Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill

I move, That the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider the bill. This bill will provide key Government agencies with more of the information and tools they need to keep New Zealanders safe. It will improve the safety of New Zealanders by streamlining how agencies work together to establish and share the identity of offenders and use that information to ensure their sentences are properly carried out. It implements a shift away from name-based records held by individual agencies, to a single, shared, anchor identity based on unalterable information. It implements the remaining aspects of the Government’s response to the inquiry into the matters concerning the escape of Phillip Smith/Traynor. That inquiry called for a step change in the way identity is verified and shared in the justice sector. That step change is delivered through this bill.

Before I discuss the bill, it is worth casting our minds back to the events that led to the inquiry. Phillip Smith was a serving prisoner convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, and convicted and sentenced for child sex offending, extortion, and kidnapping. While on temporary release from prison, he went missing and was able to leave New Zealand on a flight to Chile, unimpeded. Had it not been for a single, sharp-eyed staff member in a Brazilian youth hostel, he might even now be unaccounted for. That is totally unacceptable. The public quite rightly expects the Government to be able to collect and share identity information quickly and accurately to protect them from the risk of harm.

The subsequent independent inquiry made it quite clear that justice sector agencies “have coped with constraints on their ability to share knowledge, manage information and exchange data with one another. But the constraints created risks for them and other agencies and stakeholders.” It is therefore not surprising that the inquiry saw the lack of information sharing as a failure to protect the public against risks, particularly those arising from confusion about criminal identities. The inquiry highlighted that this incident was more indicative of systemic failings to share information between relevant agencies.

There have been a number of changes to operational practice in the way serious offenders are managed, but we also need an improved legislative mandate to ensure that other offenders and mental health patients subject to the criminal justice system cannot exploit the same weaknesses in the system. This bill enables justice, border, and identity sector agencies to manage the ongoing risk posed by offenders. It enhances border processes, to better identify people who are not permitted to leave the country.

The first of the changes in the bill that I would like to highlight is the authorisation for specific agencies to share identity information with one another. The inquiry outlined the need for agencies to efficiently share and manage identity information to address the risks associated with multiple identities being used by offenders and others subject to travel restrictions. The bill provides clear authorisation to share and use identity information to verify people’s identity in certain circumstances. These provisions focus on identifying people who are subject to the criminal justice system, to ensure they cannot breach their conditions or mislead Government agencies. This includes where the police are charging someone, where the Department of Internal Affairs is issuing passports or other identity documents, and where an offender is attempting to abscond from New Zealand.

We need to move away from name-based records held by individual agencies, to a shared anchor identity that is based on unalterable information. Accordingly, the bill enables the use and disclosure of a range of identity information, including biometrics such as photos, fingerprints, and facial recognition.

I would also like to draw the House’s attention to amendments that will enable specified agencies to access key identity information for harm prevention and law enforcement purposes. Both the driver’s-licence database and the births, deaths, and marriages database have important identity information. The inquiry noted that access to this information for law enforcement and harm prevention purposes is unduly restrictive. The bill makes the changes needed to ensure that agencies are authorised to access the information they need to protect the public and enforce our laws.

The information-sharing provisions in this bill have built-in safeguards to protect against inappropriate sharing. The primary safeguard is that the bill sets clear parameters for the circumstances in which information can be shared. It has a clear focus on maximising public safety through effective verification of offenders. It means the bill will not allow the trawling through the records of New Zealanders who are of no interest to the criminal justice system. Alongside these safeguards, existing privacy protections will continue to provide information security and management safeguards. This means Government agencies will have to protect information from unauthorised access and they will have to take reasonable steps to ensure information is accurate before they use it. They will have to take care not to attribute the wrong identity to the wrong person.

The bill also introduces explicit provisions that offenders being managed by a probation officer must not leave or attempt to leave New Zealand without the prior written consent of their probation officer. This amendment gives the operational practice established following the inquiry the force of law. This law change is necessary to ensure that offenders can be effectively managed while on supervision. The bill will make this prohibition on travel without approval a standard condition for offenders on certain conditions, including those on parole, intensive supervision, and home detention.

In the same vein, the bill will also make it explicit in law that mental health patients subject to the criminal justice system and held under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act and the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act may not leave hospital or depart from New Zealand without permission. These individuals are held in secure facilities to protect themselves and the general public from harm. Mental health providers will be clearly authorised to prevent these individuals from travelling unless they are granted leave.

We cannot allow unduly restrictive privacy laws to operate to prevent our border and criminal justice systems from knowing who they are dealing with. We must ensure that the imposed sentences cannot be defeated through the use of multiple aliases. The inquiry made clear what needs to be done, and this bill makes the necessary legal changes to allow Government agencies to work to prevent such incidents from occurring again. I commend the bill to the House.

I thank the Minister of Justice for her précis of the bill. Labour supports the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. I think it was only going to be a matter of time until this sort of legislation was going to have to come into effect, regardless of the Phillip Traynor/Smith incident. That was a real catalyst, I have to admit, but we were always going to have to upgrade our processes and our systems to ensure that offenders or people who need to be in certain places are always going to be kept there.

