Privacy Amendment Bill, Tax Administration Amendment Bill, Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill

I move, That the Privacy Amendment Bill, the Tax Administration Amendment Bill, and the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The aims of the Privacy Amendment Bill, the Tax Administration Amendment Bill, and the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Bill are to facilitate better public services and improve the way personal information is collected, stored, and used to help people. The bills balance the need for better information-sharing with the need to protect individual privacy.

The Privacy Amendment Bill does two things—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: “Pri-vicy” or “pry-vacy”, which?

—choose—but basically it is fairly basic. The Privacy Amendment Bill does two things. Firstly, it removes the need for a serious threat to public health or safety, or to the life or health of an individual, to be imminent. The Privacy Act’s information privacy principles will be amended to allow agencies to share information at an earlier stage in these cases.

Secondly, the bill sets out in the Privacy Act a process for drawing up information-sharing agreements that can be approved by Orders in Council. The Orders in Council enable the agreements to be used to share information outside of the Privacy Act’s information privacy principles for specified public purposes. One party to an approved information-sharing agreement must be a Government department. Private sector agencies can also be parties to an agreement, provided they are delivering a public service. Agreements will remove existing barriers to information flow and clarify when information can be shared.

I acknowledge the important contribution made to the bill by submitters, the Law Commission, and the Privacy Commissioner. The bill has the support of the “Pry-vacy” Commissioner and the “Pri-vacy” Commissioner! The commissioner noted in her submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee that the bill is a fine balance between providing flexibility and ensuring that privacy considerations are given due weight. The Justice and Electoral Committee made some excellent suggestions to improve the bill. These were taken up by this House during the Committee of the whole House stage, and the bill emerged from the Committee reordered and easier to navigate. It is also clearer.

Among other things, the bill now requires that the approved information-sharing agreements specify their purpose with due particularity. The bill also clarifies that the costs to be considered by a Minister in a cost-benefit analysis are broader than pure financial costs. Costs must be outweighed by benefits before a Minister can recommend that an information-sharing agreement be approved. The operation of approved information-sharing agreements will be supported by the Ministry of Justice and the Privacy Commissioner. The Ministry of Justice is developing guidance material to assist in drawing up effective and efficient approved information-sharing agreements. The Privacy Commissioner will have an important oversight and advice role in ensuring that approved information-sharing agreements function as intended.

I will mention Supplementary Order Paper 172 from Denis O’Rourke, which proposed that the bill require the Children’s Commissioner to be consulted on every information-sharing agreement. The Government did not support this Supplementary Order Paper. The bill does allow the Children’s Commissioner to be consulted over an information-sharing agreement where the interests of children are relevant. I have instructed my officials to be clear in the guidance material that parties to the agreement should consider whether it is desirable to consult with the Children’s Commissioner.

The Tax Administration Amendment Bill will amend the Tax Administration Act so that the Inland Revenue Department can share information with other Public Service providers more effectively and efficiently.

The Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill will allow the Department of Internal Affairs to use information-sharing agreements to share births, deaths, marriages, and relationship information. This enables a recommendation of the person A ministerial inquiry to be implemented. Teachers whose history of offending has been hidden by changes to their names will be able to be picked up.

These bills will improve public services and unblock the flow of vital information. At the same time, they will give due weight to individual privacy, and there is a range of protections and safeguards to ensure that the balance is maintained in the use of information. I commend these bills to the House.

I am pleased to take a call on the third reading of the Privacy Amendment Bill. I think it is important to take ourselves back to where this legislation came from, the intent that supposedly lay behind it, and whether or not that intent has been fulfilled.

I would like to draw the House’s attention to the Law Commission’s report on privacy—which was undertaken, I think, from around 2006 or 2007 to 2011—and the enormous issues underlying it, and the need for reform. I would just like to draw attention to some of the benefits and risks that were drawn out in that report, which was ultimately provided to the Minister, specifically around information sharing. It said that “Information sharing has obvious benefits.”, that “Individuals are relieved of the need to supply the same information to several agencies.”, and that “The agencies can work together to see and understand the individual’s problems in their whole context, instead of each agency seeing only through its own narrowly focused lens.”

It also said in that advice: “However the risks of sharing can be considerable and need to be carefully managed. There are significant implications for individual privacy. Sharing, in fact, runs counter to two fundamental principles of the Privacy Act: that personal information should only be collected from the individual concerned, and that information collected for one purpose should not be used for another. Moreover, if information is inaccurate the error will appear in multiple databases, making it more difficult to correct. It may be difficult for individuals to find out exactly where their information is held so that they can take steps to ensure that it is corrected.” And it also said that “Some of the information shared can be particularly sensitive … Failures of security, the use of inaccurate information, and the use of information in ways which are not anticipated by the individual, can lead to loss of trust in government.”

When the Law Commission made its report to the Minister it said: “we are of the view that reform is required … Our aim is to identify a way to facilitate appropriate public sector information sharing within a framework of openness, transparency and accountability, which accords appropriate weight to privacy values.” That report contained 136 recommendations—136 recommendations—and some of them extremely important recommendations. They included giving the Privacy Commissioner a binding power of decision on complaints about people’s rights to access their own information. Anybody who has made a complaint knows that it is very difficult, it takes a long time, and, in the end, the commissioner herself does not have the power of decision. The other thing that it recommended was that people should be notified when their personal information held by an agency was lost or otherwise compromised—for example, through computer hacking—if the breach is sufficiently serious.

