Turia Tariana: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Turia Tariana: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9205] 
TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tena tatou katoa. Today is an auspicious day to be debating the Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill. May 15 was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 as the International Day of Families. So as we mark this international day of whanau we turn to thoughts of our kaumatua who are at the very heart and core of whanau. In thinking about elders and in farewelling the late head of State of Samoa the Maori Party takes this moment to express our sympathies at the sad passing of another revered elder kuia Maera Moekau Couch who gave her life to the communities of her beloved Pae-o-Hauraki and Rapaki. It was not very long ago that this 92-year-old kuia was honoured with an award that recognised the distinctive contribution she had made in encouraging other seniors to play an active role in society. Moe mai e te whaea rangatira ki to moengaroa. 
[ 
Slumber there in your sleep without end matriarch 
.] 
Any proposals that come into this House to improve the standard of living of our elders to enhance their access to Government services and entitlements and to improve the provision of information to them will earn the support of the Maori Party particularly because only 4.1 percent of our old people actually live long enough to ever receive superannuation. Our elders are those who provide us with the leadership and the vision to guide our future directions. We in the Maori Party are very conscious of wanting to protect the special place that they have in our communities to value their contribution and to put strategies in place by which we can ensure the continued participation of older people. 
We believe that the SuperGold card recognises the contribution our pakeke have made and currently make to Aotearoa and we are happy to support it. We thank New Zealand First for negotiating such a great opportunity for the elderly in its coalition arrangements and we thank the Hon Ruth Dyson the Minister for Senior Citizens for her support of the card. 
We have debated the pros and cons of this bill. We have been aware that in improving the standard of living for seniors we must also be mindful of the need to ensure that whanau members and caregivers are informed of the purpose of the entitlement card and the opportunities that it represents. Far too often individual entitlements are not promoted to the degree of attracting universal understanding. We do not want the eligibility for particular services to be granted only to those in the know. The well-being of all senior citizens must be guaranteed and if this card brings with it commercial concessions thereby reducing the cost of goods and services we must ensure whanau are supported to take up those rights. So we hope that when the first tranche of the SuperGold cards comes off the production line in August our senior citizens aged 65 and over—or aged under 65 and receiving the veterans pension in their own right—will be well informed of exactly what their entitlements are. 
But we have one very significant concern with regard to this bill. It is the hidden danger behind the honourable intentions of supporting our pakeke which is of course the element of intrusion and surveillance piloted in this bill: the microchipping proposal. The Maori Party supported the amendment by Heather Roy to have the microchipping clause removed from the bill and we did so on the grounds that this bill as the Law Society advised was the first occasion on which legislation has authorised the use of microchips on cards. We have heard all the arguments including those of the Minister that it would be irresponsible to introduce a discount card without ensuring it could apply the technology of the future and of course we know the future use of radio frequency identification tagging known as RFID is not very far off. The microchips introduced under this legislation are just one step along the way towards the global surveillance society. 
The concern for the Maori Party has been the way that such a significant proposal has been slipped in the back door riding on the coat-tails of a proposal designed to support our pakeke and enhance their golden years. I remember when George Orwell’s  
Nineteen Eighty-Four 
 seemed fanciful fiction and in that novel “thought crime” was monitored by the thought police who had “telescreens” in every home and hidden microphones and informers in order to catch the potential “thought criminals”. The “Ministry of Truth” exercised complete control subjecting the nation to a re-education to the newspeak of the totalitarian Government. At one point the key player—ironically also with the name of Winston—Winston Smith is told: “But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always at every moment there will be the thrill of victory the sensation of trampling on the enemy who is helpless.” But of course the Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill is set in 2007 not 1984 and we are given every assurance by the Rt Hon Winston Peters that under this legislation microchip technology will not be introduced without the Privacy Commissioner’s and the State Services Commissioner’s agreement. 
The tension for us is in allowing microchips to be introduced. None of us really know what else lies in store. Which other Government social service card will be next? Twenty years after  
Nineteen Eighty-Four 
 
the 25 privacy commissioners of the European Union adopted an initial position on the use of radio frequency ID technology. In their statement on 19 January 2005 they expressed their concern about the possibility of radio frequency ID technology being able to “violate human dignity as well as data protection rights”. The questions we raised at the second reading of this bill reiterated the concerns of New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff: concerns such as who controls the access to the information what sort of technological protections should be mandated to guarantee privacy and how to avoid function creep with the information from the microchipped cards being used for wider purposes than were originally intended. 
The concerns around microchipping are influenced by a paper from Dr Paul Roth a professor of law at the University of Otago. In his paper  
Workplace Privacy Issues Raised by RFID Technology 
 he describes a case in 2004 where a Mexican Attorney-General and 160 of his employees had rice grain - sized radio frequency ID tags implanted in their arms to regulate access to restricted areas of the headquarters. Then there is the VeriChip the very first Food and Drug Administration - approved human implantable radio frequency ID microchip. It was approved in 2002 in the United States and is typically implanted in the arm. It is code named by privacy advocates as a “spy chip”. The primary concern of course is that like Big Brother in the Orwellian tale the movements of a person can be traced without his or her will. These new types of electronic bloodhounds—the bio-chip implants and the biometric fingerprints—may indeed be part of a future that we must all be prepared for. 
So in the context of the SuperGold card we cannot be oblivious to the risks inherent in the microchipping device. It may not be a case of the “Ministry of Truth” or the thought police but there are certainly sufficient grounds for concern to have the members of the Maori Party worried. We welcome the amendment put forward by Taito Phillip Field to provide that the microchipping will go ahead only after consultation with the Privacy Commissioner the State Services Commissioner and any other relevant body. We will be following that process with great interest to ensure that every concern is explored. We remain convinced that the jury is out as to whether the use of microchip technology is of such critical importance to the senior citizen discount cards that one could not have been voted on without the other. But we will not stand in the way of our elders and it is with their interests at heart that we vote in support of this bill. Kia ora.