Auchinvole Chris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Auchinvole Chris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure and indeed a privilege to stand and speak in favour of this particular bill the Electronic Identity Verification Bill. I too would like to acknowledge the chairmanship of Ruth Dyson and the contribution by actually all members of the Government Administration Committee. It is a neat little select committee the Government Administration Committee. It is small. It allows for a lot of consideration and a lot of good debate. We have an interesting blend of experience. A bill like this one in spite of the last two speakers’ contributions is basically not really a partisan bill. It allows for open consideration. Indeed that was the way it was handled. It was a pleasure to handle. It was particularly good to receive the carefully considered responses of officials to the points we raised and there were a number of issues that were taken into account. So from that point of view as I said it has been a pleasure to be involved with this bill. 
I have been listening carefully to the contributions that have been given so far and I think there were some take-home points brought up by the Hon Trevor Mallard who said that there is anxiety over electronic sharing. That was something that we very carefully considered in considering this bill. Listening to the last speaker Clare Curran she went to some extent to express her concern. Indeed I was put in mind to some extent of H G Wells’  
The First Men in the Moon 
 and the concern about Selenites and central control. I was reminded of  
Nineteen Eighty-Four 
 George Orwell’s novel of the horrors of our future and indeed of Alvin Toffler’s  
Future Shock 
. In the film of it they had Orson Welles smoking and shrieking out: “We live in an age of anxiety. We are the victims of our own technological strengths. We are the victims of future shock.” I can remember when  
Future Shock  
came out. It gave people a little bit of concern. Life did not actually turn out that way though. Life did not turn out that way. 
Although I think the criticism that has been expressed by the previous speakers of things that have gone wrong is fair let us remember that it is always important to view systems with great care and with great recognition of human error technological deficiencies and unforeseen vulnerabilities. This is what happens when you introduce new systems. The development of trust is something that will come only in my view with experience. I do not make light of the seriousness of the technological errors that have occurred and have been referred to today but it does let us remember take an exception to prove the rule. It is not as if the problems that have occurred have been ignored. They have been and are being attended to and were taken very seriously. 
So with this particular bill what does it do? Let us look at Part 1. Basically the bill contributes to the Government’s reforms to achieve better public services—in particular result 10 of the Better Public Services programme which is that “New Zealanders can complete their transactions with the Government easily in a digital environment.” I remember being approached by a constituent in Motueka who said that I could repeat his story. It is the story of his son who is in his 20s. His son has an incurable condition and it requires him to liaise frequently with up to six or eight Government departments. He consistently has to produce fresh identification information in hard copy—original documents and all that sort of thing—on a very frequent basis. It is tedious. It just emphasises to the family again that he has this difficulty in which he is not going to get improvement. One of the consistent questions that he is asked is whether his condition has improved. He has a condition that will not improve. And so I think back to him when I see that invalids who repeatedly need to supply information will be able to do so electronically using this identification system. I think of all the times when as a rural-based JP we had people come fair distances for me to verify copies of identification. All these things will be far better dealt with. The other parts of the debate—