Ngaro Alfred: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14670. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National): Just taking on the comments of the previous speaker Maryan Street about rocket science I say that the Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill is a rocket that has no science. It has no fizz. It is a bill that we will not be supporting and here are the reasons why. I do understand the intent of the member in charge of the bill Sue Moroney which is to try to address issues. We are absolutely clear that there have been privacy breaches. We can talk about ACC and the Ministry of Social Development. Those things are actually out there. We have to own them. We know they are out there.Last year in front of the Justice and Electoral Committee the Privacy Commissioner Mrs Shroff said—and these are the comments that she made witnessed by the Hon Lianne Dalziel and Andrew Little—when questioned about the privacy breaches that there is actually nothing new. Privacy breaches have been happening for an absolutely long time long before us. It has been going on for some time. However what is new—these are her words—is the attention of the public on and the concern of the media for our addressing these issues. So we do realise that they are absolutely important.The Government agrees with the Law Commission’s recommendation to replace the Privacy Act with a new Act. That is currently in play and we are looking at that. National wants legislation that balances individuals’ rights to and need for privacy with the need for particular Government agencies to continue to be able to share information that is out there. That is important to meeting the needs of our members and our community as well. We need to improve the way personal information is collected stored and used by people.In order to prevent breaches of this magnitude it is important that the Privacy Commissioner is able to undertake investigations and identify gaps. The main provisions of this bill as mentioned by the previous member Maryan Street are twofold. Yes those provisions are to ensure that the Privacy Commissioner has the power to issue a compliance notice—a notice to an agency that is found to be in breach of the Act—and to require the agency to comply with the Act. But here is the second part and this probably is where we have a contention: the bill would also give the Privacy Commissioner an audit power to demand information-handling audits across the public sector. The Government cannot support the bill in its current form and particularly in that second part. Although we agree with the Law Commission’s recommendation in its review of the Privacy Act that the Privacy Commissioner should be able to issue compliance notices we do not support an audit power being given to thecommissioner. Here are the reasons why. National wants to strengthen the Privacy Commissioner’s power to investigate of their own motion so yes it will agree to that. But the Privacy Act is currently under review so we are undertaking what we think is important.You see the thing is that this bill—and hence the reason why I refer to it as a rocket with no fizz and no science—addresses only one part of the Law Commission’s recommendations. What the Government is doing however is actually taking a broader approach. It is actually tackling a variety of different issues in this legislation. We want the legislation to be balanced regarding the rights and the needs of privacy of individuals. So here is some more about what we are doing. The Minister herself expects to take a paper to Cabinet later this year. It will cover the issues raised in this bill and the remainder of the Law Commission’s recommendations.The other thing too is that the Privacy Commissioner is out there consulting. There has been a lot of concern about the lack of consultation—a lack of consultation. We have been out there and the Privacy Commissioner has been out there consulting with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that we get these issues addressed clearly. All the recommendations of the Law Commission must be considered in combination with the privacy breach issues that have arisen from the Privacy Commissioner’s report.We know that there are also issues with regard to technology. Technology has changed. Because of that change I suppose that in this sense it is not just a simple issue of: “Well we’ve got to issue these compliance notices and that will solve the issue.” We do not believe that. There is a broader set of things that we need in order to be able to do this and hence the reason why we are not supporting the bill.One of the things that did come out from the Law Commission was about the language. Refreshing the language in order to clarify the provisions inside the Act will help users better understand its purpose in our modern environment.We should also consider the international approaches to privacy as well. Although I do applaud the intent the effort and the energy of the member in putting together this Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill—a bit of a mouthful there—I have to say on behalf of the Government that we will not support this bill. We do not think that it actually reaches all the key concerns that are there in the recommendations. I will not be supporting this bill in the House.