Adams AmyENHANCING IDENTITY VERIFICATION AND BORDER PROCESSES LEGISLATION BILLThird ReadingHon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move That the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill be now read a third time. This bill is designed to ensure that the agencies tasked with managing offenders and monitoring our borders have the right information at the right time. The bill will improve public safety by providing these agencies with real-time access to identity information that is unalterable and is up to date. Before I discuss the bill and the changes that the Law and Order Committee has recommended I think it would be useful to remind this House how this bill came about.Phillip Smith was convicted of murder child sex offending extortion and kidnapping in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In November 2014 while on a 74-hour temporary release from prison he was able to board a plane for Chile using a passport he had obtained issued under his birth name Phillip John Traynor. He had a ticket for onward travel to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where he remained at large for 4 days before he was recognised and deported back to New Zealand. Of course this is totally unacceptable.The Philip Smith inquiry was established in order to investigate the events and processes that had led to Mr Smith's escape. The inquiry found that there were some vulnerabilities in the system that had failed to prevent Mr Smith escaping. Many of these vulnerabilities were operational and have already been addressed through a sector-wide strengthening of processes. The remaining weaknesses required legislative amendments which are contained in this bill. I want to recognise those who made submissions during the select committee process and I also want to take the opportunity to thank once more the Law and Order Committee for its diligent consideration and the number of valuable recommendations it has made to strengthen the bill.I want to highlight two of those recommendations in particular as they relate to the way we support victims of crime. Under the current law a victim or their representative is notified if the person who offended against them escapes from prison or absconds from home detention. The committee recommended that the victim should also be notified in situations where the offender escapes temporary release. A second recommendation related to situations where a representative is to receive notifications on the victim's behalf but cannot be reached. The committee considered that Police and Corrections should have the discretion to alert victims directly when their safety is at risk. These two clauses represent small but significant changes that we can make to ensure the safety of victims are duly incorporated into the bill.I now turn to the substantive elements of the bill. It represents a move towards a single shared record of information about offenders for law and border enforcement agencies. This record will shift away from reliance on name and date of birth records as the principal records of identity verification and instead make greater use of biometrics such as fingerprints facial recognition and iris scans. By taking a whole-of-system approach to offender identification and management we can ensure that the right information is accessible to front-line agencies at every touch point in the criminal justice system and out to the border.The bill is focused on enabling offenders' identities to be quickly and accurately established by authorising specified agencies to collect and share this identity information. This will ensure that offenders will comply with the conditions of their sentences and do not mislead the public sector agencies or cross the border without authorisation. As an example Corrections will be able to access biometric information collected by police in real time to verify that the person reporting for a community-based sentence is who they say they are. The same information can then be accessed again by customs to identify offenders like Philip Smith if they were to attempt to depart New Zealand. In addition the bill will give key agencies access to births deaths and marriages information and the database of drivers licence photographs for law enforcement purposes. These forms of identity information are central to ensuring law enforcement officers can be certain they know the identity of the person presenting before them.I want to emphasise the fact that the sharing of this personal information will be safeguarded by legislative protections built into the bill. The types of information that can be shared the agencies that can access it and the purposes for which it can be accessed are all for the purposes specified in the bill to ensure that the agencies do not overstep their mandate. The Law and Order Committee also recommended that agencies be required to report annually on the sharing that takes place under the bill. This recommendation has been adopted to bolster agency accountability and public confidence.I am pleased this bill has enjoyed widespread support as it has passed through the House's stages. The changes contained in this bill are vitally important to ensuring public safety and will significantly improve the quality and use of identity information across the justice and border sectors. I commend the bill to the House.