Meager JamesJAMES MEAGER (National—Rangitata): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a real pleasure to take a very quick call—I'm on my feet today. We are speaking on the Privacy Amendment Bill this afternoon which of course was introduced actually in the previous Parliament in the name of the Hon Ginny Andersen. I acknowledge the member here today who I'm sure will be able to make a contribution on what this bill does before the House.The bill of course does as Dr Webb pointed out a very very simple straightforward thing. It adds a new information privacy principle to the Act—I think there are 13 and this will be number 14: new information privacy principle 3A (IPP 3A). The point around adding the new privacy principle is to make sure that we have some increased transparency in our privacy laws and that we apply similar standards of information awareness around the collection of personal information to information collected indirectly as we do directly. Of course IPP 3 provides some requirements for agencies when they are collecting information about individuals directly from them and IPP 3A will be applying similar requirements on agencies to do with information collected from third parties or indirectly.Now I understand having read some of the previous documentation around this bill from the previous consultation—and there was a there was a fair bit of public consultation before the bill was introduced into the House—that there were some concerns around some of the additional costs and the obligations being put on agencies and businesses for this bill. I'd like to address some of those because they are serious concerns—any time the Parliament legislates to put another obligation on a business or an individual we have to be cognisant of the impact that has on their operations.There are several protections in the bill against some of those additional costs and obligations the first of which is actually in section 22(3) in clause 4 and that is IPP 3AIPP 3A. That says that an agency is not required to take the steps around notification and around contacting the person involved in the information if that individual has been previously made aware of it by another agency. So for example if an agency collects information from you or from a person directly and then informs that person that that information may be passed on to agency B then agency B does not have to then go on to those steps of making that person aware.The second protection against adding on additional costs would be ensuring that the obligation to provide information is reasonable—you must take reasonable steps in the context about making these individuals aware. Of course that'll depend on the context of how you've collected the information; where it has come from. If you are say collecting information from an agency and it's to do with 10000 people it may not be reasonable to write a letter to each of those 10000 individuals and take the steps. Similarly if you do not have or hold the contact information for those individuals again it may not be reasonable for you to go out and have to track that information down.So there are some protections in there around the obligations and how onerous this may be. Of course there are a range of exemptions under section 22(4) around agencies when they aren't required to comply. That's to do with grounds such as protection of public revenue being necessary to maintain the law not prejudicing individuals' health or risk or threats to life.I'd like to touch on a couple of other points in the bill that we could consider at the select committee stage. I understand that a bill like this is likely to go to the busy and effective Justice Committee another piece of legislation to go on the agenda of the busy committee and of course privacy actually—[Interruption]—Well that's it; privacy affects us all actually. So it could go to one of a number of committees including the Governance and Administration Committee which may be a fantastic committee to consider this bill. But as the chair of the Justice Committee we do look forward to receiving it. We do look forward to looking and seeing whether there are any parts of the bill that could be improved given the amount of time that has passed since it has come in.One that I would like to touch on and it's formed part of my maiden speech is this idea of whether we are overly privacy-anxious when it comes to collecting information. There's a question in the bill and in the Act as it exists as to whether or not we need to create a distinction between information which is collected and information which is created. Because as a previous public lawyer there were always concerns around when dealing with Privacy Act requests people accessing information which has actually been created within an agency rather than collected from that individual.But in saying that I'm sure that given the support that looks likely across the House it will come to the Justice Committee and we look forward to considering it then.