Logie Jan: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Logie Jan: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7762. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JAN LOGIE (Green) 
: 
 I rise today to speak to the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. This is the fourth piece of legislation with significant privacy aspects that I have spoken on over just the last year and a bit. Again sadly I find the need to express the Green Party’s opposition. We have an opposition it seems to the fundamental direction of this Government in relation to our shared privacy rights. 
I think it is also salient to remember that over just the same period of time which feels so fast to me—just over a year—the Government has had to deal with multiple major privacy breaches within Government departments: the Inland Revenue Department ACC Work and Income justice immigration and of course Novopay. Privacy is the issue of the day. 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. 
So what is this Government’s response to what I think could fairly be said to be a crisis of systems? It is a systemic crisis in relation to the protection of people’s information. Well we have been given this piece of legislation which actually seeks to extend the sharing of information with no further assurance of protection of people’s information. That to the Green Party is anathema. It is a massive lost opportunity. 
We absolutely acknowledge the need to update our privacy laws and ensure a clear process for protecting people’s information. It is a concern to us—probably more than a concern—to hear that the current law is not being consistently or logically implemented and that is something we do believe needs action. We certainly support anything to fix those problems but sadly this piece of legislation does not give us the confidence that rights are at the centre of this Government’s approach or even that this piece of legislation will solve or go anywhere near solving the problems that exist from the perspective of a citizen. For us they should be at the heart of any changes to privacy legislation. 
People require a sense of security if they are to feel comfortable within their society and one important facet of security is the capacity to control information about oneself. Therefore the principles of privacy as a means of controlling that information are vital contributors to an individual’s sense of security. So it is a fundamentally important human right. 
In my first reading speech I referred to a pregnant woman on the DPB who was escaping a violent relationship who had recently just told her community organisation that she was working with that she was considering hiding her pregnancy because she was scared that if the Housing New Zealand Corporation or the health system found out about her pregnancy they would tell Work and Income and she would experience incentives to find work more quickly than she could actually cope with. 
I listened to the submissions that were made on this bill. I heard the support—qualified and unqualified—for this bill. I listened to that information and their views from the perspective of this woman. Was what they were saying—would this Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill help this woman have confidence in disclosing and getting the help she needed to be safe? I did not find that assurance. For me the experience of this woman and others like her need to be at the heart of our policy making. 
A Labour colleague Lianne Dalziel also mentioned the lost opportunity that seems to have been missed from not picking up a stand-alone child welfare statute that could have gone some way to actually consciously front-on looking at those issues. I think that is a shame. I hope that the Government may consider in the future actually looking at a piece of legislation in that light. I believe as a society we need to confront those issues and their interaction with privacy legislation. 
A nuanced message of responsible information-sharing as we are hearing from the Government will not be heard by our most vulnerable people. The drive to hide information can dramatically increase people’s isolation. We have a duty to protect our most vulnerable and they for me are at the heart of what we need to consider when we are looking at this legislation. 
This bill will increase the amount of information sharing that Government agencies can undertake in order to accomplish this goal of Better Public Services. For me that is about front. Actually what we need our privacy legislation to do is to enable our citizens to access services and get the help they need and to be safe. It is not about the delivery of Government services. That is completely secondary to what should be the focus of this bill which is our citizens. 
Although another stated goal is to ensure that privacy remains highly protected increased information-sharing between Government departments actually means the individual enjoys less control over their personal information. That is what this bill does. Because of the centrality of public service to this bill the individual’s relationship with the State becomes pivotal. As we have heard from that list of Government departments that have actively breached people’s privacy that relationship is not in good shape at the moment. We need to be focusing on how we can increase people’s confidence rather than extend provisions that potentially undermine that confidence. 
Technology is often touted as a reason for privacy laws to be updated and with good reason. I absolutely support that. We are in a changing world and our legislation needs to change with it but this bill does not relate to technology and rather it seeks a readjustment of the core privacy principles that impact on the rights of the individual vis-à-vis the State. 
One particularly concerning element is the empowering of the executive to create information-sharing agreements by regulation. This could result in agreements that are not in keeping with the principles of the Privacy Act and by extension gives the public less reason to be confident in the integrity of that legislation. Scrutiny of the agreements is also a potential issue because copies will be made available only on the internet which some people do not have access to or in the head office of lead agencies which imposes its own set of access issues for those not in the vicinity. Moreover the decision not to carry over section 96T in new Part 9A inserted by clause 8 has serious implications because it increases the likelihood that information will be passed to agencies not envisioned in the original agreement. 
Diluting the requirements for when private sector agencies can participate in the information sharing might contribute to a misplaced sense of certainty on the part of the agencies but it does not contribute to a sense of certainty for the individual on how their information is to be disseminated and used responsibly. If you do not know whom the information is going to be shared with are you going to want to share it at all? 
The Law Commission’s landmark report on privacy law in Aotearoa New Zealand made two key recommendations for empowering the Privacy Commissioner to protect against the sorts of breaches that are happening. The first of these was that the commissioner should be able to issue compliance notices. The second was the power to require an audit of an agency’s practices and systems for handling private information. These would have brought the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner’s powers in line with the majority of comparable overseas bodies charged with the protection of privacy. This would have really addressed a lot of our citizens’ concerns but tragically these measures are not included in this legislation. For us that is a fundamental problem which means we cannot support this bill. We want legislation that has citizens’ needs and human rights at the heart of it and we regret that this bill does not.