Hipkins Chris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill Identity Information Confirmation Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill Identity Information Confirmation Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7390. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very very pleased to take a call on these particular bills the Identity Information Confirmation Bill and the Electronic Identity Verification Bill. I have only one question for the member who just spoke Chris Auchinvole and that is if someone was going to steal another member’s identity why on earth would they choose his? Clearly—clearly—they had not done their homework if they chose Chris Auchinvole’s identity to steal. Clearly they are proving the Darwin theory if they tried to steal Chris Auchinvole’s identity. 
It feels a little like  
The Day of the Jackal 
 here today because actually this legislation should have been passed quite some time ago and would have been passed quite some time ago if the Government had not put it on the back-burner. Why did the Government put it on the back-burner? Well let us go back. Let us rewind the clock back and try to remember why the Government might have put this legislation on the back-burner. I believe that it was dealing with a few identity-related issues at the time this legislation was languishing on the Order Paper. In fact a member of Parliament who was part of the Government stood up in the House and made a statement confessing that he had stolen the identity of a dead baby. After he did that suddenly the Government did not want to debate this legislation. It put it right down at the bottom of the Order Paper— 
Hon Judith Collins 
: He was not a Minister. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: He was part of the Government. If all those backbenchers over there can claim that they are part of the Government then David Garrett was part of the Government. 
Maggie Barry 
: What about Gareth Hughes? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well Gareth Hughes is sitting right over there and I do not think Gareth Hughes has done anything wrong. I think Maggie Barry should apologise to Gareth Hughes for that absolute slur on his character. I believe that Gareth Hughes is an upstanding citizen. I do not think he has ever stolen the identity of anybody and I think Maggie Barry should stand up and apologise. In fact Maggie Barry has got no right to comment about identity theft because she has never done it. Therefore under Maggie Barry’s standing orders she is not allowed to talk about it. If Maggie Barry has not stolen the identity of somebody she should not be commenting on it. Apparently according to Maggie Barry you can talk about something only if you have done it yourself and if you have not then you should not be talking about it. 
Identity theft is an issue that all New Zealanders will have an interest in because an average of 2000 New Zealanders a day are affected by some form of identity scam. That is quite a significant number—2000 New Zealanders a day are affected by some form of identity scam. I said in one of the earlier readings of this legislation that I think— 
Maggie Barry 
: Don’t worry no one remembers it. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Nobody remembers it says Maggie Barry. Well I cannot remember a single thing Maggie Barry has said in the House this year other than insulting all of the other members of the House which she is quite good at. I have to say that Maggie Barry is quite good at insulting other members. I do not think she has made any other contribution to Parliament than sitting up the back after long emotional dinners and flinging insults to the other members in the House. 
As I said in one of the earlier speeches on this legislation I think that issues around identity will be some of the most important issues that we deal with in this Parliament over the next few years because fundamentally things have changed so much around the storage of personal information the volume of personal information and the propensity of people to release their own personal information quite freely much much more than they did in the past. If we look at social media for example people release huge volumes of personal information about themselves that once upon a time simply would not have been anywhere near the public domain. Many of the forms of identity verification that are currently used are actually widely available so if someone wants to set up a profile on a website on many of the websites they will be asked questions like what their date of birth is. Date of birth is used as an identity verifier in a whole host of online environments and actually it is quite easy to get hold of. I think that leaves people quite open to the prospect of identity theft. Their mother’s maiden name is another one that is a piece of information that is not difficult to get hold of from many people and is often used as a form of identity verification. So one of the things that is quite important and one of the reasons why the Labour Party is supporting this bill is making sure that there are secure and reliable forms of identity verification available to New Zealand citizens so that they can have their identity verified. 
I guess there is a question for the Government as to whether this legislation will extend only to New Zealand citizens or whether New Zealand residents might also be covered by this. If somebody wanted to verify the identity of a New Zealand resident—for example verifying that they were in fact a New Zealand resident—would this legislation apply? This is very relevant to the Government because its own spy bureau for example the Government Communications Security Bureau may wish to verify whether somebody is a resident of this country because it seems that the bureau does not actually know whether someone is a citizen or a resident and therefore whether it is allowed to spy on them or not. Mr Dotcom who was not a citizen but was a resident was in fact protected but the Government Communications Security Bureau did not seem to know that. The Government clearly does not have any sort of identity verification service within its spy bureau. It seems to think that it can do whatever it likes without any sort of identity verification. Perhaps this bill might go some way to solving that problem. 
However all those things aside one of the things that New Zealanders are very concerned about is what the Government is doing with their private and personal information. It is all very well for us to talk about what other people are doing with New Zealanders’ private and personal information but in fact under this Government’s tenure New Zealanders have no certainty that the Government itself is not using their private and personal information incorrectly. I ask the Minister who is sitting over there the Minister for ACC—she is in the Chamber tonight—what the number 6748 means to her. To Judith Collins what does the number 6748— 
Hon Judith Collins 
: It’s much less than my majority honey. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It is much less than her majority. What does the number 6748 mean to the Minister for ACC? Anything? Nothing. We are getting nothing from the Minister for ACC. That is the number of people whose private and personal information was released by ACC and yet the Minister does not know that because she does not actually care about ACC releasing people’s private and personal information. 
Hon Judith Collins 
: Was I the Minister at the time? No. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Oh what happened to the member who was the Minister for ACC at the time? He is coming back into Cabinet after Christmas apparently. I am sure Judith Collins will be there welcoming him with open arms when he is restored to Cabinet after Christmas. 
A total of 6748 people had their private and personal information released by ACC. Then of course we have got the Work and Income fiasco. We do not know exactly how many people’s private and personal information was released by ACC although we know quite a lot about two of the people whose private and personal information was released by Work and Income because it was released by the Minister for Social Development. Paula Bennett released their private and personal information herself. She did not think that was problem. Apparently if someone criticises the Government this Government thinks it is OK to go and look them up and splash their private and personal information all over the media. That is OK according to this National Government. 
We move on to the Inland Revenue Department. The Inland Revenue Department is one of the Government agencies that has some of the most private information about people—huge volumes of personal information about how much people earn what they pay in child support a whole variety of those sorts of quite sensitive pieces of information. It actually probably has the best name and address database of any Government agency. The Inland Revenue Department I would say without doubt has the best name and address database of any Government agency. It is the most up to date. The Inland Revenue Department has this amazing way of finding people and yet New Zealanders can have no confidence at the moment that it is actually treating that private and personal information with the care that it deserves because we have seen the release of information by the Inland Revenue Department that really should have been held private. 
There were 7000-odd documents accessed from Work and Income’s kiosks. It did not even actually need to release the information. It just put its computers in the foyer area so that anyone could go and look it up. I think New Zealanders should be quite concerned—and rightly concerned—that the Government is not taking due care with their private information. And let us not get on to Novopay because I am towards the end of a 10-minute— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: It doesn’t work anyway. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It does not work anyway. I am towards the end of a 10-minute speech and there is another 20-odd minutes of a speech about Novopay. Again there is no certainty for people that their private information is being protected by Novopay. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: “No pay”. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: As David Cunliffe points out it actually would be more accurately described as “No pay” rather than Novopay because there is certainly no guarantee even with all the private and personal information it holds that people will get paid. 
This is good legislation but it does not deal with many of the fundamental issues around identity theft and around the release of private and personal information which this Government is not dealing with.