Fenton Darien: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:144. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call in the first reading of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill but before I begin my contribution may I also take the opportunity to congratulate you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson on your election as an officer of this Parliament. I look forward to you continuing your role as a fair and effective officer of this House. We have all had great experiences with you in the role and it is very nice to know that you are continuing in that. I would also like to congratulate the new Minister Amy Adams and I congratulate her on introducing her very first bill as a Minister in this Parliament. As my colleague Ruth Dyson said it is a pretty special moment. I also acknowledge the work that has gone before but well done Minister.  
Labour as my colleague has said supports this bill’s referral to the Government Administration Committee. I know that the process in the select committee will be really robust. I think that there will be a lot of interesting submissions and hopefully we will be able to return a bill that everybody can continue to support in this House.  
I was a member of the Government Administration Committee in my first term in Parliament and this is not the first time that committee has dealt with issues of identity. I was on the committee when we did the changes to accessing online information about births deaths and marriages. I remember how controversial that was—on all sides of the argument actually—and how distrustful people were about anybody collecting information particularly Government departments. So I think the committee has a big job ahead of it. There is no doubt about it—issues of identity are extremely sensitive. It is understandable because it is part of our uniqueness. It is part of who we are as human beings and it is extremely personal to every single one of us. The history of our families and our whanau and our personal information is something that we all hold on to and hold dear.  
It used to be the case that it was paper based and I really do not want to part with any of that paper-based information that I still hold from my forebears such as birth death and marriage certificates. Of course our drivers’ licences are still paper based as are our passports although I will acknowledge the work of the former Labour Government and the Hon Rick Barker as the Minister of Internal Affairs and the progress we have made with our passports. In fact I just got my new one. It is very good; it is very nice. I like the black cover and the fern. It is very beautiful and also it is somehow reassuring to know it has that electronic tag in it so that it cannot be duplicated. Somebody cannot obtain my passport and duplicate it.  
Technological developments are altering access to personal information quite radically. It has become a valuable commodity—unfortunately often to be bought and sold combined sorted profiled mined and sometimes abused meaning that the opportunities for the misuse of that information have multiplied. There have been many stories about identity fraud and the State’s role in this is that it has special responsibility for the personal information that it holds. Actually it holds personal information about almost every New Zealand citizen in one form or another. And so what this bill will do is enable a wider sharing of that information through the Electronic Identity Verification Service where individuals will have the option of verifying their identity online and in real time to participating agencies including in the future the private sector.  
Now it seems like it is an inevitable change as technology overtakes us and many people will welcome the ability for an online service. It is optional and I acknowledge that and it should stay that way but sadly I do not think it will. If we think about the development of call centres for example and if we think about the services that are provided through public services for example we now have to spend quite a lot of time on the end of the phone going through a whole lot of different numbers pressing buttons and so on and sometimes speaking to people in different countries. It is now a requirement. I read something the other day that said that the ordinary person now spends something like 14 hours a year on the end of the phone going through the various— 
Chris Hipkins 
: That’s on hold? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is on hold— 
Chris Hipkins 
: That’s just the IRD. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is just the IRD. But consider that. We are time poor as it is and here we are now obliged to follow those processes because it does save money it is more efficient and so on and there are people on the end of the phone maybe in India maybe in other countries maybe in the Philippines. But you know that is the way our lives have changed. So although we can say it is optional at the moment my fear is that it will not stay that way. It is just the inevitability of the change that we are seeing in technology.  
I do want to give a caution. I am glad there are protections in this bill for the moment but let us keep in mind the people who actually have no idea about how to go about doing something online. It is not necessarily because they are older; sometimes that is the reason. Some people do not even have access to a computer and some people do not even have access to a phone. So we have got to remember this as we go into these things and remember that not only are many of our families time poor but they are also technology poor. They are communications poor so we have to bear that in mind. For those people putting something in the envelope and walking down to the Post Office because they probably do not have a car because they cannot afford one is the only option that they have. It is the cost of living issue and I just really as I said caution that we keep in mind that not everybody is able to move with the times with the fast pace of technology as this bill indicates we will be doing.  
It is really important in this bill that there is provision for ensuing that there are protections against fraudulent applications and criminal activity. I think it will be easier if it is online. I think there are far more security checks in that than in being able to copy someone’s birth certificate as people used to be able to do and probably still can and then reinvent themselves as another person. I probably should not talk about that too much. I mean— 
Hon Member 
: Where is David Garrett? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right. We have had an unfortunate example of that in this Parliament and we know what distress that caused. It really did cause enormous distress to that family. It was a very sad story actually on all counts.  
But whether we like it or not the internet as a service delivery channel is continuing to grow in importance. Statistics New Zealand reported that in the 12 months to the end of December 2009 around 2.68 million New Zealanders used the internet and that number continues to increase. Now I will own up and say I have got much more comfortable about online access to some of these things. It took me a while to trust internet banking and I am still a bit iffy about it. I still do not really believe that it is secure; however it is convenient. Often convenience in the end overtakes one’s requirement to be cautious.  
I am glad about many things in this bill. I think of the “Principles” which the previous member referred to and also in Part 2 the administrative provisions. Part 3 I think will receive a great deal of attention because it is around the intersection with the Official Information Act and the Privacy Act 1993. That is a while ago you know but it has become a really important part of the New Zealand culture and expectations around privacy of our information and privacy around the way we are treated and how our information is used. I think all of those things will receive a great deal of attention and scrutiny in the select committee.  
The challenge in this legislation is to preserve the benefits of online transfers including easy access for those who require it in the public interest while minimising the risk to individuals preserving the option—so that it is not compulsory—in the long term and making sure that the contest between access and convenience ensures an obligation on the State to protect personal information. I suspect that this bill will have to visit all of those debates when it gets to the select committee. I look forward to hearing about it but we are happy to support it to the select committee. Thank you.