We have relied in the past on paper identification, signatures, passwords, PIN numbers, and those sorts of things, and now we are having to move to the next level, with biometric identification such as retina scanning and thumbprints. The classic example of biometric processes is at the airport, of course. We have a passport with a photo in it. Now you can go up to the SmartGate, take off your glasses, and a machine takes a photo of you. The machine itself can compare your photo, taken as you are standing there, with the photograph in your passport and make sure that the face that is in front of the machine at the moment and the passport photo actually are the same person. That will avoid, certainly for people like myself—the customs officer used to hold up my passport, look at me, and go: “Oh my God! You’ve aged in 3 years.” That will not happen. The machine will not give that brutal feedback to us.

We have to understand that the catalyst for the report was the Phillip Traynor/Smith escape. On 6 November 2014 Phillip Traynor/Smith passed unimpeded through immigration and security checks at Auckland Airport. He carried a New Zealand passport that had been issued some 16 months earlier in his birth name, Phillip John Traynor, and yet he was known by the Department of Corrections as Phillip John Smith. The fact is that he was able to sit in prison and apply for a passport under a name that he had used as a child, and it was not picked up was because of the fact that the Department of Internal Affairs, the Customs Service, and the Department of Corrections were not on top of the aliases he had used.

Let us understand that there are many people in prison and in the community in general who go by a number of names. Some people have been adopted and have got a different adult name from the one they were born under. There could be any reason why they have different names, but it is important that our system keeps track of these names. Previously, we just relied upon the honesty of people, and, of course, many people—or most people—in prison are in fact there because of some form or dishonesty.

So Phillip John Traynor was released on a Release to Work programme. It was some 74 hours, I think, before anybody realised that the man who was meant to be on this Release to Work programme and out in the community on this was, in fact, halfway across the Inca Trail and still climbing. The big issue for Phillip John Smith, or Phillip Traynor/Smith, was that he had an ego, and once he got to Brazil—via Chile, I believe it was—he felt he had to call back to New Zealand and email to let everyone know how smart he was. That was his downfall, because I believe that even though he was in some backpackers in some town in Brazil, he was actually recognised because of the media attention over there. If it had not been for the fact that he had an ego that got too much for him, he would probably still be somewhere in South America.

The biometric identifiers, as I say, track facial features. Iris and retina scans, thumbprints—it is all done by computers. If someone turns up at the border, customs officers can actually identify that the person they say they are and the person standing in front of the camera is the same person who is in the passport. A recent example was an Australian man who used his brother’s passport to depart Australia to fight for a terrorist organisation in Syria. The visual check—like I say, the guy at the customs hall held up the passport and said: “Oh yeah, it looks like him.” The customs officer obviously thought the photo looked like the man standing in front of him, and he was able to abscond. A biometric check would have probably prevented that from happening.

I can actually understand that, because people say that my brother and I look very similar. Obviously, I am a lot trimmer and less grey than him, but still, many people mistake us—

💬 Hon Annette King: And better looking.

And better looking—thank you, Mrs King. I can only concur with that.

💬 Tim Macindoe: He must look like me.

So this guy was able to use his brother’s passport—oh, I look like you?

💬 Tim Macindoe: No, he must.

Ha, ha! Yes. So he was able to use his brother’s passport to abscond over to Syria and fight for a terrorist organisation, which is exactly the sort of the thing that we do not want to have happen or to reoccur.

This bill actually amends a number of Acts, but the current Customs and Excise Act allows a customs officer to require certain information from a person crossing the border in order to establish that person’s identity, including any prescribed document that the officer may specify. This includes a passport and the information contained therein, but the Act does not currently explicitly state that biometric information is included in this authority, and that is what this bill is doing. In all the Acts that it is amending, it is making it explicit that biometric information can be used.

The Immigration Act provides the clear authority to collect biometric information from all travellers on arrival to establish or verify their identity to check that they may enter New Zealand, and from foreign passport holders on departure to verify their identity and confirm they have departed. However, in order to act upon border intercept alerts, the Customs Service also needs to be able to use the biometric information of New Zealanders on departure, so this bill is making a number of points explicit in the Acts that it is amending.

I believe there are some seven or so Acts that are being amended, including the Parole Act 2002, the Sentencing Act 2002, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, and the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act. Those Acts are there because there are some people who may need to be in secure facilities because they have a mental health issue or a disability. I can think, for example, of my dearly departed father-in-law, who had Alzheimer’s. I guess there is a tendency for some people with dementia to wander, and somebody like my father-in-law may have been able to get out somehow, and it would be easier to identify that person and show who he was—certainly, because he was not able to actually recall his own name and explain who he was. The bill also amends the Customs and Excise Act, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act, and the Privacy Act, as well.

Labour supports this bill. We believe it is something that was going to have to happen, regardless. Even if the Phillip Traynor/Smith incident had not occurred, this was still going to have to happen at some stage in the future to make sure that our borders are safe, to make sure that people are where they are meant to be. We commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. Before I speak regarding the bill, I would like to greet you in Mandarin and say ni hao, because this is Chinese Language Week. I would also like to greet you in Hindi, because this week is also being celebrated as Hindi Language Week—so namaste for that. I would like to congratulate Satya Dutt, the President, and Praveena Prasad, the Secretary of the Hindi Language and Culture Trust of New Zealand, who have been very passionately working on this and celebrating Hindi Language Week for many years.