There is nothing in this bill today on either of those two seriously important and very current issues. Instead, what we saw was two recommendations of the Law Commission taken up—two. There were 136 recommendations made; two have been taken up. The concern is what will happen to the rest of them. Will they languish? It is so important when discussing this legislation that is before the House today, which is about to be passed, that the question is asked of the Minister: what will happen to the rest of those recommendations? In her first reading speech the Minister of Justice said quite clearly that “the Government will respond in due course.” This legislation was first read in the House some time last year. We are now at the third reading and there has been no report back to the House on how the Minister plans to treat the rest of these recommendations. That is a critically important point.

Another important point to make in this third reading is about the cherry-picking that has been undertaken around these few recommendations that have been brought in this legislation to the House—how the Government has chosen to deal with that Law Commission report. The concern is that it may do the same, and it appears it will do the same, with another report by the Law Commission around the reforms that are required and needed to the Official Information Act. That is another point that I want to make extremely seriously to the House today. Cherry-picking from a serious piece of work undertaken by the Law Commission—to pick out just a few things that suit the Government of the day—is just simply not good enough by a Government that is supposedly serious about openness, transparency, accountability, and building public trust. That is what this piece of legislation before us today on privacy and information sharing is ultimately about. It is about bringing up to date an Act that needed to be brought up to date, the Privacy Act, but also it is about seriously reforming the practices of Government agencies, about how information is shared, and about how the right to privacy of individual citizens is treated in this country. Unfortunately, the opportunity to undertake a seriously important piece of reform has been dropped and lost, and we have to ask what is going to happen in the future. With the Official Information Act reform, we have equal concerns about how that may be dealt with.

These issues are current. They are absolutely current and they are absolutely important. We are seeing thousands of breaches of people’s privacy every day, particularly through electronic means. We are not seeing in this piece of legislation a comprehensive measure—or, really, any kind of measure—to address that, to take it seriously, and to look at the underlying reasons why those data breaches are occurring, and why so many people’s information is being shared in ways that are inappropriate, damaging, and deeply distressing to them. We have heard example after example after example with the Ministry of Social Development, through Work and Income, and the information that was made available through hacking into the kiosks; through ACC; through the Inland Revenue Department; through the Department of Immigration; and through countless other agencies and departments across our land. It is absolutely critical that the people of New Zealand, who currently do not feel assured that their data is secure, can be reassured that this Government takes it seriously. There is before this House a member’s bill that calls for a special inquiry into these breaches. Given the failure of this bill to address this issue, despite the fact that it could have—there was the opportunity to do it—given that lack, and given the ongoing seriousness of this issue, I hope that this House will treat that bill with the seriousness it deserves.

I am also pleased to take a call in this third reading debate on the bills arising from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. Members will recall that I chaired the Justice and Electoral Committee as we considered submissions and prepared our report on the bill to the House last year. I want to thank the submitters who contributed to this important process. I also want to thank the officials, who provided us with valuable guidance. I want to take this opportunity to wish my successor, Scott Simpson, well as he assumes the role of chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee. I know he will do an excellent job.

I also want to acknowledge Labour’s current spokesman on justice, Charles Chauvel, and wish him well as he prepares to leave this House and take up his new position with the United Nations. Mr Chauvel and I were on the Regulations Review Committee in the previous Parliament, when he was chair and I was deputy chair, and, in this Parliament, while I have been chairing the Justice and Electoral Committee he has been Labour’s lead justice spokesman. I consider that despite our political differences he and I have always worked very well together. I therefore genuinely wish him well and I thank him for the assistance he has given me. I seem to follow Mr Chauvel in every debate in which we have both spoken in the current Parliament. So I am a little bit worried about where I will get my cue from from now on. I am obviously going to have to have my wits about me to know when to take a call. Perhaps I will have to ask the new junior Government whip to ensure that I am alert, including stopping me from moving procedural motions in the wrong debate in the House.

As this is a third reading debate, and for the benefit of those who may be listening and have a strong interest in this measure, I would like to reiterate the background and the purpose of the original bill. The Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill aimed to improve rules around the collection, storage, and use of personal information while making sure there are safeguards to protect an individual’s right to privacy. That is a hugely important balance to strike, and in this era, as information technology, communications, gadgets, and all sorts of other things make the sharing of information—frequently through social media and also other, more formal means, an absolutely day-to-day occurrence—we have to ensure we do get it right.

Members will know that one of National’s key priorities is to deliver high-quality, modern public services for all New Zealanders, and this measure is absolutely part and parcel of achieving that goal. It supports better public services by providing a new mechanism to share personal information more effectively and with more certainty.

I am pleased to reassure Ms Curran, who spoke before me, that the remainder of the Law Commission’s recommendations for changes to the Privacy Act are indeed being considered by the Government with a view to updating this important legislation. We need to improve the way personal information is collected, stored, and used to help people. The bills that the Associate Minister has moved and spoken about this afternoon balance the need for better information-sharing with the need to protect individual privacy. The information-sharing aspect of privacy reform was fast tracked ahead of other privacy work because of its potential to help vulnerable people, including children. Of course, one of the Government’s core focuses at the moment is on better protection for vulnerable children in our communities.

