Logie Jan: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9892. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):In a lot of the annual round-ups for 2012 privacy was at the top of the list of items of importance for this country. The Privacy Commissioner plays the critical role in terms of this country’s basic protection of privacy. So it has been very disturbing in this financial review to hear so directly and so clearly from the commissioner herself of her concerns about the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s ability to fulfil that role. The office’s baseline funding has remained static as has already been said for the last 8 years and it has been told to expect it to remain static for a while longer. It has funding of around $3.5 million a year to fulfil all its functions except that it has told us that it cannot. It has told us that it does not have the capacity to do everything and that it is having to prioritise protection of our basic privacy. That I think is something that most people in this country would not want compromised or not prioritised.While in office this Government has had the oversight of multiple significant privacy breaches within Government departments—namely the Inland Revenue Department ACC Work and Income the Ministry of Justice the Immigration Service the Ministry of Education and the Earthquake Commission. If you think about the people whom those different departments deal with it actually occurs to you that that is potentially pretty much everyone in this House. It is pretty much everyone in this country who has potentially had their own private information shared inappropriately or their privacy breached. That is quite an extraordinary situation. The Privacy Commissioner has noted that there has been a 42 percent increase in complaints to the office. We have been told of course that it is about human error and front-line staff but the Privacy Commissioner herself—a very very diplomatic woman—said that it was inappropriate to blame staff that the answer is bigger than that and that there are systemic issues.People require a sense of security if they are to feel comfortable within this society. One important facet of security is the capacity to control information about oneself. If we cannot control information about ourselves it is very difficult to operate in this world and therefore the principles of privacy as a means of controlling that information are vital contributors to an individual’s sense of security and to our collective well-being. The Privacy Commissioner also pointed out that it is incredibly important for our economic development and security because business is increasingly being done online. There is an element of business and information sharing that happens in that engagement and we need somebody with the resources to be overseeing that to protect us and our economy.So what has this Government’s response been to what I think can pretty fairly be said to be a systemic crisis of privacy systems? Well it has decided to continue to freeze the funding to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to our knowledge; it has introduced new legislation with increased legislative responsibilities for the Privacy Commissioner without an increase in funding; and it has decided to establish a new Government data hub. The new legislation you could say may have some good elements to it and may increase the protection of privacy but unless there is somebody who is resourced to be able to actually secure that you really have to question what the value of it is. You could say that a Government data hub is a great idea on lots of levels—and there was discussion on this just this morning on Radio New Zealand National—but if there is no resourcing of the commission to properly input into that process to ensure that the systems are secure and that privacy is central in this process then again we have to question whether our rights and our information are being adequately protected.