I would like to congratulate the Minister of Justice on her leadership in bringing this bill to the House. I hope that it will have widespread support from all the parties.

As the previous speaker, Kelvin Davis, mentioned, Labour is supporting this bill because technology is changing and we need to upgrade our technology as well as our by-laws so that we can take advantage of it. An example given by Kelvin Davis was that previously names were kept in a register to identify whether someone was required under some offending, but now the technology has changed and people can be identified with biometrics and fingerprints.

Ever since this Government came into power, it has continuously focused on the areas that the public has got concerns with. We have put in place legislation based on need, or as soon as we have realised that amendments to the current process are needed to strengthen our system. This bill in the name of the Hon Amy Adams is another example of needs-based legislation. The purpose of this legislation is to strengthen the power of our front-line staff so that they can identify offenders and provide this information to agencies, so that they can avoid any risk to the general public. This legislation, like many other pieces we have introduced earlier, is part of our promise to deliver better public services.

The need for this bill arose from this Government’s inquiry into the matter concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith from prison. Mr Smith was in jail serving a life sentence for murder, child sex offending, extortion, and kidnapping. Due to the lack of information sharing between agencies at that time, Mr Smith managed to plan his escape from prison. Without doubt, this shows that we need to improve our existing legislation. We need to improve on our failings around adequate information-sharing between agencies along with operational practices, so that dangerous offenders like Mr Smith do not succeed in escaping from prison.

The main focus of this bill is to authorise specific agencies to access and use identity information, including biometrics information, to verify the identity of individuals within the justice system as well as at the border. It is very important to understand that these agencies need to share this information so that a good support system can be provided. Clarifying the ability of the Customs Service to collect, use, and disclose biometric information about persons arriving or departing from New Zealand is another important factor. Authorising the sharing of birth, death, marriage, civil union, and name-changing information with a specified agency for law enforcement purposes is again important so that we can upgrade the information on a particular person.

The last point that I would like to emphasise is that this means that this bill will help mental health patients held in the criminal justice system under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act who may not leave their hospitals or New Zealand without permission because it can be dangerous to the safety of the public.

With these words, I commend this bill to the House.

I just want to reinforce the comments that were made by my colleague Kelvin Davis around this bill and Labour’s support for it. I do just want to acknowledge that, obviously, the system surrounding offender and prisoner management does need amendment and updating. It is, of course, more than unfortunate that the proof and demonstration that we had of the need to update our legislation was quite a serious breach of the law. The ability of a prisoner to escape not only from prison but from New Zealand—you cannot really get much more serious than that. But what I think we need to remember though is that although we now know that there are a number of things that did not prevent a prisoner from making an escape like that—although there were a number of things that were not in place to do that—actually, there were some really basic failings that occurred that meant we should never have seen some of those mechanisms tested.

So what do I mean by that? Well, sure, we know that, for instance, there are no comprehensive systems in place where the Department of Internal Affairs is routinely supplied with information about New Zealand citizens who are not allowed to leave the country. We also know that the Customs Service was not routinely loading information about those not allowed to leave the country into its border alert system. So those are two obvious things we need to make sure are happening now.

But, actually, before Phillip John Smith even arrived at the airport, there were a number of things that should have happened that never happened. For instance, he was being released to a nominated sponsor. He had been part of a release training run that we use in our corrections system. He was due to be released to a sponsor, but no one informed the nominated sponsor of his pending release, so, therefore, there was no expectation by that sponsor that he would arrive, and no call to the corrections system when that individual did not arrive. So, yes, we have some failings at our border, but actually some of those failings—those fundamental failings—occurred right at the beginning and were failings within the corrections system of the most basic nature. Of course, the Department of Corrections—I acknowledge—responded quite quickly to that and acknowledged those failings.

One of the concerns that I think we need to have though is about things like Release to Work, which is, by and large, a really well-run, well-utilised way of slowly working towards reintegration. While a prisoner is still behind the prison wall but getting close to the point at which they will be released, and they are assessed as being ready for work and being in a situation where the Department of Corrections feels able to monitor them outside the wall for work, then such prisoners are able to go out and do that, and come back into the prison grounds in the evening. Release to Work, by and large, works really well, but my understanding is that as a consequence of some of these issues that were raised by Phillip John Smith, we had a complete, complete shutdown of Release to Work. That is a real shame because, actually, when monitored well, when we do a proper risk analysis of the individuals to whom it applies, it works. It is a good tool. So we do not want to see a complete knee-jerk reaction, and I would implore the Minister to work with the Department of Corrections to make sure we get some of those useful tools back into play.

I want to come to what the bill fundamentally does for the Customs and Excise Act, Birth, Deaths, Marriages and Relationship Registration Act, and the Privacy Act across the board, around the way that biometric information is used at the border. As I say, Labour supports this bill, but we do want to check some of parameters of it once it gets before a select committee.

