Stewart Barbara: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Stewart Barbara: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 I am delighted to contribute to this debate on behalf of New Zealand First. I am absolutely astonished and very sad that such an atmosphere of misinformation and fear has been created around the use of a simple super-gold card for 540000 senior citizens here in New Zealand. The card is something that Australian senior citizens already use on a daily basis and it is not too difficult to implement over here. 
The doom and gloom that we are hearing in this Chamber is absolutely incredible. Logically one should step back and ask why the Government would invest millions of dollars in microchips in order to spy on what our elderly are doing. The answer is that it definitely would not. This is total misinformation. It is scaremongering. 
To say that personal information will be accessed is wrong. It is set out quite clearly in the legislation what will be on the magnetic strip. The information will be exactly the same as what would be on any microchip. We have a list here: the cardholder’s name an identifying number assigned by the department a number or code indicating the cardholder’s class of eligibility for the card an identifying number assigned to the card the commencement and expiry dates of the card and a code number. The strips that are already on other cards that people have contain much the same information as will ever be contained in a microchip when that technology becomes available. 
In relation to the argument that the card will track the user’s activities we have to accept that really whenever we use a card—whether a bankcard a card for an ATM machine that takes our photo a petrol card or a Fly Buys card which I would say many of us here have in our possession—we do not think anything of it. They are all cards we have at home. 
We will not ever return to the good old days when we never had cards. The fact that we have a photo on our driver’s licence is something that years ago people regarded with total astonishment. We thought people would steal our identities steal our signatures if they were on cards. But has that happened? No. 
So really we are hearing a lot of misinformation. We have a microchip on our ID cards here at Parliament that tracks exactly where we have been—which doors we have opened and which areas of the House we have walked through. As we have heard today next year banks are changing their technology. Guess what? Because banks are changing retailers have to change too. If we want to use our cards they will have to be updated to be part of the new technology. And as was pointed out today in question time the cards for seniors will not initially be issued with a microchip. 
The concerns that we have heard here today are interesting and I think they should be part of a wider debate perhaps on the use of microchip technology. But I believe that our senior citizens can be assured that the cards will not be used for purposes they are not supposed to be used for. The concerns we have heard show total misunderstanding; they are examples of political point-scoring. The information as we have said before is clearly set out in the bill. 
It is a shame that now that the SuperGold card is becoming a reality for our senior citizens and our veterans all of these hassles have been brought to the fore. We know that seniors are eagerly awaiting this particular card. We often heard criticism in the earlier part of the debate from those on the other side of the Chamber that they did not know the details of what is actually on the SuperGold cards. So be it! We have all heard that details will be released—and we know they will be—when the card is launched. That is the usual practice for any card to be launched. 
We in New Zealand First believe that it is very sad to play politics with this initiative.