Information sharing has major benefits in allowing agencies to see all sides of an individual’s case, rather than just through their narrow lens. By sharing personal information, agencies can work together to examine and understand customer needs as a whole, instead of each agency viewing them through its own lens. It is another important way of stopping that problem of the nine cars all parked up the one driveway. Instead, here we have a far more coordinated approach. The legislation improves the sharing of personal information between agencies. This is a direct response to the Law Commission’s review of the Privacy Act in relation to this all-important area of our law.

The legislation is also expected to save information-handling costs across government, so it is another part of meeting the need for greater efficiency, to ensure that we are spending the taxpayer dollar wisely.

For individuals, information sharing can relieve them of the need to supply the same information to several agencies. It will enable integrated assistance—for example, for a family that requires a complex and integrated response from a range of agencies. This leads to significant service benefits and improved outcomes for individuals, reductions in information-handling costs across Government, and efficiency gains in service delivery. This could benefit programmes such as ServiceLink and Whānau Ora, where iwi and Government service providers could use agreements to give each other a better picture of what services are and are not being provided. Across the public sector, agencies are rethinking the way they deliver services and undertake their business, which includes reviewing the way information is used.

This legislation allows agencies to share personal information at an earlier stage when it is deemed there is a serious threat to public health or safety, or to the life or health of an individual. The Law Commission recommended removing “imminent” from this test, to assist agencies that feel they cannot release information where there is a threat that is real but not immediate. We have done that in this legislation. It has all sorts of admirable qualities. It is an important area of law, and I am very pleased to see it going through to its enactment today.

It is a pleasure to take another call on the bills that come from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill, now several pieces of legislation. One might say that in the absence of comprehensive adoption of the Law Commission’s report on privacy and proposed privacy changes, what we have before us now in this third reading debate is a gallimaufry of legislation dealing with the issue.

This legislation does three things of considerable importance. One change is to relax the protections in the existing Privacy Act in relation to privacy principles 10 and 11. Mr Macindoe, the last speaker, alluded to the fact that what was a protection for agencies to release information in the event that there was a “serious and imminent threat to public health or safety” has been watered down to just a “serious threat to public health or safety”. I will come back to the significance of that. Although Labour is supporting this legislation, nevertheless the record should show that there remain some concerns. In the event that a future Privacy Commissioner or a court should come to consider these words, then let the record show that this House has expressed some concerns about the legislation, even as it stands.

The second change is to create and allow for privacy sharing agreements between agencies, and not just public agencies but private ones as well—private agencies that are dealing with public work, if you like, and operating in the public arena. The third significant change that I want to draw the House’s attention to that relates to privacy sharing agreements is that although the privacy sharing agreements are done by Order in Council, and therefore there is a record of them and it is possible to get access to them, they can be amended, without referral back to any of the parties and without going through a public process, simply by Order in Council. That is another point to draw attention to as something that we need to be alert to, because it carries the potential for abuse or for further erosion of the rights to privacy that we have all come to expect under the Privacy Act.

In relation to privacy sharing agreements, the point is—it has been made before and I will make it again—that in this day and age, in the modern State, citizens operating in the modern State must surrender an enormous amount of personal information to the State. We accept that, in order to get the benefits of the State, whether through protection, whether through entitlements and benefits, or for whatever reason. But we do release an enormous amount of information to the State. If there is one thing that people want to have control over, and want to make sure is secure and is protected, it is information about themselves. It goes to their identity; it is about who they are. They want to know to whom it has gone and for what reason. They want to be assured that it is going to be used for the right reasons. They want to have some control over it.

The Privacy Act was a very good way of putting a stake in the ground, because we never had a developed common law of privacy. Even in other legal jurisdictions more mature than ours, their common law privacy rights were developed in fits and starts and lurches, rather than in one coherent stream. We enacted the Privacy Act, which set a stake in the ground. That was very good. It was very important that people could understand that they could exercise control over the information that they surrendered to public and private organisations.

Now we are doing something else. We are, in effect, relaxing those protections. So, naturally, every citizen wishes to proceed cautiously and carefully, as, indeed, I think the House has done by and large with this legislation. But when it comes to information sharing between agencies, particularly State agencies, then we want to be clear that there are good safeguards around that. Those safeguards include that there is to be a deliberative process, that the agreement is, obviously, to be kept in writing—recorded and kept by whichever lead agency is in control—and that people can have access to it. But it still raises the risk that people might give up information about themselves to an agency, in order to get access to its support or services or some sort of entitlement, and that information could find its way, wrongly disclosed, to another agency. Or it might be that a zealous official misinterprets the extent of a privacy sharing agreement and releases information in the mistaken belief that it is covered by the privacy sharing agreement. That means that the oversight of these sorts of processes needs to be very thorough.

If there is one thing that we have learnt in the last year—in 2012, the year of the privacy breach in the New Zealand bureaucracy—it is that our oversight and enforcement need to be up to scratch and up to the mark. I am not 100 percent confident that they are. We can do better. If you have a look at the breaches, I think that most of the breaches of privacy that we saw in 2012 were accidental. They were from public servants who were harried, overworked, stressed for whatever reason, and not exercising due care and diligence, and they allowed information to be wrongly disclosed. In some cases, they were risks of breach of privacy that were known in advance, but no action was taken. That particularly applies in the case of Work and Income. But it highlights the anxiety and the reason why people have anxiety about the information they give to the Government, and therefore why the processes we have for dealing with information, managing personal information, and now disclosing information between agencies in a more streamlined way need to be very clear. The processes around those things—those mechanisms—need to be well understood, clear, and followed absolutely to the letter of the law, and there needs to be good oversight and control of them.

