Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill

When we were last considering this bill, Stuart Nash was on his feet. He had 9 minutes and 30 seconds, but seeing as he was so nice to me, and the clock does not work any other way, he can have 10 minutes.

Actually, Mr Assistant Speaker, I would rather you give me 5 minutes. This is a subject that is not nearly as inspirational or as aspirational as the last one—in fact, there is no doubt about that. I remember when I got up to speak on this one. I was watching the second hand tick, and I am sure it got to 12 when I had to jump up, and I got 20 seconds. I got 20 seconds.

What I was talking about was that this bill came out of a series of systems failures that allowed Phillip John Smith, who is one of the more despicable people in our jails—he is a paedophile, and then, when he went back to abuse the kid again, this kid’s father tried to shield him, and Smith murdered this guy’s father. Like I said, he is one of the more despicable men I have ever read about in our country. But he managed to get away. Luckily for us, he is as thick as two short planks. The reason I say that is he actually got across to South America, but then they caught him pretty quickly and they sent him back here. It is good that they did catch him, and it is good that they did send him back here. However, a little wee part of me wishes he had just spent a couple of years in a South American jail. But, anyway, that is a story for another day.

This bill is about a whole lot of recommendations that came out of the report that was written based on Phillip John Smith’s escape. It is a shame, I must admit, that it took an incident like that to provide the impetus for us to do this, because there were obvious system flaws before Phillip John Smith escaped, or else he would not have been able to escape. But often it is the way with this Government that it is very reactive. If a situation happens, then it says “Goodness me, this has captured the public imagination.”, it does a poll, and it realises it needs to do something about it. But here we are. This bill is going to make the system a better one, of that there is no doubt.

The report that was written about Phillip John Smith’s escape did detail a series of failures in the handling of the incident by Corrections, by Justice, by Customs, and by Internal Affairs. Because a man escaped, it was not just the fault of Customs. You have got to remember that this guy ended up getting a passport, for goodness’ sake—obviously, with a photo with a whole lot of hair, because he wears a wig—but Corrections, it was noted, had strong inadequacies in the way it administered temporary releases. I can imagine, actually, that when Phillip John Smith ended up back in prison, there were some other prisoners who were not terribly happy, because Corrections actually changed the rules and that meant that—what is the technical term for shore leave or leave outside the wire? You know what I am trying to say.

💬 Mahesh Bindra: Release to Work.

Release to Work. Yes, those schemes—Corrections put a ban on those immediately and then it tightened up on those. Release to Work schemes are a good idea, I must admit. We need to end up with a way that better reintegrates people back into the community.

One thing I am very, very critical of is our—well, not just Corrections, but our whole society is. In 2005, the Corrections budget was around about $526 million. This was its operational budget. It is now close to $1.4 billion, so after 12 years we are now spending about $900 million more a year keeping people locked up. There has at some point been some sort of systemic failure, and I do think we lock too many people up. But that is beside the point. What we do need to ensure is—our jails of course have to be places of incarceration but they also need to be places of rehabilitation. The evidence points to the fact that it is actually not happening in a way that is allowing prisoners to get out and at least have a chance of being productive.

I remember when we had the CEO of Corrections at our Law and Order Committee. He told us that, actually, 62 percent of prisoners who walk through the prison door every single year have an existing mental health and/or addiction issue, and there are 14,000 Kiwis who are in jail for 6 months or longer, every year. That is about 8,500 people in prison for 6 months or longer who have a mental health and/or addiction issue. I said to the CEO: “So have you at least got the plans and the processes in place so that when these people get out of jail, they have at least got a chance of being productive members of society?”. Do you know what he said—and I would not have believed it. I have got the transcript. He said: “I don’t think we’re that ambitious.” “I don’t think we’re that ambitious”—that is an admission that what we are doing in this country is locking up people and throwing away the key. When we find the key 6 months, 12 months, or 18 months later, we are letting them go and they are a little bit badder and they are a little bit sadder and we wonder why, in 6 months’ time, we see them back in jail. In fact, we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the OECD, and it is something that we have got to change.

It is not necessarily Corrections’ fault. It is not the one that is locking people up for longer and longer, but it is the one responsible for administering that. What I would really like to see is us getting back to a different way of administering justice. What has happened is we have become a much more punitive society, as opposed to the compassionate society that we once were. We are now saying that the solution is to lock ’em up, as opposed to saying that the solution is to find what will work or to understand the issues of why people are ending up in the criminal justice system. Compassion versus punitive—I think we need to go back to compassion. When you think, would you believe, that it costs us $100,000 a year to keep one man in jail, I just wonder whether we would not be better spending that money elsewhere in solutions as opposed to locking people up. But back to the bill. [Interruption] Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for allowing me to stand on my soapbox for 5 minutes about Corrections.