The best example of some of the things that we want to have a bit of a discussion around is the way that biometric information will be used, for instance, by the Customs Service. When we are referring to biometric information, the Immigration Service obviously uses biometric information already. It includes, basically, the ability to scan the iris, and it includes photographs and fingerprints—not necessarily all of them, but that is the cohort that we describe as biometric information. In New Zealand, when you apply for a passport you do not automatically provide all of that information. Obviously, you provide a photograph, but some of that additional information is really—kind of—checked on a voluntary basis on the return into New Zealand. So, as a New Zealander, when I exit New Zealand the only information that is used for me is a photo. But if we use—as I understand it, if you opt to use the e-gates, then you are providing greater information at the border.

One of the things that this bill will allow is, say, for example, in Subpart 2, “Amendments to Customs and Excise Act 1996”. If you get down to the amendments that this bill will make, it allows biometric information, which, as I have mentioned, is one or more of the following kinds of information: a photograph, impressions of the person’s fingerprints, or a scan of the person’s irises. Then in clause 15 we go on to new section 32D, where it talks about how that information can then be legally used. It states: “The Customs may, for the purposes of monitoring the movement of craft and persons, passenger and crew processing, and border security, collect and use the following information about craft and persons arriving in or departing from New Zealand: (a) details of craft movements …”—that is less useful—“(b) personal information including the person’s name, date of birth, gender, biometric information, passport number, nationality, and travel movements.” It then goes on to new section 32E and states: “(1) A Customs officer may, during the processing of a person’s arrival in or departure from New Zealand, request that person to verify his or her identity by providing biometric information …”.

It then has a series of provisions around what happens if you fail to do that. Those are quite broad, sweeping provisions. At the moment we are basically allowing the Customs Service to, at its discretion, access or request biometric information for anyone who arrives or departs. I want to point out again that that is actually not commonly what is practised, other than a photo. The Customs Service is currently not able to do that with everyone who comes and goes.

It may be the will of the House that we consider it to be absolutely fine to broaden that power, because, actually, the status quo provides some powers for entry but not for departure, and this is obviously where our concern exists—around people who are seeking to depart from New Zealand, and not just arrive. It may well be that we want those broad, sweeping powers to be available to border control, but that is a discussion we need to have, because in the regulatory impact statement it has acknowledged that the Customs Service has actually said that its preferred option is not to check every single person at departure, but to allow the discretion. Well, actually, in allowing the discretion, is that enough to make sure that we pick up everyone who might have a false passport or be using an alternative identity? There are arguments on both sides. We really need to test that we have got the balance right in the powers that we are handing over at the border to border security and to the Customs Service.

One other point that I want to make is that with these kinds of bills it is always incumbent on us, as the Opposition, to make sure that we do look at every implication. As I have said, we support the bill. The intent of it is absolutely necessary. But, as a House, it is really important that we also make sure that we look at the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) implications. Sometimes we do pass in this House things that do encroach on an individual’s privacy. It is always our job to check that that is done in a proportionate way and that we have analysed it, we know the implications, and that we are comfortable with a breach if, indeed, a breach has occurred.

I try to make a habit of checking a section 7—a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment—against legislation like this. I have not been able to find the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis for this bill. We checked online today; it does not seem to be available. I personally think that is unacceptable for a bill that does undertake some of the functions that this one does. So I make a plea to the Government that if, indeed, a BORA analysis has been undertaken—which I can only assume it has; unfortunately, the departmental disclosure statement made it very clear that it was not available at the time that that was drafted—I would implore the Government to make that available to the Opposition. We cannot do our job without information like that. Otherwise, I look forward to the scrutiny that I know the select committee will be able to provide to this bill to ensure that we get the balance absolutely right.

I am very pleased to stand and speak in support of this bill, the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. I appreciate the comments of the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, and I think that there will be some good discussions in the select committee around those issues about where the lines are drawn. I think today we do live in a world where security, of course, is becoming incredibly important for the safety and the well-being of populations.

What this bill does is include safeguards against inappropriate sharing of information by providing clear parameters for the circumstances in which information can be shared. Alongside the existing privacy protections outlined in the Privacy Act, these parameters include limiting information that can be shared to identity information, and only certain named agencies can share that information in specified circumstances. The occasion of the escape of Phillip John Smith created the necessity for an investigation into how that happened. The Government inquiry into the matters concerning his escape found that there were failings around adequate information-sharing between agencies, as well as operational practices. We do see that there were gaps and flaws that needed to be addressed that had been there for many, many years. It took that situation, that instance, to bring to light the questions that enabled us to have this inquiry and come back with recommendations, and the Government fully supported 39 of those, which were quite significant ones.

As I said in my opening comments, around the world the necessity for security is increasingly there. It is like a net that is there, and if there is a hole in the net, then that is where the fish will swim through. So it is important that New Zealand’s security measures, particularly around border entrance and exit, are consistent with other security measures around the world. Otherwise, we become the weak link. We become the vulnerable place. We become the place that can become a safe harbour. So let us be aware of that. No doubt we want to have the great Kiwi way of life that we love and appreciate in this place but at the same time have the security that enables that way of life to be enjoyed by our citizens. I am very happy to support this bill. Thank you.

