Privacy Amendment Bill

When we were last on the bill, we were at call No. 10. It was a second split call, from the National Party—a five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As you’ve just mentioned, we are continuing our conversation on the Privacy Amendment Bill. We’re on the second reading, and I’d like to acknowledge the 16 submissions that were made with respect to this bill. In light of the number of submissions on other bills, yes, it may be a small number, but it was quite impactful, and we made some really significant changes after listening to the submissions. I acknowledge those submitters, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too would like to say a few words on the Privacy Amendment Bill—maybe just a few more. Labour supports this bill, and as has just been noted by my colleague Rima Nakhle from the opposite side of the House, there were 16 submitters. They were all very interesting. They were all subject matter experts and it was quite technical, and I’m sure that we all learnt a lot.

The Privacy Amendment Bill intends, essentially, to improve transparency when it comes to collecting personal information, both when collecting personal information from individuals and strengthening that individual right to privacy. Currently, there’s actually no requirement for an agency, whether it be a public agency or a private agency, to notify an individual when it collects personal information about the individual indirectly—and you can imagine various scenarios when that would apply and when that happens—and this means that an individual may not necessarily know that an agency holds that information and holds their personal information. I think that’s important because an individual does need to know who has their information and who has collected it, even when it is indirect, in order to make any corrections that may need to be made.

This is a really important bill. It goes a long way towards strengthening our privacy framework, which is always an important thing to do. It enables people to just, essentially, be well informed about who has their information, when they have it, and in what circumstances it has been collected.

As has been said, there were a few amendments made during the select committee process. I won’t go through them all, but there’s a couple that caught my eye in particular, by way of reminder, and the first one was an exemption for archiving in the public interest. As I’ve said, several of the submitters who made really, really informative submissions were professionals. This is what they do, and so they know this area inside and out, they know the loopholes, and they know all of the means by which things could be inadvertently caught up.

There were some exceptions. There is an exception for archiving in the public interest. As introduced in new section 22(2), inserted by clause 4, the bill includes an exception to information privacy principle 3A. For example, it is not necessary for an agency to comply with the requirement if the agency believes on reasonable grounds that non-compliance would, in fact, not prejudice the interests of the individuals concerned, the information is publicly available—or, actually, even if compliance is not reasonably practical in that circumstance, and there were several examples that we were certainly regaled with that made that quite clear.

There were also exceptions relating to national security, defence, and anything to do with trade secrets, which I think speaks for itself. There was a host of—well, there were certainly some more exceptions that were made, and it’s an interesting read for someone that wants to look in a little bit more deeply at that.

One thing I would just like to say before I finish my contribution is that it was a timely reminder that it’s back-office staff who almost always keep these robust public institutions functioning and ensure that we do have good transparency when it comes to compliance with the Privacy Act and the Official Information Act. This is a good bill. We need back-office staff to administer this bill, and so, again, it’s a timely reminder of the excellent work of the unseen people behind the scenes, who are often disregarded and maligned somewhat as being part of bureaucracy. This is the type of work that they do and it is most indeed very, very worthy, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to stand as the final speaker on this bill.

The Privacy Amendment Bill, as we’ve heard from contributions tonight and on previous nights, is making a minor tweak but a really important one for the privacy of New Zealanders and the collection of their information.

I support the legislation and I commend it to the House, and I’m looking forward to hearing the contribution coming up from my colleague the Hon Andrew Bayly.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.