So the Office of the Privacy Commissioner becomes even more important. If there is one thing that we now should rightfully expect to see, it is a beefing up of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, because my observation is that in response to the privacy breaches that we saw last year, that office struggled to deal with the complaints and to come to grips, in some cases, with the magnitude of the complaints and the seriousness of them. A lot of people were left with a very sour taste in their mouths about the way their privacy complaints had been handled by that office. I do not blame that office—it is in a difficult position—but it needs some assistance and support if it is to come to grips now with overseeing what could be very extensive, very comprehensive, and very important agreements between public agencies. People are entitled to that assurance. They are entitled to know that in this new age, in this electronic age, where information can be disclosed very easily and very quickly, there are proper safeguards around that information, and that they have a place to go that they know will be responsive to their concerns and, if they have complaints, can respond effectively and with alacrity to their complaints and their issues.

So although Labour supports this legislation and we will be voting for it, let us not avoid the reality that there are ongoing concerns and anxieties about the way personal information is managed by the public sector in its engagement with the private sector, and that this legislation, although it has the potential to do many good things and be very helpful and allow streamlining of processes between Government departments, also has the power to magnify and exacerbate the risk of breaches of information. So the safeguards must be absolutely second to none, and the oversight by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner must be the best that it possibly can be.

Kia ora. The Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill was one that the Green Party would have liked to support. We looked very carefully at the original drafting of the bill. We made another decision after the Justice and Electoral Committee had done its work. As much as we might wish to we cannot support this legislation, for a number of reasons. We recognise that the Government, the State, holds a great deal of information about people, and we do not think for a moment that the regulations, the boundaries, around information sharing are quite right yet. For example, I believe that there are difficulties between the District Court and the Family Court around some information that they may not share, which is not helpful in some specific cases. I think there is a degree of public concern that information about children held by schools or other agencies may not be available to their parents, and at times that is not helpful. So we do see that there is a need to address some of these issues, but, sadly, this bill does not do it.

My colleague Jan Logie in an earlier reading—the second reading, I think—made the point that this is the fourth piece of legislation with significant privacy aspects to it that we have seen through the House in the last 12 months or so. That would indicate to us that what is actually called for is a major overhaul along the lines of the Law Commission’s proposition that we do need to take a step back and restructure the privacy laws. This sort of meddling, these incremental changes around the edges, are not actually serving the purpose. They are not achieving the goals.

We have seen in the last 12 months—as a number of speakers have mentioned—some major failures of privacy. People’s information has been released inappropriately by the Inland Revenue Department, ACC, Work and Income, the Ministry of Justice, Immigration New Zealand—the list goes on. This does not give us any confidence that when we add another layer, when we open more potential for information sharing, it will be protected adequately—that there are sufficient protections in place.

Technology has been mentioned, and, clearly, modern technology enables us to acquire, retain, manage, manipulate, and analyse massive amounts of information—much more than was the case previously. Again, that creates opportunities for things to go wrong, either through malice or simply through human error. Occasionally, of course, the mistakes are purely through human error—people getting it wrong. The previous speaker, Mr Little, alluded to the fact as well that in the Public Service there are some very busy, overworked people, so these errors are more likely to occur.

It is interesting in that context that we are told that the key purpose of this legislation is to facilitate public services in line with this Government’s programme of delivering Better Public Services—with capital letters to tell us how important it is to the Government. The Prime Minister last year said that this delivery of Better Public Services was all about being “innovative, enterprising, driven, and focused on results”. Sadly, those of us who talk to people in the public sector, who understand what actually is going on in the public sector, know that the most innovative people in the Public Service are desperately trying to apply that innovation to try to do more with less. They are trying to do their jobs well, despite cost cutting, despite the removal of resources.

Sadly, some of the most enterprising of our public servants have simply given up the fight and gone off to work in the private sector. They have seen there is no future in amongst the constant cost cutting and the other winding back of the public sector. I think many of them are nearly driven to drink by the constant restructuring of the Public Service, the constant re-amalgamations and splittings, and the shuffling of the deckchairs around the place, none of which is helpful. Focusing on results, sadly, is too often a tick-box mentality. This is not what we want in our public sector. Putting the words “facilitating public service” into a piece of legislation does not make that achievable unless you actually resource that Public Service, unless you give it the means to protect people’s information and to protect people’s privacy, and unless we can retain good people who can make the good value and judgment calls about the sharing of information in the way that is appropriate and that we would like to see achieved.

So one particular issue about this legislation that we have been concerned and continue to be concerned about is the empowering of the executive to create these information-sharing agreements by regulation. This, to us, creates a possibility that you could see agreements formed that are outside, certainly, the spirit of the Privacy Act, if not outside the letter of it. It gives the public less reason rather than more to be confident that the integrity of their information will be retained, that information will be used only appropriately, for the right reasons, and by the right people.

Scrutiny of the agreement—again, we are told that copies of any of these agreements will be available on websites or at the office of the lead agencies. That is, again, not a particularly forceful or innovative way of making information available to people. There are such people as those who do not have access to the internet. Not many people routinely trawl the websites of Government departments or, indeed, attend the offices of major Government agencies. We simply do not see that people will actually be adequately informed or have the opportunity to know which agencies are sharing what information that may affect their lives, their businesses, their families, or whatever it may be. We simply do not think that the protections built into here are adequate or sufficient, given the potential for things to go very wrong and the reasonable expectation people have of a very high level of security for their information when they give it to the Government in good faith.

