Woods Megan: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woods Megan: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6557. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I would like to take a call on this bill the Identity Information Confirmation Bill as a number of colleagues have because it is an incredibly important bill that we are considering here tonight. It is one that does seek to get the right balance between the public’s right to know certain information about people and the right to privacy. As Trevor Mallard has just spelt out in an excellent speech— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Eloquent. 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: —it was a very eloquent and excellent speech—this is a piece of legislation that has been worked on very hard at the Government Administration Committee consideration largely in a cross-party way to make sure that we have the best piece of legislation. But it has taken a long time to get to this Committee. I think the time we are considering this is very timely as it was with the previous legislation the Electronic Identity Verification Bill which we were just debating in this Chamber. 
The issue of identity fraud and the issue of how it is that the Government or the State deals with people’s identity information are issues that are of prime concern to people. We have had people not surprisingly referring to the instances where this House itself has become implicated in issues of identity fraud—talking about David Garrett and his kind of  
Day of the Jackal 
 textbook case of identity fraud. I think one of the things that this legislation is seeking to grapple with is not only the kinds of identity fraud that have always been able to happen but how it is that this changes in the technological context in which we live. So added to  
The 
Day of the Jackal 
 if we are going to look for movie inspiration I guess there is also  
The Net 
 a movie—and Clare Curran touched on some of these issues—about the way in which we are extra vulnerable around our information and our identity security in this technological age in the time of the internet. The purpose of this bill is to provide a consent-based service to allow both private and public sector agencies to check that information. The Identity Information Confirmation Bill extends the use of the data validation service to public and private sector agencies on a strictly need-to-know basis. I think it is incredibly important that this is on a need-to-know basis because we do have to have these provisions there. 
We all know that this is something that people are incredibly anxious about. We have people coming into our electorate offices and constituents talking to us regularly about their anxieties around the security of their data—who can access it how it is going to be used and if they speak out whether their information will be released by the Government as a way to silence them. What we saw is that an Australian security products company called Fellowes recently did a survey as it does—it is into its sixth year now on these surveys—around how people feel around this issue and it has found that 40 percent of New Zealanders are concerned about the threat of identity fraud. So this is certainly something that must be addressed. 
A number of members have shared personal stories where they have been a victim of identity fraud or things that have happened in this House throughout time in terms of identity fraud but I would just like to add a personal note there. As someone who has spent more time than is probably natural or healthy even in archives looking through the records of births deaths and marriages as a historian I can speak about the amount of information that you can glean and piece together about a person and their life from that information. It is a tool of historians all over the world where such information is held. When you are a young postgrad historian learning the historical method one of the first tools that you first learn to use is how it is that you piece together inordinate amounts of information from the sources about an individual. So I can speak from personal experience about the need to put these protections around this information and to make sure that there is a need-to-use and a need-to-know basis before people can just go in and access this information that is incredibly telling. Just as a footnote there you will never get an historian talking about the use of Births Deaths and Marriages records without talking about the $26 fee that it costs to access this information and what it might do to the quality of historical scholarship in this country if there is not an exemption for research purposes. 
Labour is supporting this bill because it is an important piece of the arsenal against identity fraud. We have seen over the last few months and actually from this Government which has a record of being incredibly sloppy with New Zealanders’ information the litany of where people’s personal information has been leaked or it has simply dribbled out of a Government agency or where a citizen journalist has been able to walk up to a kiosk put in a USB stick and download huge amounts of information about individuals that they should never have or whether it be the bank account details and personal information of hundreds of the nation’s teachers being leaked through yet another one of the glitches with the Novopay system—or as Ruth Dyson likes to call it the “No pay” system—of the Ministry of Education. We are seeing it with ACC we are seeing the obvious problems with Work and Income around security of data and of course we have also seen that with the Inland Revenue Department. My colleague David Clark has spoken at length about some of the problems in terms of the department and what it has done around the breach in respect of the personal information of 6300 people where we have had the wrong information being sent. In the most serious case with the Inland Revenue Department 638 people had details like their addresses and tax numbers released making them incredibly vulnerable to identity fraud. So although security companies such as Fellowes and the police will issue all kinds of advice to people about what they should do with their mail what they should do with documents that contain their personal address and a lot of personal information—like shredding it and getting rid of it—this is all well and good but if you cannot trust the information that the Government is holding about you then the whole issue of your identity security continues to be a risk. 
Labour will support this bill. It was pleased to have a positive input into this legislation and to be able to contribute to a lot of the changes that needed to be made to whip this legislation into shape as Trevor Mallard has described it. We are pleased to be part of actually making sure that the 40 percent of New Zealanders who do feel anxiety about the security of their personal details might be able to take some comfort that this will not be something that will cause them this level of anxiety and they will have confidence that the Government does have their personal information and its security at its heart because it needs to. Thank you. 
Part 1 agreed to.