I stand on behalf of the Green Party. We are opposing this legislation before the House today. This is the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill.

This bill is in fact a response to a single event, which is of course when Phillip John Smith, who was on short-term release from Spring Hill Corrections Facility, was somehow able to leave the country for South America. We absolutely will enforce and will always stand for safer and secure communities, countries, and passage. However, a number of flaws that allowed Phillip John Smith to be able to get away from the country, and indeed be released from prison, have in this instance seen a sort of a knee-jerk reaction as well—a sort of a twin towers reaction, if you like—where everything is tightened up. The screws are put on, and in that process—and I acknowledge what my colleague Jacinda Ardern has been highlighting in terms of the privacy concerns and the civil rights and liberties that are being thrown out, which we need to be really concerned about.

If this bill does go through to the select committee stage, I will also really look forward to any sort of New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, human rights, and privacy concerns analysis, because all citizens of New Zealand need to be considered—there are considerations—but, particularly, Māori are overrepresented in the prison population and will be disproportionately affected by the collection of prisoners’ biometric data. So that is, essentially, our primary concern in opposing this piece of legislation. We would like clear and robust analysis, and it is actually concerning. I myself, having come from a Human Rights Commission background, have been trying to search for whether or not there is a justification for impeaching upon civil rights liberties and privacy rights, as well.

My other point is that what happened here in the release and departure of Phillip John Smith was a number of things that could be solved without the breaching of civil liberties by collecting biometric data—so, for example, just picking up on the fact that the prisoner’s birth name and passport name were different from the name that he was convicted under. I think immediately of my own father, who has a birth name on his birth certificate that is very, very different from his public and stage name and, therefore—this is someone who has just this year finished travelling to every single country in the world over the past 2 years—he himself has had to negotiate, at every border and entry into every single country, the difference between his birth name and his passport name.

Something as simple as having a register whereby you have all of the names of the prisoner registered as a person who is not able to leave the country would have, just on its own, been able to pick up that flaw in the system. For example, if there was any sort of comprehensive system in place to ensure that the Department of Internal Affairs knew about citizens who were not allowed to leave New Zealand, that could have happened without the quite huge consideration of the collection of biometric data. When we are talking about biometric data, we are talking about things like fingerprints, retina scans, DNA, and palm veins, and, as our technology increases, there are more and more ways to collect biometric data. It is now starting to include heart rhythms, as well—that is the sort of new development. So it can be quite intrusive, and the concerns about that include, for example, firstly, consent. I note a concern—and I am happy to be corrected on this by the Minister—where perhaps mental health patients could have their data collected without consent. So consent is something.

The privacy concerns about biometric data also refer to an unintended function or scope. This is where the authentication goes further than what was actually intended—for example, finding a family tumour—in the process of collecting biometric data. Or another concern is where there is unintended application scope, so this is where the process correctly identifies the subject when the subject did not want to be identified, and it possibly could be for a reason that has nothing to do with a security or safety measure. Then, thirdly, there is covert identification. So, for example, that is where the subject is identified without seeking identification, in a crowd somewhere, and I am thinking of situations where that could actually impinge on the well-being of anybody, as well. So there are huge privacy concerns.

As a democratic country and as one that has a reputable position on human rights—a longstanding one—we must always keep the civil rights and other considerations at the forefront. Another one is whether or not it will be counteractive—whether or not the collection of biometric data will be counteractive to bringing down recidivism, or reoffending. So, for example, we must ask whether the collection and sharing of data will take into account any change of behaviour with any prisoner release—whether or not there has been genuine change of behaviour in any prisoners who are released and who are trying to move around—and whether or not we are disproportionately applying the legislation as a sort of a knee-jerk response in a situation where it could also be quite counteractive.

So we are opposing this bill today. We will be keeping a sharp eye on it, if this does go through, and we will want departmental reports and thorough investigation as to any unintended consequences specifically around the gathering and the sharing of biometric data.

I have looked through the recommendations of the report when the Government did an inquiry into what happened with Mr Smith, and I can see the logic and the security measure contained around sharing information—absolutely. As I said before, something as simple as having a register of who should not be allowed to leave the country could be quite a logical recommendation to adopt, but we absolutely must always be reasoned and calm in any situations where we are about to just fling away a whole load of civil liberties with regard to privacy, because that will concern all of our citizens as well, and it will impact on the future of how we organise and govern our country—whether or not we are going to be counteractive and be creating further harm in our communities and in any prisoner release situations where they actually are trying to integrate fairly and genuinely back into the community. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. As we are all aware—and various speakers have spoken about it—the case was where Phillip John Smith, who was serving a long sentence and was on a 74-hour temporary release from the Spring Hill Corrections Facility, managed to get a passport issued in his birth name. He went to Auckland Airport, unhindered and unstopped, and managed to flee right out to Brazil.

A Department of Internal Affairs inquiry was held, which identified a number of shortcomings, and it came up with an equally large number of recommendations. So, operationally, Phillip John Smith should have been on the victim notification register, but clearly he was not. What happens when an offender applies for a temporary release is that he or she is assessed by the prisoner manager, assisted by other officers. In this case the victim notification register clearly was not applied to Phillip John Smith, and that is the reason that his temporary release was wrongfully approved.

