Street Maryan: Privacy Amendment Bill Tax Administration Amendment Bill Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Privacy Amendment Bill Tax Administration Amendment Bill Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8121. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the third reading of the legislation before us arising from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. I like my colleagues before me have said that Labour will support this group of bills largely because as far as they go they are fine and we will not object to them. 
But there is a problem remaining and it is the loss of opportunity to do a comprehensive review of the Privacy Act and privacy laws generally which the Law Commission review recommended. Here we have a short-term knee-jerk reaction to some contemporary events with which we are all familiar. The privacy breaches that have occurred under this Government’s watch are now legion. They started perhaps with ACC. Other colleagues have referred to the situation that Bronwyn Pullar found herself in with a great deal of information being released into the public domain; the situation with Paula Bennett and the welfare beneficiaries who decided to criticise her and her use of every lever of State to come crashing down on them; the Inland Revenue Department breaches of privacy; the Work and Income breaches of privacy that meant Keith Ng found it easy to access 7000 cases from Work and Income through a public kiosk; and now we have the blunder upon blunder within the Novopay debacle. Everybody is familiar with that context and would wish that the Government would do something comprehensive and significant in order to protect citizens’ privacy. 
But the other thing that is important is that we have an efficient and effective public sector. Where there needs to be a transference of information between one Crown agency or ministry and another then that should be able to happen but with proper safeguards in place. I have no objection to the sharing of information between agencies. That can be a protection for the Crown and a protection for the taxpayer. But it has to be done properly and it has to be done in a way that also balances the right to privacy of citizens in this country. My concern even though we will support this legislation through its final stage is that the Government has prioritised this item because of the heat around the issue without being prepared to do the comprehensive piece of work that was necessary and that was recommended out of the Law Commission’s review of privacy law. 
In fact the Government’s habit of cherry-picking bits and pieces recommendations that suit it and leaving recommendations that do not suit it has come into play here again. As the Government did with the Official Information Act so it is doing with the privacy legislation—just picking out the bits a few of the recommendations that suit it to enact and leaving others. With that I suppose reticence around something that is insufficient in this legislation I will support it. Labour will support it as far as it goes. Thank you.