The Law Commission’s landmark report on privacy laws in New Zealand made two key recommendations, neither of which is addressed in this legislation. The first was that the Privacy Commissioner should be able to issue compliance notices to agencies deemed to be in breach of the Privacy Act. That would seem pretty much a bottom line. I suspect many people would expect the commissioner to have that power now—to require compliance where there are breaches. We would expect the commissioner to have some very real teeth, and the Law Commission encouraged us to put such provisions in place. But, sadly, in this legislation, which was the opportunity to do that, there is no such reference, there is no such mechanism, and we continue to have a well-meaning and very capable commissioner, sadly, lacking teeth and lacking the levers and the capacity to actually demand compliance when breaches occur.

The second power the Law Commission suggested that we should give to the commissioner is the power to require an audit of an agency’s practices and systems for handling private information. It seems not unreasonable that we should have that watchdog body to cast an eye over the practice and the systems that are in place within departments. In the absence of such an audit, in the absence of such oversight, and, as I have said, particularly in the context of a very stressed, under-resourced public sector with very low morale, one would expect that there would be that power given to the commissioner to have oversight to ensure that the best practice was actually being applied. There could be considerable positive benefit in that, as well as insisting that no rules were being broken and that nothing was suboptimal. That would be an opportunity as well for the sharing of best practice. Sadly, there seems to be nothing to encourage or facilitate that.

In essence, then, and in summary, I guess we do see, as I said at the beginning, a need to improve our performance, to put in place adequate regulation and protection of people’s information, while at the same time facilitating the sharing of that information in a way that does genuinely enable various Government departments to do their job, which is to serve the interests of New Zealanders. In this legislation, sadly, the balance is far too much to privilege the State, to give much too much capacity and freedom to use information and to share it. There is far too little protection of people, and far too little reassurance that the privacy and the integrity of that information will be maintained. For those reasons, we will not be supporting this bill. Kia ora.

I am pleased to stand for the third readings of the bills divided from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. National has identified what matters to its people, and the Government’s priority is to deliver a high quality, modern Public Service for all New Zealanders. The Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill has now been split into three bills, which amend the Privacy Act 1993, the Tax Administration Act 1994, and the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995, to improve Public Service delivery by facilitating information sharing between the agencies.

It is vitally important to safeguard and protect people’s information and their right to privacy. This legislation ensures that better information-sharing across the agencies and the key service providers will protect the elderly and vulnerable people. The most important point is that a new system has been put in place to share personal information efficiently, and that people’s right to privacy is protected. It is very important that the privacy of people is maintained at all stages.

Before I conclude, I would like to thank all the officials who have worked during the process of this bill, and I commend this legislation to the House.

New Zealand First supports these three bills, the Privacy Amendment Bill, the Tax Administration Amendment Bill, and the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill, and in doing so recognises that the privacy of information is one of the most important issues of today. Many people are rightfully worried about their information and that it should be used correctly by agencies of the State. Therefore, on their behalf, we need to be diligent to make sure that that is the case. New Zealand First supports the legislation, because we think it goes just far enough for those purposes.

The issue, of course, as expected, is the tension between the need for privacy protection and the need for Government agencies to properly share information where that will improve the efficient operation of the Public Service. So it is the propriety of that that is one of the issues, and the second one, of course, is how privacy of information will be adequately protected.

Although the legislation does not go as far as the Law Commission recommended—and I respect the Green Party’s position that it would not support the legislation unless it went that far—I think that, on balance, this legislation has gone just far enough. The Privacy Commissioner having the power to issue compliance notices and do audits, as the Green Party has suggested—and, I think, as the Labour Party wanted as well—would have been an improvement to the legislation, but even without it it is certainly a big improvement on the current situation. So for those reasons I think it should be supported.

I am glad to see that there are two really important aspects of the legislation that do mitigate very much in favour of the protection of personal information. The first is the requirement on agencies to give notice to people where their information is going to be shared. The individual can take action to dispute information to ensure its accuracy, and provided that agencies listen to what those who make use of this right have to say about the accuracy of information, I think that that is a very important right and should work quite well.

The second provision, of course—and it is the big change introduced by this legislation—is the requirement for information-sharing agreements between agencies. Agreements must, under the legislation, specify safeguards for the protection of personal information, and provide for complaints to a Government department. Also, only the necessary information is to be shared by agencies for proper purposes and no more. Agreements must not unreasonably impinge on the privacy of an individual, and agreements will be scrutinised by the Privacy Commissioner to ensure compliance with these important caveats. I think those are the two really important aspects of the legislation that we can rely upon for the protection of personal privacy, and in doing so, of course, we will be relying heavily upon the effectiveness of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. New Zealand First therefore supports the legislation on the basis of that proper balance between the need for a robust sharing regime on the one hand, and the protection of personal privacy on the other.

I note that the Privacy Commissioner will have three important roles: firstly, in the oversight of the content of agreements and how they will operate; secondly, the commissioner’s reporting functions to the relevant Minister, who, in certain circumstances, must report to Parliament within 5 days; and, thirdly, the commissioner’s consultation responsibilities in the formation of the information-sharing agreements. However, agencies must always remember that they need to take seriously the specified actions to protect personal privacy, not pursue their own interests, and not rely solely on the Privacy Commissioner for those purposes. That is why I think the requirements for agencies to consult on agreements are so important. Agencies must, of course, consult the Privacy Commissioner, but they must also consult any person or organisation representing the class of persons affected and anyone else the agencies think should be consulted.