Police did also note in the report they wrote about the Phillip John Smith incident that they did not have access to basic information such as births, deaths, and marriages records, which would assist them in building essential profiles around offenders. The reason I say that is that members will have noticed that sometimes when someone is arrested or the police are looking for someone, they will say: “John Jones, sometimes known as Bob Brown, or sometimes known as Jim Smith.” The prosecution works in that the name that the prisoner, or the person being prosecuted or arrested, carries at that point in time is the name that goes forward into the system. So if the name that the person is being arrested under or prosecuted under is Jim Jones, but he was born with the name of John Smith, then that information is not captured, and I think this is what Phillip John Smith used to get his passport.

In this day and age, in the 21st century of big data and these massive databases when IRD is spending $1.3 billion and every other man and his dog, or every other ministry, is spending literally millions and millions, what we do expect, I think, and what the voters certainly expect and what New Zealanders expect, is that we put the systems in place that allow our databases to at least talk to each other in a meaningful way that is going to keep our communities safe. The reason I mention that is that Phillip John Smith went over to, I think Argentina. He went overseas. OK, what would have happened if he had actually gone to Hawke’s Bay or New Plymouth or somewhere else and continued in his nefarious ways, or if he had decided to go for the guys who put him in jail? He did murder the father of the son he had abused. What if he had gone and sought revenge? In a way, we were lucky he did not do that. In a way, we were lucky he did head overseas. All I am saying is that what the scam did was it exposed a whole lot of flaws, which this bill will actually remedy, I am sure.

There were 30 recommendations that were made by the inquiry. The Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, had at the time of the report’s release agreed to 34—sorry, did I say 30? There were 39 recommendations; she agreed to 34 of them. What I would say is that the Minister was actually very serious. She took on board a lot of the recommendations because she understood the fact that this is important, as do we. It is why we are supporting the bill.

My good colleague Kelvin Davis, at the time of the report’s release, said that it painted a pretty farcical scenario of how a complete lack of information across Government agencies allowed Smith to apply for and receive a passport in a name he had not used since he was a child. Kelvin also noted that it highlighted deficiencies in identity information. Kelvin just went on—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

—in the very competent way that he did, to say that things needed to change.

It is why we are supporting this bill. It will be good to see it go through, because the last thing we want is another Phillip John Smith in our communities. Like I said, we are lucky that he was as thick as two short planks and that we caught him pretty quickly and got him back in jail, and may he be there for the rest of his life, but may that also be the last time someone uses such a scam to escape. On that note, I will just say that we do support this bill. Thank you very much.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Yes, I really want to speak on the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. In the first reading, I posed a question about whether or not the magnitude of the response matches and is appropriate for the size of the issue, and I will come back to that later on. But I do want to make a couple of points about what led up to the situation of needing a response to this issue.

As my colleague Stuart Nash has pointed out, there was a certain person who decided he was going to go split the country and go off to South America. It occurred to me that if just one of the key agencies had made a phone call—if the Ministry of Justice had made a phone call or if the Department of Corrections or if the Department of Internal Affairs or if the Customs Service had made a phone call—or if someone had called the nominated sponsor, then this situation may not have happened. Seriously, there has been a communication breakdown in this issue, and then we find ourselves here today in the process of passing new legislation to deal with that situation. I think that that is not the best way for us to be developing new legislation.

The seriousness of the lack of communication between all of these Government agencies needs to be dealt with. But, as I posed in my first reading speech, is the magnitude of the response appropriate for the size of the issue? We are supporting this legislation. In my opinion, to answer my own question, it is something that will need to be reviewed over time to decide whether or not it goes too far. I think it is not a situation where it does not go far enough; I think it fixes up a whole lot of things.

Submitters made submissions on this bill, and some of them were lengthy and substantial. I am not on the Law and Order Committee, but I have read through a few of those submissions. The Law Society submission was really thorough and helpful for me to understand what this bill is about. I see in the select committee’s report that it has addressed all of those issues, not in the way that the Law Society actually wanted, but, as I say, I do not think we are going to know the full impact of this legislation until it has been around for a few years and has been able to be used and until that biometric information has been shared between the different agencies like Corrections, Justice, Customs, and the Department of Internal Affairs.

It is actually quite staggering that the Department of Internal Affairs’ births, deaths, and marriages information was not able to be shared with Corrections, so it had no other way of being formally advised that this person had another identity. Actually, I am standing here just about to say that it is amazing that this has not happened before, but do we actually know that? We possibly do not know that there are not perhaps others who have got away with it. As my colleague Stuart Nash pointed out, the person in question was not that bright, and that is why he got caught.

However, we are in the situation where we have had the inquiry. The inquiry has made 39 recommendations, and 34 or 35 of those recommendations have been picked up. What I did notice from the submissions I read was that people were most concerned about the sharing of data between the agencies. If I can just refer to one of them, by the name of Aaron Livingston, he put forward his submission because of his concerns about, and the potential for, as he saw it—I am not saying this is going to happen—mass surveillance. He had huge issues around privacy of information. I think it is really important that these submissions, even if the select committee did not agree with what he was saying, are actually valid arguments that the Parliament should note. It is my view that it is important that all voices on this issue are heard.

