Logie Jan: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Logie Jan: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:235. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JAN LOGIE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will not be supporting the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill today as we are being asked to sign up to an erosion of a core human right for the nebulous gain of “improving public service delivery”. We do certainly acknowledge that there are instances where information sharing could produce good results. However this legislation does not put in adequate checks and balances or provide clarity of purpose. We do not believe that the select committee process is enough of a public consultation to justify the erosion or redefinition of one of our core rights.  
Green Party policy requires us to scrutinise closely any information sharing between different State databases and oppose those that are unwarranted. We are also required to review controls on the exchange of information between Government agencies to ensure consistency with the aims of the Privacy Act. We do not believe that this bill is warranted or that the controls outlined are adequate to protect against breaches and neither do we believe that they are consistent with the intent of the Privacy Act.  
Just to remind the House of some of our understandings—our common understandings—of what privacy is and why it is important to us and why it is a human right I would just like to draw your attention to information on the Privacy Commission’s website that says privacy is basically about people’s need to protect information about themselves and secondly acknowledging that people need the opportunity to withdraw physically or mentally from society. Privacy as defined by this common understanding is important to ensure that we all feel secure. For instance we become tense when we are constantly under scrutiny. We also often define our relationships with other people by the information we choose to share with them. So if we are unable to control who knows information about us we will feel insecure at least in part because the boundaries of our relationships become uncertain. Human beings need security to be able to function normally in their social environment. So privacy that supports or creates feelings of security is an important human right. If we feel secure we are more likely to play a full part in society.  
The Privacy Commission of course acknowledged that although privacy is important it is not absolute. All privacy law already makes allowances for other social interests such as preventing crime ensuring safety and ensuring courts get information to make their decisions. Please note that none of those points reference revenue collection or the improvement of public services. They have never been considered as priorities over the basic right to privacy.  
The aim of the bill before the House today is to amend the Privacy Act and the Tax Administration Act to facilitate information-sharing between agencies. The key changes as stated in the bill are to allow the use and disclosure of personal information where there is serious threat to public health or safety or the life or health of an individual and removing the necessity for that threat to be imminent as is currently required. It also allows information-sharing agreements to be implemented by Order in Council to clarify or modify the application of the privacy principles. It also allows these agreements to be between and within Government agencies as well as private sector organisations which includes NGOs.  
We have several concerns about this in detail. Removing “imminent” from the legislation in relation to “threat” and making it just a “serious threat” to public health or public safety or the life or health of the individual concerned or another individual would effectively enable Government agencies to profile people and share information on the basis of profiles. I do not believe that this is consistent with the intent of the original Act or our shared understanding of privacy rights. It also holds the potential to reinforce racist stereotypes and I think that is something that as a country we need to be very careful of. The creation of information-sharing agreements by regulation is problematic as people’s privacy rights could be undermined and agreements can provide exemptions to privacy principles. The checks and balances that are provided by the Privacy Commissioner’s advice are not binding on Cabinet. This for us is not good enough. It gives Cabinet new and significant powers to override privacy rights.  
Further I would like to draw attention to—I come from a community organisation background and I really would be sad to see us lose the pressure for agencies to engage people in the choice about whether their information was shared. Currently Strengthening Families is an example of information sharing between agencies and it gives us an insight into how some of the tensions might work in this area. Typically the process goes two ways: one way is where agencies get together excluding the family and decide what the family needs to do or secondly when the family is central to the process they choose that their information is shared and they are involved all the way along. This latter option is generally acknowledged as the better practice which is more likely to lead to long-term positive outcomes. However of course there is real pressure on agencies to get outcomes and tick boxes and this pressure often leads to the first approach being taken. We believe that this piece of legislation will provide more justification for that first approach and will provide many more pathways for excluding people from decisions about the sharing of their personal information.  
In the social sector forum briefing to the incoming Minister it alludes to this bill by noting for example that planned amendments to the Privacy Act if pursued would enable Government agencies to enter into information-sharing agreements with other Government and non-government agencies. So it is clearly stating that this bill will cover business community and iwi organisations as would Strengthening Families. To give more of a sense of the Government agencies’ impressions of how they might use this Act I again quote the social sector forum briefing for incoming Ministers which says that better information-sharing would reduce duplication and help them better provide services to families with multiple issues. Information sharing is also the starting point for developing an investment approach and it supports better assessment monitoring and evaluation of the impact of particular programmes and services. However of course it is important to remain mindful of privacy and safety considerations. It is the last little addition to make that OK.  
As I have mentioned already I come from the community and voluntary tangata whenua sector previously known as the third sector. It has been known as the third sector because alongside Government and business the community sector has a distinct culture and values and helps keep this country running. The third sector is not an arm of the State and should not be treated as such. I believe it will be to the detriment of the country as a whole if this independence is undermined any further than it already has been. To give the Government the potential to pressure community organisations to share information without individual consents and against the codes of practice of those organisations is a threat to the autonomy of the sector. I say this from having managed several health and welfare organisations. I know from experience how important confidentiality of information is to young people accessing health services and for women escaping domestic violence.  
The Government may think that information sharing will improve service delivery but there may be very significant unintended consequences if we put more pressure on community organisations to share information or indeed even extend the sharing of information between Government agencies without very strong forethought. I heard today about a pregnant woman on the domestic purposes benefit who is escaping a violent relationship. She told her community-based advocate that she is considering hiding her pregnancy because she is scared that if the Housing New Zealand Corporation or the health system find out they will tell Work and Income and she will experience incentives to find work more quickly than she could cope with. A nuanced message of responsible information-sharing will not be the message received by our most vulnerable people. The drive to hide information— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Her time has expired.