After getting his temporary release approved, Phillip John Smith went right out to Brazil, and by successfully escaping from our borders he actually stopped being our problem and became somebody else’s problem. But we are a responsible nation and it was not acceptable to us that he had become somebody else’s problem. We have a reputation to protect in the international arena. To his bad luck—and to our good fortune—Phillip John Smith was apprehended in Brazil and brought back to New Zealand. By the time he was brought back to New Zealand our reputation as a law-abiding country, and as law-abiding people, had taken a serious beating in the international arena. Our law enforcement agencies and border control systems had also become the laughing stock of the world.

The multi-agency review came up with a number of recommendations and observations. Some of them are really, really damning for the Department of Corrections and the police. I would like to read out a few of those—“Corrections’ staff failed to adequately assess the extra risk Smith posed on temporary release”. As I mentioned earlier, he was meant to be on the victim notification register but clearly was not, and that victim notification register was later on, as a knee-jerk reaction, amended to read that he was actually on the victim notification register. So the assessment system itself had failed.

The second thing is that his sponsor for the temporary release was unaware that Smith was supposed to be with them, so there was a huge lack of communication between the Department of Corrections and the sponsors themselves. Had the victims of Phillip John Smith been notified prior to his temporary release, as the system demands, I am sure they would have objected to his being released in the community, even if it was for 74 hours.

The third thing, which the police are being blamed for in this whole saga, is that the police checked the wrong address. The police are actually responsible for checking the address of the sponsor who sponsors an offender in jail and is responsible for their stay and their well-being during the time of temporary release. This clearly did not happen, because the police checked the wrong address twice. When the Department of Corrections realised that Smith was not with his sponsor, it was slow to tell police that he had escaped. This was, again, unacceptable. After learning that Phillip John Smith had indeed escaped the country, the police were too slow to alert Interpol, which, again, is a huge shortcoming.

This bill is actually a knee-jerk reaction to a knee-jerk reaction. The inquiry, or the review, was a knee-jerk reaction to the escape itself, and this bill is the fallout from that review. The review gave 39 recommendations, out of which the Government has accepted, in principle, 34 recommendations. How much work will go into that, into fixing those shortcomings, is yet to be seen. However, the intent of this bill is to enable agencies such as the police, the Customs Service, and the Department of Corrections to have instant access to jointly held information on serious offenders and mental health patients who have figured in the criminal justice system. As to the information so held, it is expected that it will be more technical and more accurate, and, hopefully, it will not infringe upon the basic human rights of any individual.

By successfully escaping, Phillip John Smith taught us a few lessons. I hope that we will learn lessons from that escape. Because the intent of this bill is to strengthen interdepartmental information and the sharing of information, including technical data, New Zealand First will support this bill. Thank you.

Just as I start a short contribution on this bill, I am disappointed, I guess, that the Greens have taken an opposing view to this bill. They believe that it has all been brought about as a result of the activities of one person—in fact, Kelvin Davis supported this view in his earlier contribution on this bill. This piece of legislation probably is necessary. It was triggered by the activities of one person. As is so often the case, it is either a crooked person, a clever person, or just an ordinary person tripping up who causes legislation to come before this House, and this is no exception.

Since 2008 the Government has worked very hard to ensure that its agencies share information where relevant and useful. This is just another case of there being significant advantages in agencies sharing information and in making processes a whole lot easier for all of those agencies trying to either enforce legislation or enable people to come and go as they please. It is a most essential part of what we do as a Government, and I think we have got to a very good space with some of this sharing of information.

I do accept that there is some risk in sharing information, and, obviously, the select committee, as it moves through this process, will ensure that all possible safeguards have been put in place. The bill itself includes built-in safeguards against inappropriate sharing by providing clear parameters for the circumstances in which that information can be shared. Alongside the existing privacy protections outlined in the Privacy Act, these parameters include limiting the information that can be shared to identifying information. Only certain named agencies can share that information, and in specific circumstances. I think that is a very good start to the safeguards we need to ensure are in place to protect those people. We have got to remember that, on the whole, these laws are not being put in place to protect people who are perfect angels, so we need to make sure that we deal appropriately with those people. That then enables everyone else in the country to move about with a great deal more freedom than they previously had.

I think the ironic thing about technology is that as we enable technology to participate in our regulatory environment, it actually frees up life for the rest of us. Access through customs, for example, is a very good example of this. Some of us recently had the opportunity to visit Auckland Airport. We were on a Ministry for Primary Industries agenda more than a customs agenda up there, but it was really very interesting. Despite the assertions of the last speaker, Mahesh Bindra, on our border control and Customs Service, they are not the laughing stock of the international community. In fact, our Customs Service and border control are probably as good as, if not better than, anywhere else in the world, and I think we should be very proud of them. This bill will give them just a little bit more horsepower when it comes to making sure that those people whom we want to make sure are where we think they are, are where they are.

So I have a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill, and I look forward to the discussion in the select committee as well. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. Dr Kennedy Graham—5 minutes.