As I said, for me it is quite finely balanced around supporting this bill in the way that we are. I remember reading that even some of the basic information that is available to each individual department, ministry, or agency—there seemed to be no sharing of that information between all of them. I think that is something that really did need to be addressed.

To the bill—it clearly inserts a definition of what biometric information is into six Acts where that did not exist. So under this bill that definition will be in all six of those Acts. It amends the Privacy Act. I think that is where the major concerns were for those submitters who made their views known to the select committee. The bill amends the Parole Act, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, and the Customs and Excise Act.

The part that drew, I think, the most attention was the new Part 10A, going into the Privacy Act, which actually is the key Act that authorises agencies to access the use of identity information, which includes the biometric information that I talked about. They can use that information that is held by other agencies primarily to verify the identity of an individual. Those individuals are set out in a new schedule within this legislation. As I said, I think the jury is out on how effective this will be. I think it will be effective, but does it go beyond the issue? Only time will tell. Thank you.

I stand today in support of the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill in its second reading. This bill is in the name of the Hon Amy Adams and is a result of the Government inquiry into the matters concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith, or Traynor, who managed to acquire a passport, leave New Zealand, and end up in Brazil while on temporary release from prison. The inquiry found that it was the inadequate sharing of information between various agencies that enabled this escape to take place, as well as some operational processes that were also inadequate.

This legislative change is supporting the improvements that have already been made to some of those operational processes. In particular, Corrections has implemented 13 of the recommendations after it conducted an urgent review around this issue, such as making temporary release of prisoners a much more rigorous process.

This is an omnibus bill, as we have heard today. It amends and strengthens requirements that must be satisfied before Ministers can make Orders in Council. The amended Acts are the Victims’ Rights Act of 2002, the Sentencing Act of 2002, the Parole Act of 2002, and the Corrections Act of 2004, as well as the Human Rights Act and the Privacy Act.

This bill will streamline how various agencies must work together to identify offenders, and it will ensure that their sentences are carried out properly. It also clarifies the ability for Customs to collect and use biometric information about people arriving into or departing from New Zealand. The bill moves away from the simple, name-based information that agencies currently hold in their records to a shared identity based on information that cannot be altered, such as a person’s fingerprints or facial recognition technology. This is what is known as biometric information.

The public does expect their Government to be able to share information for the purposes of keeping communities safe and to prevent harm and also prevent the type of escape from justice that initiated this bill. This bill does contribute to the Government’s priority of delivering better public services by reducing crime and reoffending, and as such I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

I am pleased to take a somewhat contrary view to the rest of the speakers we have heard on this bill. The Greens are not supporting this legislation. We see it as addressing the wrong problem, in a sense. There may certainly be an issue around information sharing. We think, however, this bill goes too far. The peculiarity of this legislation is that in the introduction to the commentary we are told that the bill responds to perceived weaknesses in legislation regarding offender and patient management that were identified in the Government inquiry, entitled matters concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith/Traynor. The peculiarity is that had all the provisions proposed in this bill been enacted, been in legislation, at the time that Mr Smith/Traynor took his brief excursion to South America, nothing would have changed. There is nothing in this bill, actually, that would have prevented him from doing exactly what he did, and that is very strange in its own right.

The inquiry actually identified a whole raft of issues and failures that enabled Mr Smith to escape and make his journey to Brazil. The main findings are set out—what are referred to as principal causes and deficiencies that failed to prevent his escape. The inquiry likened it to links in a chain. Had one of those links not been present, had one of those failures not occurred, then Mr Smith would not have got away and we probably would not be having this conversation.

Firstly—and these are identified as the links, the deficiencies, that contributed to his ability to escape—Corrections did not adequately assess or mitigate Mr Smith’s risk. The surveillance and monitoring of Mr Smith’s activities was inadequate. The inquiry went on to say “Mr Smith should have been subject to higher levels of vigilance by custodial staff, intelligence staff, staff members generally”, and said that experienced officers expressed strong misgivings about Mr Smith that were not always shared or assessed, or were not influential.

Mr Nash referred to Mr Smith as being “as thick as two short planks”. I love the phrase, personally, and I am not here to defend in any way Mr Smith’s character or actions. But, in fact, he displayed a considerable cunning or, dare I say it, even intelligence, in being able to manipulate access to a passport and to get out of the country. His undoubted cunning/intelligence was proven by the fact that he illegally but successfully ran a couple of businesses and generated a healthy amount of money for himself while still in custody. So while he certainly proved to be foolish by putting himself in a public forum after his escape, he did demonstrate a level of cleverness, at least, or cunning.