The Children’s Commissioner is not specified but may still be consulted under the provisions I have mentioned. The interests of children are a very significant issue. Children must be well provided for because those members of our community cannot be expected to look after their own interests and do need special treatment. It is therefore a disappointment that the Government would not support my proposed amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 172 to add the Children’s Commissioner as a mandatory consultee, because the legislation as it is effectively means that it will be the agencies that will decide whether there is a need to consult the Children’s Commissioner, whereas under my amendment it would have been compulsory to consult the Children’s Commissioner, and the Children’s Commissioner could then have decided whether consultation was needed. So it is a disappointment that that, I think, very sensible amendment, which would have been harmless and would not have imposed greatly on the agencies concerned, was not included in the legislation.

It is disappointing also that the Government simply does not listen to good ideas and does not consider them properly. On some occasions Ministers have said in this House of me that I did not go and talk to them about bills. Well, what is the point when they simply do not listen? If they are not going to listen, then I am not going to bother to waste my time with them. If Ministers genuinely do want other people in the House to contribute constructively, there is an obligation on them to genuinely listen to what is said and, where appropriate, to take action. The Minister of Justice did not do so in this case and, clearly, should have done so, and I think she stands indicted for simply not listening. Therefore, what we have is a situation where there is a defect in the legislation that could have been completely avoided simply by making the Children’s Commissioner a mandatory consultee. However, that was not done.

Nevertheless, even with all the various defects in the legislation—and I concur with many of those that other speakers have mentioned, and I too would have liked to see some more action in the enforcement area—with all those defects, warts and all, this legislation is still a considerable improvement on the current situation. For those reasons, New Zealand First will support the legislation.

I wish to speak only very briefly in support of this legislation. My colleagues Tim Macindoe, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, and Minister Chester Borrows have outlined clearly why this legislation is important and is good legislation that is worth supporting. It improves rules around the collection, storage, and use of personal information. I think New Zealanders do expect the Government and this House to take personal and privacy issues very seriously. There are some important safeguards in the legislation, especially around the Privacy Commissioner and ensuring that the Privacy Commissioner plays an important part, especially when information-sharing agreements are being drawn up—the Privacy Commissioner must be consulted. The commissioner may provide a report to the relevant Minister on any privacy-related issues, and the Government does have to take account of that.

I want to speak just very briefly to the comments raised by Denis O’Rourke around the Children’s Commissioner. I was listening very carefully to Minister Borrows when he was speaking in the House, and, essentially, the suggestion put forward by Denis O’Rourke was unnecessary. The legislation already requires agencies developing information-sharing agreements to consult any person they consider represents the interests of a class of affected individuals—in this case, children—so the Children’s Commissioner would be required to be consulted if children are a class of individuals who would be affected by the information-sharing agreement. That is the reason why Supplementary Order Paper 172 from New Zealand First was not accepted. It was not a case of the Minister not listening; it was a case of actually the issues already being covered in the legislation.

It is good legislation and the Government supports it.

It has been pretty rare that I have seen legislation supported with less enthusiasm than by the National Party fourth whip as he has just—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: Can’t you count to three?

Well, I can count a bit better than that member can count, and I think that member knows that. I want to support the Privacy Amendment Bill, the Tax Administration Amendment Bill, and the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill, but in doing so I want to say that I regret two things. One is that the full opportunity has been taken to be thorough in the legislation bringing together privacy issues, and to do all the things that could be done when we have legislation with such a wide scope as we have now.

Secondly, I make the pretty basic point that the Privacy Commissioner is already overloaded with work. One has only to ask the question about Minister Judith Collins and the report that is being done—for getting on for a year now—by the Privacy Commissioner into leaks of ACC information. It has not yet been reported publicly or to the House. I do not want to go into the detail of that, because it would not be appropriate at the third reading of this legislation, but it is important that the Privacy Commissioner be properly resourced in order for her to do her job properly and to make the reports for which undertakings were made nearly a year ago that they would be made in a relatively short time.

This Government does not have a good record in the privacy area. I think the standout one, the one that has caused a lot of embarrassment and Ministers to come and go, is the sending of private information to Bronwyn Pullar. It is clear that the protocols that sit within some agencies and the software that sits within some agencies are just not good enough. The idea that in this day and age whole, massive files involving 6,748 people are kept on some spreadsheet that can be attached to a document and sent out is just not acceptable. That clearly has to change. In the Pullar case, of course, not only was the private information sent to Ms Pullar, but her name was then leaked to the media, as well as a lot of the information.

It is not often that I agree with Michelle Boag. In fact, Michelle Boag and I have had a history of disagreeing on lots of issues. But I do accept her statement that when you cannot send a communication to a Government Minister without fearing that the privacy of that communication is going to be breached, that is very, very dangerous. I agree with Ms Boag on that particular comment.

Paula Bennett is someone who has a very poor history around privacy. She released details of women who were receiving a benefit, because they had the temerity to criticise her for pulling up the ladder up which she had already climbed—for denying them the training incentive allowance to further their education. What is worse is that Ms Bennett has not ruled out releasing details again.