The stated aim of this bill is to amend various statutes to provide for better information flows between agencies in relation to personal information, including biometric information. This is to enable better identity verification of individuals for the purpose of preventing offences and, when offences have occurred, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting them. The Minister of Justice publicly explained the bill as being in response to the Smith/Traynor inquiry of last year, which called for, as she put it, a step change in the way identity is verified and shared in the justice sector. That entity, she said, was to be based on unalterable information such as fingerprints and facial recognition rather than paper records.

The bill would allow agencies access to the driver’s-licence photo database and birth, death, and marriages information of offenders and mental health patients subject to the criminal justice system. The move towards a single, shared record of photographs, fingerprints, and facial recognition would, she said, equip New Zealand law and border enforcement agencies with the best tools in identifying offenders and absconders.

Our concern is that the bill permits the widespread collection of biometric data on the basis of a single incident involving an escaped prisoner. I pick up on the point made by the previous speaker, Mr McKelvie, who was lamenting the fact that the Green Party is pinning its opposition purely on that. But, in fact, that is not an accurate portrayal of our position. The essential opposition we have to the bill is triggered not by one person. The main reason is the fact that what the Minister of Justice calls unalterable information is, to us, unacceptable information in terms of its intrusive nature into privacy laws. The ability of the Customs Service to collect biometric data is not limited to people suspected of having traveller restrictions, though the bill’s regulatory impact statement suggests that it would be used sparingly. It is not clear how the information would be shared among agencies, given that the Department of Corrections already possesses this information.

The scope for further information gathering from patients—for example, in mental health care—and sharing with foreign enforcement agencies may pose privacy concerns, as Marama Davidson, my colleague, pointed out in some detail earlier. I will not spell out those details again. But, as our Labour colleague Jacinda Ardern said at the beginning—and this is not the first time this issue has come before this House—this issue is a balance between, on the one hand, national security concerns and domestic security concerns and, on the other hand, privacy laws and the right to avoid unnecessary intrusion.

As Jacinda Ardern put it, she searched and could find no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis. For the record, the Green Party sought a briefing from the Ministry of Justice on this issue and was refused. For these reasons, the Green Party will, at the first reading, oppose this bill.

It is a pleasure to take a short call on the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. I just wanted to start off by saying, as my colleagues have said, that Labour will be supporting this bill to select committee.

I want to express what we do know about the circumstances around this bill. First of all, we know that there was an inquiry. We know that there have been a number of failings in the systems, including in the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Justice, Customs Service, and the Department of Internal Affairs. We know of the perpetrator who got himself over to South America, but what we do not know is exactly how many other people have managed to do the same thing. This person got himself caught, and so maybe there have been others who have not been caught. It just occurred to me that that is something we do not know.

As my colleagues Jacinda Ardern and Kelvin Davis have pointed out, we will support this bill at first reading because there are clearly some systemic failures within the processes being used at the border, and with the sharing—or lack of sharing—of information. But I do want to acknowledge that in this ever-changing world, with the technology changes that we have, it is appropriate to also ask the question: does the magnitude of the response match, or is it appropriate for, the size of the issue that exists? I think that is an issue that the select committee ought to look at, around all of those issues within this bill.

It is a very powerful bill, I believe. With anything that changes the Privacy Act, there is, to me, a very high threshold of consideration that needs to be met. I believe that is the appropriate place to make it—at the select committee. Changing the use of information and, as I said, the technology around that information, and biometric information being transferred or shared amongst agencies for that purpose—and I have listened carefully to the concerns that others have around this very issue. I have to say that I have heard some valid issues around the use and potential misuse of this biometric data. We certainly do need to tread very carefully, but I also think we need to have every tool that we can have in the tool box to protect our borders—to protect and enforce the laws of our country so that people who are not supposed to leave New Zealand cannot leave New Zealand. I am very happy to support that.

I have read, in view of my portfolio being internal affairs, the specific parts around the changes to the Passports Act, and they all seem to me very appropriate to have within the processes of issuing passports. It still comes down to the ability to give effect to these new changes. The only way the Department of Internal Affairs is able to issue a passport—it actually needs the information from those other agencies.

I am happy to support this bill. Kia ora.

This bill responds to legislative weaknesses around offenders and special or restricted patient management. These weaknesses were identified in the Government inquiry into matters concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith, or Phillip John Traynor. Agencies have since been working hard to implement the inquiry’s recommendation to improve operational practices. However, we need to keep supporting that work with legislative changes to ensure something like this example cannot happen again.

I will go very briefly through the main provisions of the bill in its first reading. The key changes authorise specified agencies to access and to use identification, including biometric information, to verify the identity of individuals within the justice system, as well as at the border. It clarifies the ability of the Customs Service to collect and use and disclose biometric information about persons arriving to, or departing from, New Zealand. It also authorises the sharing of birth, death, marriage, civil union, and name-change information with specified agencies; clarifies that special care recipients and special patients and restricted patients may not leave their secure facility—or New Zealand—unless authorised; provides for the collection of biometric information from offenders to better identify those offenders at New Zealand’s borders; enforces the conditions specified for those individuals; authorises the sharing of photographic images of driver’s licence holders for law enforcement and identify verification purposes; and strengthens the standard release conditions to stop offenders on sentences or parole conditions from leaving New Zealand without written consent from their probation officers.