I think that the fairly bald statement that the inquiry revealed issues around information sharing is not untrue, but it overemphasises the importance of those problems. Had Mr Smith, or Traynor, been correctly identified, then he would never have been able to get a passport. If we had had legislation in place that said serving prisoners may not get passports, that would have stopped him, presumably—except, of course, for the historic glitch that meant there were no links anywhere in anybody’s database linking Phillip Smith with the name of Traynor. So the response, which has been a significant increase in the ability, the potential capacity, for various Government agencies to share information, is we think a significant overreaction in terms of the likelihood that that sharing or lack of ability to share information was, in fact, the problem that enabled this fellow to get away.

We already have—as was pointed out by, I think, the Law Society—mechanisms to enable agencies to share information, and they are called AISAs, or approved information sharing agreements. We had a fairly robust submission—several of them, in fact—that suggested that those agreements could be used to allow for not only bilateral but multilateral arrangements for information sharing between various agencies. An argument would need to be made that it was necessary. The agreements could be constructed in such a way that the need is demonstrated and that we keep fairly tight reins on the ability of these agencies to share information.

It is always a fraught sort of an area, the question of information sharing between Government agencies, because on a practical, day-to-day basis you can see it is sensible and necessary. Police, courts, and agencies involved with managing domestic violence—you can see very quickly that if the barriers to information sharing are too impermeable or too excessive, then we are not going to get good outcomes for some vulnerable people in our communities. But we have to be very thoughtful about exactly how far those agreements go, and I think that this bill has overreacted. I think part of the reason why this bill has become a sort of a catch-all, almost an omnibus—it is not a universal freeing up of agencies to share information, but it has gone a long way down that road.

I think it is not as good a bill as it could have been, and we can get some evidence for that from the regulatory impact statement (RIS), which was probably one of the most straightforward and frank pieces of advice I have seen from Justice officials. They said very clearly that the main constraint they have faced in their regulatory impact analysis was time. The message is very clearly stated in the RIS that Justice officials did not have time to do a decent job. It says: “The Government has committed to introducing legislation as quickly as possible to improve the ability of agencies to verify identities.”—compounded by, say,—“the Government’s decision to not implement recommendations by the inquiry and to consider the full range of tools to enable better information sharing.”

It is a bit like the old expression “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”. I think the same can be said about making legislation about forming statutes. If you do it quickly under the haste that is generated by the public spotlight—the public concern, and rightful concern, that this very dangerous person was able to leave the country—reacting to that sort of public pressure does not make for good legislation. I think this bill is an example of that.

The point was made earlier, again in terms of this general theme of overreaction, that temporary release had been, and is and could be again, a very successful mechanism for making the transition from prison to society. The inquiry actually made the point that—here we are—“In the 10-year period ending in 2014 the reported number of breaches of temporary release conditions by prisoners was extremely small, even minuscule.” “Minuscule” was the word it used in terms of the number of incidents of people abusing or failing to comply with conditions of temporary release. Yet when this one guy, a very smart person though not an admirable person in any way, managed to manipulate himself a passport and get out because Corrections, frankly, was not doing its job of monitoring him—it did not confirm the sponsor, and it did not do a large number of things. The fact that this fellow was able to get away—one serious breach—immediately led to a blanket halt on temporary release.

This disadvantaged not only prisoners but some employers, who were actually giving those prisoners jobs and who were extremely upset that the inmates turned up to work one day and the next day they did not arrive because they were not released from prison. It undermined employers’ confidence in the ability of Corrections to reliably supply them with people who are going to do some useful work and learn some skills. Again, there is that whole sense of overreaction. I think even now, several years later, the incidence of temporary release is at something like only 80 percent of what it was before this one escape, which as I say, the inquiry described as minuscule.

So, all in all, the Greens think that this legislation goes too far in enabling information sharing. It is a difficult area, as I have said. I concede that we certainly do not want to allow people to be disadvantaged, we do not want to allow people to be victimised, and we do not want to inhibit the provision of necessary social services to individuals who are in need of them by absence or lapse in the ability of agencies to share information. But legislation done in haste and under the glare of public pressure is seldom good legislation, and I fear that this bill has fallen into that. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. At this stage I would like to acknowledge the work done thus far by the members of the Law and Order Committee, the staff who are allocated to us to assist us, and the advisers who advised us very efficiently on legislation that to me appears to be not foolproof but very close to becoming very efficient legislation.

This bill was prompted by the findings of an inquiry into Phillip John Smith’s escape on 6 November 2014 while on a 74-hour temporary release from Spring Hill prison. The inquiry actually found out that there were various issues with regard to the processes that were followed to assess that prisoner’s suitability for a 74-hour temporary release. This escape was followed by a number of knee-jerk reactions, and one of those was in respect of prisoners who went out to work in industries on the Release to Work programme, which has got nothing to do with the temporary release that Phillip John Smith was entitled to. It had nothing to do with Phillip John Smith. However, those prisoners who were otherwise entitled to leave to prison to go out and work—and a continual outing like that would have helped them in getting rehabilitated into mainstream society—were adversely affected by this escape, and they were not very happy when the prisoner was ultimately recaptured and brought back to New Zealand.

