Auchinvole Chris: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Auchinvole Chris: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6550. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 I would like to join with the chair of the Government Administration Committee in commending this Identity Information Confirmation Bill. It has been under consideration and thought for some considerable time and no I do not have an explanation for that but I am not the Minister. 
The bill is a useful bill and it is an adjunct in many ways to the bill that we had been discussing earlier in the evening. The point that the Hon Ruth Dyson made I would just like to refer to because the Opposition members of the select committee did oppose the clause in the bill—clause 18 I think it is—that protects the Crown Ministers and officials from liability as a result of this service unless they acted in bad faith in which case there is no protection for them; or if they were grossly negligent there is no protection for them. But this clause has been retained on the basis that the service is provided on an opt-in basis and contains numerous protections for the members of the public. It was an interesting one to debate and what I particularly like about select committees especially with the officials that we had in this particular case was that they were quite comfortable about giving us examples of when this service could be used. 
The bill helps combat identity fraud by preventing the use of fake identities and extends the use of a web-based data validation service to public and private sector agencies on a strictly need-to-know basis. It allows agencies to check whether the identity information presented by a customer is consistent with that held by the Department of Internal Affairs through citizenship registers the passport database and the various registers of the Births Deaths and Marriages registry office. As the Hon Ruth Dyson has just said there are many occasions when small identity changes occur. But it did make me reflect back on my own experience of having my bankcards nicked and— 
Kris Faafoi 
: You’ve had a bad run haven’t you? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I have I have. Well I have lived a full life Mr Faafoi. A full life protected from nothing—protected from nothing. But when I had these cards stolen I somewhat naively told the police that they would be of little use to the person who had stolen them because I had already reported them as stolen so they would be invalid. They gazed at the sky they rolled their eyes and they said “We’ll see you in about a month. The cards will already have been sold and they will already be being used.” And it was I think about 6 weeks later that I started getting final demands for payment of accounts. The accounts had been opened using my cards as an identity— 
Kris Faafoi 
: That’s your story anyway. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: —and I am sticking with it—in shops that I had never ever been near. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Which of the member’s identities? Which of the member’s identities? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I am beginning to wonder whether I should have embarked on this line but it is very very important because we take things like security of identity as a given whereas it is not. It is not like that at all. It is not a nice honest life out there and no matter how naive I may be there are people who want to do you ill. 
This bill will help ensure compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 and that requires banks and other financial institutions to undertake more comprehensive know-your-customer checks. It is an important tool in preventing identity fraud and reducing compliance costs. 
There will be many other aspects of this bill which is a nice tidy little bill. It will be very effective—I am pretty sure it will. Again the officials applied themselves I think assiduously in ensuring that the questions diligently raised by members of the Government Administration Committee were answered to the fullest extent—they were assiduous and diligent. I would hate anyone to think that this committee under Ruth Dyson’s chairmanship was in any way— 
Hon Annette King 
: Impeccable! 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: It was thank you for that. It was certainly not in any way casual about its approach. Although I can appreciate Opposition members saying “Oh it would be different if it came up now.” I am not completely sure that it would because I am not sure how much more diligent we could have been than we were. I will leave it at that because there will be other aspects of this bill that will come up under Part 2 that I will wish to speak on. Thank you.