Hughes Gareth: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Identity Information Confirmation Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4978. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a very brief call on the Identity Information Confirmation Bill. We support the intent of the bill which is to help prevent fraudulent activity online. This bill helps with the confirmation and verification service between third parties and the igovt system relates to the bill. We have just voted on the second reading of the Electronic Identify Verification Bill. 
What we have seen is a growth of fraudulent identities online. I think of some of the parody Twitter accounts of some members of Parliament—I think of the Hon Dr Brash and “Big Gerry B” as he is known and sometimes funnier— 
Chris Hipkins 
: How do you know they’re parodies? 
GARETH HUGHES 
: That is a good point from the member Chris Hipkins. How do we know they are parodies? That is a good question. I think they are a lot more entertaining than the real Twitter accounts anyway. 
We support the intent of this bill. We have got some concerns. Reading Keith Locke’s first reading speech on this bill I see that he raised a number of concerns which he championed over the 12 years he was in Parliament. We note that the bill has been improved in the Government Administration Committee. It is important that we take note of what the member Clare Curran has raised about the need for all MPs to be up to speed with these issues because they are going to get more and more important as the years go on. The laws we write now are going to impact decisions and events in 10 years. 
The key thing when you look at issues like this one is that we do not rush headlong as we could do and as other countries have done into a compulsory system going down the path of electronic identity cards. I do not think it is the Kiwi way. I do not think it is desirable and I do not think it is actually going to benefit us to a large measure in New Zealand. 
We support the idea of a confirmation service. We do have some privacy concerns. We note that the Privacy Commissioner is going to have a role in this and that is fantastic. I think we should also have a debate obviously in the appropriate forums about adequately resourcing the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Her role is becoming more and more important I believe and we need to— 
Clare Curran 
: And the Ombudsman. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: And the Ombudsman. 
Clare Curran 
: And the Auditor-General. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: And the Auditor-General. I may as well add the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in there for good measure as well. 
I do not want to overly politicise this but we have got to raise the point that I think the public and Parliament should have concerns about how this Government has been addressing the privacy issue. We have seen thousands of New Zealanders’ files handed out to the public. We have seen a Minister make some pretty egregious comments around privacy breaching privacy and intending to continue to breach privacy which I think is terrible. We should not countenance it. It raises serious questions in the public as to whether they have confidence that the Government takes privacy seriously. It has got to be at the core of the system. When you design new systems such as this I think the Government has to demonstrate that it takes privacy seriously and we will have that debate down the line. Thank you.