This single incident caused us huge, unprecedented embarrassment internationally, and it opened our border control agencies and our law enforcement machinery to ridicule and criticism nationally and internationally. I quote a sentence from the inquiry report: “Mr Smith passed unimpeded through immigration and security checks at Auckland International Airport.” The so-called SmartGates at Auckland Airport were proven not be all that smart. Smith passed through all those SmartGates and manual controls unimpeded and unstopped. This escape was entirely preventable, but the relevant agencies were smug in the knowledge that nothing could go wrong. This is the sort of complacency that the prisoner actually used and manipulated.

The report is very comprehensive and detailed. It bares the glaring holes in the manner law enforcement agencies and border control agencies work with each other. We had submitted a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) when the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders, Bailees, and Other Persons Legislation Bill was being debated in this House. The intent of that SOP was to make it mandatory for the Department of Corrections and the police to communicate with each other while formulating regulations for their specific purposes. But, unfortunately, that SOP was voted down by the National members because the then Minister of Corrections was convinced that the departments did actually communicate with each other and that there was no need to make it mandatory for those departments to communicate with each other more effectively.

We asked the question then, and we ask it again: where was the communication and the information-sharing regime when Phillip John Smith escaped, all the way to Brazil? After the escape, Corrections conducted its own review into the debacle. The chief custodial officer made some pretty alarming observations, and I quote him: “There was conflicting information pertaining to the risks prisoner Smith posed”. This is Corrections auditing Corrections.

Let us look at what the inquiry committee’s recommendations are, and there are quite a few. Almost all of these recommendations point out that the lack of communication amongst the agencies needs to be fixed. First and foremost, this bill, to some extent, aims at achieving that. This bill aims to ensure a better flow of information sharing amongst various law enforcement and border control agencies, and that need has arisen out of a bizarre escape—that is, of that convicted murderer and sex offender, Phillip John Smith. Although a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, this bill, hopefully, will prevent similar escapes in future.

During the select committee process a number of submissions were made and concerns were raised. The Privacy Commissioner had a few concerns to raise, and he had a few recommendations to make. While I am not going to go through the recommendations in detail, I can say that the committee considered all aspects of those submissions to arrive at what I consider to be quality legislation.

What makes this legislation stronger is the fact that personal information, including biometric information, will be collected and shared by agencies for the purposes of preventing, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting offences. It will also enable better management of offenders, including those special care recipients, special patients, and restricted patients. This bill will help strengthen our border controls to ensure that these categories of individuals are not allowed to leave New Zealand without authorisation. After the passing of this bill, we believe that there will be better sharing of information amongst the law enforcement agencies and our border control agencies. Agencies will gain the ability to store and share information of offenders on bail and on temporary release, and, of course, of those incarcerated.

During the course of this bill being deliberated on at the select committee, there were some doubts and apprehensions raised, and the intent was to ensure that the bill did not in any way, shape, or form affect the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or citizens’ right to privacy. One of the questions that I sought clarification about was the length of the period that the information, which includes biometric information, will be stored and shared by the agencies. The response to that query of mine was that the agencies will hold the information for the period of an offender’s sentence. That, I think, is a fair approach towards it.

The other issue was the security of that information. We have seen personal information being shared inadvertently by a Government agency, causing serious embarrassment to both the victims and that Government agency. We cannot have a repeat of that situation, and that is why we think that we must get this right every time.

We have contributed in the select committee by way of our own submissions, and we have supported this bill at its first reading. New Zealand First will continue to support this bill. Thank you.

I want to take just a brief call to support this bill, and I just want to thank the member opposite, Mahesh Bindra, for his party’s support of it. We know that the Government inquiry into matters concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith was the basis of this bill. One of the previous speakers from the Green Party quoted some comments to say that the risk of this happening was minuscule and he stated that this bill is an overreach. I think that when a convicted paedophile who, as the member Stuart Nash mentioned, goes on to murder the child’s father and then escape New Zealand, it should not be described as a minuscule concern. When somebody like that, with that level of depravity but also ingenuity, escapes the Corrections regime, it must be a matter of great concern.

The Government instituted an inquiry, that presented 39 different recommendations, the vast majority of which were fully adopted, and then Corrections, before any further bill was presented to address some of the concerns of that inquiry, adopted 13 of those recommendations to bring change. I think the people of New Zealand, the taxpayers of New Zealand, and the communities of New Zealand, require this sort of response. It is not an overreach. It is like when you have a net and you cast it out and you gather in fish—if there is one hole in that net, it loses the catch. It is up to us who legislate here in this House to ensure that we have a net that does not let that fish out, as Phillip John Smith was able to escape.

