Prasad Rajen: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — First Reading 
Prasad Rajen: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — First Reading 
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Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a brief call on the Identity Information Confirmation Bill. Most of the arguments have been made so I shall repeat just a few of them. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Ha ha! 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: But the important ones. We have had one good comment about Feilding I say to Mr Power. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Fine place. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The member may make a second one. Ashurst was where I lived so I do know the place well. 
Identity fraud occurs when a person’s privacy is breached—that is the most important aspect of it—and someone pretends to be another person and takes on his or her persona in order to access resources of some kind generally credit moneys etc. for personal gain and in that person’s name. It is not a victimless crime; there are often victims. But often we do not fully understand what the effects of the crime are on the victim. If someone simply has to pay for somebody else’s theft of one’s identity then that is one thing but the scar of the emotional effect of having one’s identity stolen can last a long time for a person. Therefore it is a serious issue. Organisations are also victims; businesses can be victims when they suffer financial and reputational losses in the same way. 
The issue really was brought into quite sharp relief for this House as others have said when a former member of this House in a previous life stole somebody else’s identity which showed how relatively easy it was to do. That person has paid a heavy price for that action and thoughtlessness. But the effect of the illegal action on the family of the child whose identity was stolen has also come to light in this period as well. Likewise New Zealanders were shocked when a couple of Mossad agents stole the identities of children and took up passports in their names. They travelled to New Zealand and used New Zealand passports for their illegal activities. So there are those kinds of cases as well. There is the well-known case of Wayne Thomas Patterson. He used over 123 different identities to commit fraud of $3.4 million. These cases all tell us that indeed there are problem and they need addressing. This bill sets out one way of trying to address those problems. Whether this legislation addresses all of the problems is something we are not certain about but we know there are problems to be addressed. Identity fraud has serious consequences so it is important to support the Government to send this bill to the Government Administration Committee where it can get detailed examination by a whole bunch of other people who have experience either as victims or those who have dealt with fraud cases from a privacy perspective. For those reasons Labour will support the bill’s referral to select committee. 
There is another aspect that concerns me. Certainly studies overseas talk about identity fraud and the extent of identity fraud that is taking place. Some studies show that it is about 2 percent. Some other figures we see in New Zealand suggest that some companies are saying it is much larger although when they report about their own experiences it is much smaller. New Zealand is unclear about the extent of our identity fraud except for the types of cases that have come out that have shown us it is a problem that it is important for us to address. 
The other point is that it is not easy to identify identity fraud. There are so many different ways that people can do it. The attempt in this bill is simply to match the data of somebody applying for some service with the information given to the service against reliable data that is in the State’s databases. That is a useful way to start. Whether that is enough we are uncertain. This will test our own privacy laws and the privacy laws in New Zealand are particularly good. They have held us in good stead over a long period of time. The very good Office of the Privacy Commissioner monitors this quite well and has been instrumental in taking New Zealand to quite a sophisticated level of data matching because at the moment it keeps quite a good lid on the situation. 
There are a number of good things about this bill. The most important one is that it is consent-based. I think that is a powerful aspect of this bill seeing as it is opening a facility to the private sector so people need to consent. But as my colleague Ashraf Choudhary said that in itself raises a problem which the select committee ought to examine in some detail. The select committee should examine how that consent is to be given and how the person acquiring that consent needs to know that it has been understood what the person is giving particularly when it comes to people who are unfamiliar with the English language with filling in forms and with dealing with systems like that. Great care will need to be taken to ensure that the consent is available. 
The other good thing is we are using databases that we currently have. The bill addresses as the commentary states some compliance cost issues at the moment to do with the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Finance of Terrorism Act which the bill addresses. Perhaps the other powerful aspect of this bill is that it involves the Privacy Commissioner and in the regulatory impact statement it was the major mechanism by which some guarantees could be given. So there is a lot of work for the select committee to do on that particular aspect as well. However there are some risks such as the amount of information that could be available to the private sector and how that information would be utilised. Imagine the case of a person in New Zealand on a work permit who applies for a job. There is a need to get the data right. Employers are aware that that permit has only a short period to run. They may be in a position to abuse the kind of information that could be available. I think that raises questions and I would be very very interested to see in the report back how those guarantees will be given. The committee will have to look at safeguards. 
I say to my good friend from the Green Party Keith Locke that it is precisely for these reasons that Labour is happy for this bill to be referred to the select committee so those kinds of guarantees that we require at least can be addressed and it will go further if we can be satisfied that those conditions that we require have been met. The points that the Green Party raised are very good ones. We have seen that when we try to address one problem it has unintended consequences. It is entirely possible that this bill will create some new ones which in time will cause us greater difficulties. So for those reasons it is useful for us to send the bill to the select committee. 
The final point I make is that—and Mr Power looks surprised—this will not be a cure-all for identity fraud. It cannot be. Identity fraud is an issue that is probably much wider and much more complex and this approach to it cannot be the full solution so I hope that we do not take these provisions as a cure-all. The select committee might have other ideas that it wants to propose to the House for us to look at. We are pleased to support the bill’s referral to the Government Administration Committee. But members on this side of the House have some very serious concerns and we look forward to those matters being addressed in the report back. Thank you.