Now, here is a problem that I did not know I had.
I’ve got a whole heap of blood, but I can’t give it away.
I can’t borrow a book from the library.
KiwiSaver will accept my money happily.
But they may not give it back.
I can’t even borrow a wheelchair in a shopping mall.
The stumbling block in my life? The cause of all this grief? A convicted fraudster? An undischarged bankrupt?
Far more mundane than that.
I don’t have photo ID.
Having photo ID is the modern Holy Grail. Without photo ID, the list of things that you not able do covers pages.
It was a friend who brought the issue to our attention. Without giving too much away, she has had a couple of name changes through marriage, owns her own home and grandchildren, has serious professional responsibilities, has held high offices in national organisations and has won national recognition for her efforts.
In short, she is no muppet.
But in her life she never had a passport, a driver’s or firearms licence – the acceptable forms of photo ID. In order for her to be able to sign official stuff, meet her eight year old grandchild off an aeroplane or collect her pre-paid purchases from the store, she has had to get herself an 18+ card – the same card teenagers use to get themselves into the pub!
Now, I understand that, in the modern environment, protection of one’s identity can be problematic. But here are some of the things that you cannot do without photo ID. This is not an exhaustive list, just the more bizarre ones!
You can’t:
– close a bank account or cancel a credit card that has a nil balance,
– get a mortgage or renew a fixed one,
– become a signatory to an organisation’s bank account when you have been elected treasurer, secretary or president,
– change the name on your driver’s licence when you have changed your name through, for example, marriage, Note: you don’t need photo ID to change your name by marriage, just the one on your driver’s licence,
– buy something on a hire purchase agreement,
– pay your rates bill over the counter at the post office,
– visit a prisoner in jail. You don’t need photo ID to go to jail, unless of course you’ve been using someone else’s,
– to apply for a driver’s licence you must provide either your photo driver licence (the old one, which can have expired up to two years ago), or your current New Zealand passport, or your current overseas driver licence and current overseas passport, or your New Zealand birth certificate (issued on or after 1 January 1998),a student ID card or an 18+ card,
– to apply for a birth certificate in person
And here is another interesting one that I tripped over recently. I went into my bank to change a $20 note into two $10 notes. A very simple transaction, I thought.
Wrong!
Without going into the conversation too deeply, to complete this meagre transaction required that I produced my bank card and photo ID!
I wish I could say I was joking but I’m not!
The entire interaction to change one bank note took five precious minutes of my life while they checked my ID on the computer, got two $10 notes from the draw, put my $20 note there and signed a piece of paper to say that they had swapped my note for two other notes.
The Ministry of Complication
I have been long convinced that there is an Official Authority somewhere whose sole task it is to ensure that the ends can never meet. This Authority – let’s call it the Ministry of Complication – works to ensure that, if four criteria are needed to reach an official goal, it is only ever possible to meet three of them. And in the unlikely event that one does manage to meet the fourth, it will have negated one of the other three.
The processes for getting a firearms or a new drivers’ licence are very good examples of their work.
Our friend whose problems were the genesis of this Rant inadvertently came up with the superlative version of the Ministry of Complication’s handywork.
To get her 18+ card, she went to the post office and got the necessary form to complete. It required a whole lot of stuff, including a witnessed statutory declaration in front of a JP.
When she took the form back to get her card, she was advised that she had “the old form”. It had now been replaced with a new form. And they were very sorry but they could no longer accept the old form – so she had to start all over again. Including the statutory declaration bit.
And, to rub salt into an already gaping wound, the fees had gone up!
I hear an uncomfortable rumour that we may soon require photo ID to be born.