes and has recommended that this requirement be removed.The final recommendations that I would like to highlight relate to how and when a victim of the offender is alerted should an offender escape. There is a legislative requirement that when certain offenders escape from prison or abscond from home detention their victim or a representative of that victim be notified for their safety. The committee has recommended that this requirement be extended to instances where an offender absconds from temporary release like Phillip Smith did. The committee has also recommended that where a victim has nominated a representative to receive those alerts on their behalf and that representative cannot be reached Police and Corrections should be able to alert victims directly where their safety is at risk.I am happy to support the committee's recommendations regarding the bill. They strengthen the ability of justice sector agencies to verify identify and ensure that an incident like the Phillip Smith escape does not happen again. I would like to thank the committee for its work throughout the consideration of the bill. I commend this bill to the House.