Immigration New Zealand already has biometric information - sharing agreements with nations of the world, and that is important because we want to stop identity fraud, which is, essentially, what happened in this case. It is important that information sharing amongst agencies within this country, within our Government and regulatory regime, are able to share information to ensure that when people are placed in prison because of acts that they do, they are held to account not only for the protection of the population but also for the process of rehabilitation as well. That is very important. And, as we know, there were multiple identities taking place—yes, a very clever person. This House must be smarter than the smartest of criminals if we are going to have a regime that protects the people of New Zealand.

So this bill is an appropriate response to those concerns that were highlighted. It is not an overreach; it is an appropriate response. I commend this bill, and I commend Minister Amy Adams for bringing it to the House. I trust that we will progress it. Thank you for the support of those parties across this House that are supporting it. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. Marama Davidson—5 minutes.

The Green Party is opposing the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. We are very clear that the problem of Mr Smith escaping could be addressed by the existing legislative provisions and that, actually, it is a matter of applying what we already have and practising things better.

I just quickly want to respond to the previous Government speaker, Jonathan Young, who said that we have a responsibility in this House to respond. We have a responsibility in this House to remain calm, thoughtful, and considered, especially when applying measures that could be seen as quite intrusive. I just wanted to quickly pick up on that particular point. This bill tries to respond to what its commentary says are legislative weaknesses. I have just said that the Greens are very clear that it is a process application and practice matter instead—those so-called legislative weaknesses identified in the escape of prisoner Phillip Smith in 2014. The explanatory note says that the bill is seeking to make information about restricted patients and offenders easier for a number of agencies to collect and share.

We are opposing the bill. There is a rightful and serious and valid concern from the public about safety. That is not a minuscule concern, which is even more reason why we should have a considered and thoughtful response that actually gets to the heart and the true causes of the failure. So I have to stand here and be quite honest in this House and wonder how much of this legislative response is actually a political one to try to mask over the truer failures of what happened in the case of Mr Phillip John Smith. This is not at all me commenting and being critical and harsh on particular departments, but it is just asking whether we can be honest and actually address the true reasons why Mr Smith was able to escape in the way that he did.

I do want to say that I disagree with my colleague Mr Nash, who said that it is our role to comment on the character of New Zealand citizens whose names are brought into this House, particularly with remarks such as “thick as a brick”. I do not think that is our role, and I do not think it is becoming. I think we need to stick to the issue: there were application failures. Even the Government Inquiry into Matters Concerning the Escape of Phillip John Smith/Traynor amassed that there were “numerous failings of process, notably within Corrections, that contributed to the escape long before he got near the border.”

If we are going to be intrusive in the way that this bill is proposing to cast such a wide net, then we do need to be considered. Particularly with regard to new Part 10A, in clause 6, we saw that the Law Society itself said: “No clear policy rationale supports the introduction of proposed Part 10A. The Government Inquiry … did not identify any barriers in the Act that prevented information sharing.” Part 10A is in regard to information sharing. The Law Society continued to say that “rather the inquiry noted that the cultures of the relevant agencies primarily explain why information was not shared.” Even other members have attested to that very fact—that we could have done better by picking up a phone.

I am also going to include that in the throwing of a wide net to collect biometric data, we must absolutely consider that Māori are always more likely to be impacted on by any surveillance legislation, particularly because we are overrepresented. Māori are prosecuted, convicted, and apprehended at a higher rate than anyone else for the same things. Even the Waitangi Tribunal found that there were Treaty breaches in the way the Department of Corrections is failing to work with Māori. So we in here must be aware that the casting of this wide net is going to impact disproportionately on those who are overrepresented in apprehension, conviction, and imprisonment rates.

We will continue to oppose this bill for the reasons that I have outlined. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I stand in support of the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill, and I want to touch on the point made by the member Mr Jonathan Young. I think he made a very good point. The particular crime, the devious nature, and, of course, the premeditation exhibited by the particular person who caused the review into this process is despicable. It was a crime that the whole country, I am sure, could not believe took place. To see that somebody could flout the system in the way they did and end up, for all we know, on a beach somewhere overseas, drinking margaritas—we do not know that. But the point is this: that person got away with a crime and fled this country, and we should all be concerned about that, because if we consider our entire process as a chain, it is only as strong as its weakest link.

When I look at this bill and I have read through some of the submissions, I think that a lot of these things are not overstepping the mark. I actually think that they are needed. The only thing I am sorry about is that it took an incident, or a devious crime like the one perpetrated, for this to actually happen.

Biometric data is not the future; biometric data is the now. Biometric data is the now. Most places around the world—or, certainly, in the Western countries around the world you go to—collect biometric data, so it is only a reasonable step to think that in New Zealand we would be doing the same. We would be doing the same.