The point that I am trying to make is that this Government does not have a good record around privacy. What is important in these matters is that there be trust. Trust in individual Ministers is very important, as well as trust in the institutions that they represent within this Parliament.

The Justice and Electoral Committee did a good job on this legislation. The legislation, in fact, does some things that Mr Borrows himself announced yesterday that the Government was going to do. Maybe he was just re-announcing something that had been announced about 3 years ago and brought into legislation. But the question of information sharing between Work and Income and the Inland Revenue Department is very clearly dealt with in this legislation. In fact, it is dealt with in such detail that as well as the general changes that affect all Government departments, there is a specific third reading that we are dealing with now that goes to the Tax Administration Act 1994. The Tax Administration Amendment Bill does the belt and braces—to borrow the expression from Hekia Parata. What it does is indicate to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue that, notwithstanding the normal secrecy provisions, there are procedures available under this legislation for the commissioner from time to time to supply information that would normally be kept secret, in order to facilitate the stopping of fraud. We had a grandiose announcement yesterday on doing this again. I think what we will find is that when Chester Borrows and his team have a careful look at the legislation that we are passing today, they will find that the additional information-sharing legislation vis-à-vis Work and Income and the Inland Revenue Department is totally unnecessary, because as a result of this legislation they will have that power. I say to members opposite “Good on you.” This is necessary. No one likes people who cheat on their benefits.

But what is also important is that we get some decent information-sharing going, for example, around the contents of trusts and the Inland Revenue Department, and also that we get some decent information-sharing going around the location of where people live and the Parliamentary Service, for example, so we do not have a repeat of the very embarrassing situation that we had involving the Minister of Finance and the lack of clarity as to his place of normal residence. So I think it is important that this information-sharing occurs, not only to get people at the bottom of the heap but also—more important—to get some of the individuals who are responsible for the billion dollars a year of estimated tax evasion in New Zealand.

You know, there is a lot of discussion about the $60 million - odd worth of benefit fraud—and that fraud is wrong—but it pales into insignificance when it is put alongside the billion dollars of tax evasion that this Government seems very reluctant to go after. I do not want to go into a lot of details, but anyone who has a look at the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament and the trusts that are involved in that will see why some members opposite are reluctant to have proper information-sharing, because as a result of that proper information-sharing they would, no doubt, be required to pay more tax. They would be required to do that.

So, in summary, this legislation is OK as far as it goes. It is much better as a result of the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee. It is much improved as a result of the work of the select committee. The Government has missed the boat in doing some more. It has cherry-picked out of the Law Commission recommendations in the privacy area, but what we do need to do is to have proper legislation that does help Public Service efficiency much more than this legislation does. Thank you.

I am pleased to take a call and I just acknowledge the comments from the member who has just resumed his seat, Trevor Mallard, and other contributions. It seems to be that this is fairly well supported legislation arising from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill, other than some of the comments we hear coming from the “watermelon patch”, which we have come to expect in this place. This legislation is really about—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. To refer to a member or a group of members as a watermelon patch is clearly out of order and I would hope that you ask the member to withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Well, that phrase has been used on many occasions and the Green Party members, to whom it was directed, did not themselves take offence—

💬 Hon Member: We’ve got thick skins.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): They have got thick skins. So I just ask the member to be careful in his approach, but that phrase has been used.

Certainly. I will not be talking about fruit from that part of the House any longer.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Here go the homophobes.

Settle down, Mr Mallard. Settle down, Mr Mallard, you are chewing up my minute. This legislation is really about achieving the appropriate balance in modernising the way in which agencies are dealing with information and sharing information in a pragmatic—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did treat it lightly, but I think you know that the expression used is a classic homophobic expression and it should not be used with regard to members in this House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I will ask the member just to focus on the speech.

Certainly. In the 20 seconds I have remaining to discuss the legislation, can I just say that what this legislation achieves is the sort of synchronisation of information sharing and exchange of information that will provide members of the public with a modern and pragmatic means for them to do business with Government agencies. With the adequate safeguards in place, I see there being no real challenge in this, which is why we have seen the acceptance across the House, albeit grudgingly. But this is good legislation and I am happy to commend it to the House.

Is this a split call? I understand it is a split call.

I rise to speak to the third reading of the legislation before us arising from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. I, like my colleagues before me, have said that Labour will support this group of bills largely because, as far as they go, they are fine and we will not object to them.

But there is a problem remaining, and it is the loss of opportunity to do a comprehensive review of the Privacy Act and privacy laws generally, which the Law Commission review recommended. Here we have a short-term, knee-jerk reaction to some contemporary events with which we are all familiar. The privacy breaches that have occurred under this Government’s watch are now legion. They started, perhaps, with ACC. Other colleagues have referred to the situation that Bronwyn Pullar found herself in, with a great deal of information being released into the public domain; the situation with Paula Bennett and the welfare beneficiaries who decided to criticise her and her use of every lever of State to come crashing down on them; the Inland Revenue Department breaches of privacy; the Work and Income breaches of privacy that meant Keith Ng found it easy to access 7,000 cases from Work and Income through a public kiosk; and now we have the blunder upon blunder within the Novopay debacle. Everybody is familiar with that context, and would wish that the Government would do something comprehensive and significant in order to protect citizens’ privacy.