All these measures require a number of legislative changes, and so here we are, debating at first reading the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. It is another example of how this Government responds to issues quickly and effectively. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to speak in support of this bill, the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill, at its first reading.

I note that the speaker who has just resumed her seat, Jacqui Dean, mentioned that this is how the Government responds. In a way, it is sad that the Government is responding to this, because this piece of legislation has come about because of a succession of huge blunders that were made by a succession of Government agencies. If we look at the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Justice, the Customs Service, and Department of Internal Affairs—all of those agencies dropped the ball. They dropped the ball and allowed a very serious convicted criminal, who was still carrying out his sentence, to be issued with a passport, cross through the border, jump on a plane, and end up on the other side of the world in South America. That was a huge blunder. Yes, we know that things need to be fixed, but we do not want to be seeing these blunders happening all of the time. We are seeing it too often in food safety areas, and now we are seeing it in border protection areas.

Therefore, I do acknowledge the good work by the retired High Court judge Dr John Priestley QC and Simon Murdoch, who conducted this inquiry—after the debacle of Phillip John Smith, also known as Phillip John Traynor—into the failings of our Government agencies in preventing a very serious criminal from jetting away overseas.

This bill gets to the nub of one issue, which is the issue of aliases—“also known as”. We had Phillip John Smith, also known as Phillip John Traynor. The fact that his identity information from his birth—he had a heinous criminal career under the family name of his stepfather. So those failings led him to be able to apply for a passport under his birth name, and no one knew otherwise—no one within the Government agencies knew otherwise. So this bill does crack down on that. It does allow the agencies to share more information to ensure that we do not see these events happening again.

There are operational changes that I understand the agencies concerned are already carrying out. This bill just implements the changes that are needed at a legislative level. So we do welcome these changes, but I do note the concerns of the Green Party that whenever you are looking at sharing of private information, we need to make sure that the systems are robust.

We obviously note that there was—as was identified in the report—a complete failure of or lack of comprehensive systems in place, in the case of Mr Smith. We do want to make sure—and I think that is why this bill needs thorough examination and consideration by the Law and Order Committee—that the right balance is struck. At the end of the day we want to get it right. We want to make sure that the bad persons of high interest in the criminal justice system are not allowed to just jump on a plane and just fly out of the country, but we also want to ensure that it does not unnecessarily intrude on those people who are not of high interest to the criminal justice system.

These are some long-overdue measures that we do welcome. I was interested to note the use of biometric information—we are talking about retinas, thumbprints, and various other unique identifiers that we do have. I am pleased that although biometric systems were not in place, there certainly was a biological impact on Phillip John Smith when he was intercepted in Brazil and brought back and thrown back into prison here, because he went away with what seemed like a full head of hair and came back completely bald. I think that it was good that our law enforcement folks, whether they were in Brazil or our own police, were able to yank him back to prison here in New Zealand. I understand he is awaiting further charges and the outcome of his brief South American escapade.

We do support this bill. We do look forward to examining it further at the select committee, and I commend it to the House.

This bill is a very important piece of legislation for verifying who offenders and potential offenders might be, and then sharing that information appropriately. Identifying who someone is is the process of authentication, and generally there are two factors to authentication. The first is something that you have—for example, a swipe card, a passport, or a cellphone—and the second is something you know, such as a PIN, a password, or a security question. Both of these factors come with problems. The something you know—a password can be hacked, it can be guessed, or it can be stolen. The something you have can also be stolen, it can be copied, it can be falsely created, or it can actually be legitimately created—and this feeds into what my colleague was just saying about aliases and identity theft. Name changing can be legitimately done and new identification documents established.

This leads me to talk about another Smith. The focus here today has been around Phillip John Smith, but I want to give the case of another Smith: Michael Richard Smith, who, in 2015, was convicted of theft by a person in a special relationship and jailed for 5 years. He changed his name and identification many times. He was also known as Michael Weaver, Michael Levertoff, and Michael Fresnel. While he was on bail awaiting trial he changed his name, set up new companies, and continued to defraud innocent New Zealanders. So name changing is definitely a tool that offenders use. To pick up from my colleague from the Greens, who also suggested that one case has generated this legislation, I would point him to examples of fraudsters and criminals who have recently changed their names. I would point him to Paul James Bennett, also known as Paul John Williams—this is all just in 2014—Phillip John Smith, whom we know of; Cristian Dario Alcalde; and Glenn Green, also known as Dallas Deangeles. So there is actually quite a body of work and case law to substantiate this legislation.

In fact, in 2012-13, 7,422 New Zealanders changed their names—of course, many did it legitimately, but some may have done it for illicit purposes as well. What this bill does then is allow biometric authentication. So we have got what we know and what we have; this adds what we are. That is the third factor, which biometric authentication adds. I think it is very important to add to that toolset, and I believe it will probably be a combination of all three that will be the most effective. The ultimate effective authentication is DNA, and, at some time in the future, this bill futureproofs that possibility—that DNA actually becomes our biometric assessment. Anyway, I think this is very good, very important legislation, and I commend this bill to the House.