I know that there were concerns expressed during the submissions to the Law and Order Committee about the privacy of information with regard to the information sharing across multiple agencies. With the warnings given in the submissions, I think the consideration is fair, because I do believe that in order for us to have a strong system—I talked about the weakest link. We must have strong links right across—we must have strong links right across. So any opportunity where organisations or departments or agencies can come together to share the information on a pre-arranged agreement—one that protects the rights of the individuals and that has due respect for all of the legislation involved—I think is a good thing. It is one that allows them to share information.

It is not a new thing. In fact, I know that many of the social welfare agencies do it. I know that a lot of the education agencies do it. In fact, I recall that when this particular bill came to the select committee, the then Minister of Corrections was engaged in conversations with corrections departments over in Australia around information sharing. I think that is a good thing, to make sure that the system is robust—the system is robust. Granted, there were submissions against it, warning against the overstepping of the mark. But, having accepted that information sharing will only make the system better, I think it is a good thing moving forward.

Revictimisation is always the concern. When criminals are able to get themselves into a position to revictimise those victims of crime, that is of real concern to all people in Aotearoa New Zealand. So, in order for that to stop, I think a piece of legislation like this is called for—one that will see a more robust system moving forward. My colleagues across the House have already mentioned that most of the recommendations were picked up by this Minister, and I think we have got legislation that, certainly, I know the Labour Party will be supporting.

Sure, I also take the point of my colleague Mr Adrian Rurawhe that only time will tell, as we are able to assess and monitor the proposed system when it is in place and we are able to get a trend or at least get some data that will support whether or not this particular legislation is good. I think it is. I think it is moving us in the right direction. It is sad that it took a crime and then a report in order for us to strengthen this particular part of the legislation. We support this particular bill in the House, and we look forward to it moving forward.

I will take a brief call on the second reading of this bill with a very long name. It is amazing how often legislation comes to this House that is caused by the action of a single person or of one or two people, and this piece of legislation—and I listened to David Clendon speaking earlier about the complexities of it. For a very simple issue it is actually quite a complex issue, and it is quite complex when you start to follow the process that the law takes to get to the point of designing this new piece of legislation. So it was very complicated to understand some of the connections between the various departments and the various pieces of the legislation that made it up in the end.

I certainly have a great deal of pleasure in supporting it because I think it is hugely important for New Zealand. If you think about us letting our crims hop out of prison or wherever and leave the country—that really is damaging to our international reputation. We do not want our international reputation damaged by one or two people who get away with things they should not get away with. Of course, the reasons for this bill have been well documented by many others in the House already, so I am not going to talk about that at length, but I do think international reputation is a pretty important thing to understand that we need to protect, and this piece of legislation goes a little way towards doing that. There is no simple way, from what I have seen in my time in this House, of fixing any problem and so—again, to go back to David Clendon—there was never going to be an easy way of fixing this challenge for this Government. I think that this bill is as good a solution as we were ever going to get to that.

One of the things that I found quite interesting was that those people who are being managed by a probation officer could come and go as they wished. It seems extraordinary to me that people who are serving community sentences for one sort of crime or another could hop up and leave the country without having to get permission from their probation officer. That little loophole has been tied up now, and they have got to get written permission if they wish to leave the country. I am not sure which country would want to have them, but that sort of thing has been tidied up.

Lastly, I just want to go very briefly into the issue of biometric data, because, frankly, wherever we go in the world, if we do not give away voluntarily our biometric data it is nicked off us by something in the sky anyway. So I do not think that there is any threat to privacy around that sort of thing, because that is just the way the world operates now. Whether we like it or not, we are not going to change it. So we are driven by the actions of almost every other country in the world, which, as we go through their borders, collect all this stuff on us, whether we like it or not. So I think it is just part of the way we need to behave nowadays. I think it is also hugely important that our departments—particularly in this instance, where they are dealing with people who have a criminal conviction of one sort or another—have the ability to share that information so that we do not get a repeat of what happened in the case of Phillip Smith.

I have got a great deal of confidence this bill will make a difference; I also have pleasure in commending it to the House. I look forward to it going through the Committee stage and its final reading. Thank you.

Let us just revisit the genesis of this bill. As the member who just sat down, Ian McKelvie, said, it is the bill with a very long name. Phillip Traynor Smith, or, Phillip John Traynor—oh, bro, he had all these aliases, anyway. He was released from prison over a weekend. He was going to be out of the prison for some 72 hours. Within 8 hours of his release from prison he was on a plane to Chile. I guess that plane flight would have taken some 12 or 13 or 14 hours. He would have landed in Chile. He then caught another plane, I assume, and got to Brazil.