But the other thing that is important is that we have an efficient and effective public sector. Where there needs to be a transference of information between one Crown agency or ministry and another, then that should be able to happen but with proper safeguards in place. I have no objection to the sharing of information between agencies. That can be a protection for the Crown and a protection for the taxpayer. But it has to be done properly and it has to be done in a way that also balances the right to privacy of citizens in this country. My concern, even though we will support this legislation through its final stage, is that the Government has prioritised this item because of the heat around the issue, without being prepared to do the comprehensive piece of work that was necessary and that was recommended out of the Law Commission’s review of privacy law.

In fact, the Government’s habit of cherry-picking bits and pieces, recommendations that suit it, and leaving recommendations that do not suit it, has come into play here again. As the Government did with the Official Information Act, so it is doing with the privacy legislation—just picking out the bits, a few of the recommendations that suit it to enact, and leaving others. With that, I suppose, reticence around something that is insufficient in this legislation, I will support it. Labour will support it, as far as it goes. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak on the privacy legislation arising from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. It is an important issue and one that it is urgent our Parliament address. It is a good example of how modern technology and the way our country, our Government, and our politics have changed, and it is important we deal with this privacy issue. It is clear that this country, this Government, has a systemic problem when it comes to dealing with privacy. It is a problem that has been growing, year after year, and it is a problem where we do not see the solutions that are going to be effective at protecting Kiwis’ privacy and protecting their interests. It is important we get this right, and that is why the Greens are opposing this piecemeal piece of legislation.

I am going to take just a short call, after our primary speaker, Jan Logie, to explain why we are opposing this legislation. It is important we get it right, and the Green Party fears we are not getting it right with this legislation. In fact, we fear we are going about it in entirely the wrong way. We are putting the cart before the horse. The stated intention of this legislation is to try to undertake to accomplish the goals of the Government’s Better Public Services. The Government is wanting to cut money from public services, and this is why we are seeing this law.

We are not seeing a law to protect our privacy. We are not seeing a law to strengthen our privacy legislation. We are seeing a law where the Government wants to save a bit of money in the Public Service and it needs to make this consequential change. So we are doing it the wrong way. We should be listening to, and heeding, the call of the Law Commission. We had what was considered a landmark report from the Law Commission. It put a great deal of effort into it, because what we know is that respected bodies like the Privacy Commissioner have said we have a problem.

The Privacy Commissioner has described this year as the year of the privacy breach. So it was good that the Law Commission did a great deal of work on it. But it is ridiculous that in passing information-sharing legislation we are not undertaking the recommendations from that Law Commission report. The Law Commission, in its report, wanted to see a strengthened, enhanced, and more powerful role for the Privacy Commissioner.

I acknowledge that in this piece of legislation we have in front of us there is a consultative role for the Privacy Commissioner, but let us strengthen that role. It is a valuable office, an important one, and we should be empowering it. The Law Commission, in its recommendations, recommended that the Privacy Commissioner and the office should be able to issue compliance notices and undertake an audit of an agency’s practices and systems. Those are two very good recommendations.

I heard the member Maryan Street say that what we should be doing is undertaking a review of the Privacy Act in its totality. We agree entirely because it is important we get this right. It is important we take a substantive, comprehensive overview so we can look at that Law Commission report and discuss an enhanced role for the Privacy Commissioner. But here we are passing piecemeal legislation. There are some positive aspects in it. Others we do not agree with, such as the limited role for the Privacy Commissioner in overseeing it.

The Green Party supports having better public services. We support efficiencies where they are not limiting public services. We support information sharing, and that is why we are supporting common-sense initiatives like the Electronic Identity Verification Act and the igovt system, so we can have easier and more effective engagement with Government departments. But this is not the way to go about it.

I think it is symptomatic that when it comes to privacy Kiwis just cannot trust the Government. They just cannot take it seriously. When you look at the list of the privacy breaches we have seen in our country over the term of the 4 years of the National Government, you see confidential police documents going to other businesses. We see a whole range of breaches, from the Inland Revenue Department to the Ministry of Education’s Novopay. We see Ministers like Hekia Parata breaching privacy in letters.

And then we see the Minister with what has to be the most enviable track record of privacy breaches, possibly, in our modern democracy, the Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett. Here we see a Minister who is flaunting and breaching privacy. It is not that she is not apologising; it is that she says she will do it again if she feels it is within her political interest, and that is absolutely outrageous. That is why Kiwis do not trust this Government on privacy. That is why we cannot take it seriously. That is why we need to go back and review the Privacy Act, and do it right the first time. That is why the Greens are opposing this legislation today.

I stand to take offence on behalf of the thousands of public servants who every day in this country look after the precious information of New Zealanders. I am objecting to the comments of the speaker who has just resumed his seat, Gareth Hughes, for insulting the work that they do on a daily basis. I disagree that there is a systemic failure in the way that the public’s information is managed. Have we had some issues? Absolutely. Have those issues been fronted? Very much so.

I am very pleased that the Labour Opposition members are supporting this legislation. They can see that it is important to get the balance right in terms of enabling the citizens of New Zealand to interact with our Government agencies in an electronic way—in ways that suit them best. It is important that Government agencies are able to be more agile in dealing with constituents but also have the private information protected and are able to look at some of the issues that we have had and make sure that there are protections in place.

So I am proud of the Government making sure that we do have better public services. I take offence on behalf of the thousands of public servants up and down this country who do the best job they can on a daily basis. I am proud to support this legislation.