Locke Keith: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9203] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting this bill on the grounds that it will enable pensioners to get better access to services and to discounts from various agencies—both Government and private agencies. We hope it will give an impetus to various firms and to those in the local body and Government sectors to provide greater discounts. If we travel to Australia for example or to Ireland we find that pensioners there or people getting superannuation often get considerably greater discounts on a greater range of things than is the case here in New Zealand. Hopefully this SuperGold card will be an advance for pensioners and beneficiaries on superannuation. 
This legislation has been controversial beyond the basic nature of the card in terms of the legislative provision for microchips to be added to the cards. There was an argument from the various parties in the House that were rather cautious about putting microchips on the cards at this stage—or about giving legislative provision for that at this stage—and they wanted much more investigation into privacy issues before that took place. So there was a difference between the Government side where members said they wanted this legislated in advance and the rest of us on this side of the House who thought: “Why not inquire first and if need be legislate later?”. If we did have a proper inquiry or investigation into microchips and all their implications there might well be consensus in the House and it would not be difficult to put through legislation for that—possibly even in statutes amendment legislation. I think all the scaremongering about how difficult that would be is quite wrong. It is much better to err on the cautious side. 
We did make some progress during the debate. Taito Phillip Field’s amendment for example talked about the State Services Commission the Privacy Commissioner and other State agencies being consulted before an Order in Council was enacted to put microchips on cards. That goes a little way towards satisfying our concerns but not the full distance. It is good that the Privacy Commissioner is to be involved there and perhaps the fact that the Social Services Committee recommended a review of the principles governing the use of such technology could lead to a fairly urgent review of some form—one involving public input. Whether that is another select committee review or some broader review I think that a review is required. 
The concerns of those who were worried about what the Privacy Commissioner called function creep—it could also be called mission creep in another circumstance—were that there are dangers there. It is said that the card will be voluntary but we can easily see how in practice a voluntary card can become a compulsory card either through reward or punishment if the use of the card is extended to other categories of the population—other beneficiaries or whatever—or if people are denied access to certain services without the card. That could take place in either public or private institutions. It could also become more obligatory if there are extra rewards or if people are being told that if they want extra rewards they have to have their cards on them. 
The other problem is that once we have a microchip system—and if the microchip has sufficient capacity if it is a fairly modern microchip—all sorts of other things can be added to it. We know that the microchips in our passports have facial recognition systems digitalised on the chips which are used particularly when we pass through the United States immigration service and when officials take photographs and compare those with the digitalised versions of our faces on the microchips in our passports. Of course when we go through US border control we have our fingerprints taken which are digitalised and kept in the records there. Those sorts of recognition biometrics can be added to a microchip at any time. 
The other thing about microchips that we really have to go into is the way in which the information on them can be easily transferred to databases and be the basis for a more general ID card in the community. We have to move very cautiously so that we do not go as quickly down the road as some other countries in Europe and Australia are going towards generalised ID cards. There are huge privacy problems involved when generalised ID cards are used for virtually everything in society—for what we are doing our preferences where we are moving and all sorts of things. Those can be so easily kept track of if we have a generalised ID card of course and we know that that ability exists to some degree already in the various cards we have. But if everything is wrapped up in one card it can be even more intrusive in a privacy sense. 
Although we live in a fairly tolerant society now I think we always have to work out our privacy legislation and what we do with things like ID cards on the basis that at some future time we might have a less democratic Government or in some ways a more repressive Government. We do not want to set up a system to enable a more responsive Government to control the population to a large degree. Someone said to me that if we think back to Nazi Germany if they had had all this really modern surveillance technology with universal ID cards we know that none of the Jews would ever have escaped from being sent off to concentration camps. They would have been so easy to track down. So we have to think of the use of this technology not in terms of the liberal form of society we have now but in terms of a more repressive society. 
That is not to say that we are against microchips on various cards. There is nothing wrong with bus cards debit cards cards for convenience and all those sorts of cards some of which have photo ID and some of which do not. No one is against the use of modern technology in terms of cards and in terms of microchips but we have to be careful how that is implemented particularly on State-provided cards. 
I also take up the point Judith Collins made that it is rather strange that on the one hand we have this legislation that enables people to in effect have access to birth dates and other information from the Births Deaths and Marriages register on the card but on the other hand we have a Births Deaths and Marriages bill before the House in which the Government is trying to reduce all public access to information in that register information that has been open since 1848 and that is so critical for historians biographers genealogists—anyone doing research of a historical nature. It is so stupid for access to the register to be closed to these people under that bill. There is no reason for it to be closed. It is so stupid to have provisions where one has to wait for 50 80 or 100 years to get access to information or one has to get the agreement of the immediate family one is trying to access information about. It is a rather confining sort of bill and it is in contradiction to the information being provided on the SuperGold card under this bill. 
As I say the Greens will be voting for this bill because of the advances it will make for pensioners. We will be looking forward to the inquiry into whether microchips should be put in the card and we will put a serious focus on the privacy issues involved. Thank you.