His downfall, I believe, was his ego. He could not resist, when he was in Brazil, actually emailing back to New Zealand—I think it was to his lawyer—and his lawyer went to the media, and so people knew he was in Brazil. If he had not done that, then there would have been nobody in Brazil keeping an eye out. It just so happened that some fellow backpacker in some hostel somewhere, whose attention would have been raised by the news story of this New Zealander absconding to Brazil, actually happened to see him there and alerted the authorities. So if his ego had not got the best of him, he could well be hiking the Inca Trail right now or be in Copacabana enjoying a cocktail and the sights of Brazil, or a steak in Buenos Aires. Anything could have happened. Fortunately, he was picked up and returned to New Zealand, but we have to look at why he was able to do this in the first place.

I disagree with Jonathan Young, who said that this is a case of identity fraud. It was not identity fraud, because he actually got a passport under his own name. It was a name he had not used since he was a child. His journey through the justice system was under an alias—another name that he used. The actual obtaining of a passport was actually done, I believe, legitimately, under a name that he had not used for some years.

Where the system let everyone down was that there was not this information sharing that we have been talking about. There was no information sharing between the Department of Internal Affairs and Corrections, there was no information sharing between Corrections and Customs, there was no information sharing across a number of Government agencies, and that is one of the areas where the whole system broke down and allowed Phillip Traynor—whatever his name is—Phillip John Traynor to abscond.

Having said that, we just need to read a report from the New Zealand Herald, which said: “The escape could have been thwarted before it even began if Corrections had simply checked with Smith’s nominated sponsor that the prisoner was expected to stay with him overnight.” Corrections has a lot to answer for in this whole episode. “ ‘The sponsor in fact knew nothing of the release, and would certainly have said so if asked’ … There were shortcomings in various agencies systems and processes as well as simple failings that acted as ‘links in a chain’ in their failure to prevent Smith’s escape”—that is very true. There were a number of systemic failures, all links in the chain, and if any one of them had been addressed or looked at previously, then Phillip Smith would not have actually been able to do what he did.

Even when it became obvious that the guy had absconded, Corrections was pretty slow in doing what it needed to do. It should have alerted Interpol a lot more quickly; it did not. The police were not alerted until the day after Corrections realised that he was not back in prison where he should have been. So it was a systemic failure, and this bill is seeking to address some of those failures.

I do, though, take issue with our colleagues from the Green Party. I do not believe this is overreach, for the very reasons that members have said. The crimes that Phillip Smith committed—i.e., child abuse, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, and the murder of his victims’ father—are serious crimes, and what he did was expose a loophole in the system. It is only appropriate that Parliament moves to close that loophole so that other people cannot do what he did. There were poor checks and balances from Corrections and there were systemic breakdowns from a number of Government agencies, all of which led to him heading off overseas.

As Peeni Henare said, the collection of biometric information is not something in the future; it is happening right here and now. Biometric information includes the taking of photos. Well, you know, photographs have been around for a hundred and something years. The taking of fingerprints was one of the first detective tools. It was a great leap in the 1800s, but it is not terribly innovative these days. Iris scans—OK, that is something different, but I think I saw a movie about 15 years ago where somebody had their iris scanned to get into some nuclear plant or whatever. What is the difference between taking an iris scan and, say, a doctor taking a mole map of your back? It is all just taking, basically, scans of photos. It is nothing actually, particularly new or innovative. The taking of measurements, I assume height and palm-prints, maybe—there is nothing really overreaching when we talk about the taking of biometric information.

I do agree with Marama Davidson, though—her comment that Māori are overrepresented in the justice system. I agree with that. I do not think, though, that taking biometric information from Māori is really that much of an issue. Fingerprints and iris scans and your height—that is nothing. I do not think there is anything racist in that. It applies to everybody equally. So biometric data is in the here and now.

In terms of some parts of this bill, an accessing agency—so, an accessing agency is an agency that takes the identity information—the Minister must be satisfied that the biometric information is being taken for the purpose that it is needed for, and the purpose must relate to the role of that particular agency. So we are not talking about wholesale gathering of illicit information on people here. It is just common-sense stuff to keep New Zealanders safe.

The information to be accessed is to be no more than is necessary to fulfil the purpose that the agency needs it for. Reasonable force may be used to compel somebody to give the information—that is a bit vague. What is the definition of “reasonable force”? I would like to think, in this instance, that reasonable force for the big, burly tattooed bloke is not going to be that much greater than is taken for a skinny, weedy guy like my colleague Stuart Nash here.

💬 Hon Members: Or Todd Barclay.

Ha! Something that we need to mindful of, though, is that if any information is collected from somebody who in the future is acquitted of anything they are accused of, there are checks and balances to make sure that that information is destroyed, so if that person is totally innocent it cannot be used against them later on.

Just with that, I do not think this is an overreach; I think this is plugging up a loophole that was created. We should probably be grateful to Phillip John Traynor/Smith—however many other names he goes under—for highlighting this and showing us that there was this loophole. The loophole has been closed. I think Corrections, though, needs to take notice that it had some failings in the whole process. Thank you.

Amendments recommended by the Law and Order Committee by majority agreed to.