Logie Jan: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionLogie Jan: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14258. Text is subject to correction.]JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. In 2011 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 we have been seeing happening in this country. 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 New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner’s powers into line with the majority of comparable overseas bodies charged with the protection of privacy. This Government did not follow through on either of those recommendations and that is why we have this bill in front of the House tonight. The Government had promised a bill for earlier this year; we have not seen it. We are still waiting. It has promised and it is still promising—next year.Andrew Williams: Promises promises.JAN LOGIE: Well I think this House does take privacy seriously so rather than waiting and forcing the Government into the position of breaking more of its promises the member Sue Moroney is offering this House the opportunity to actually do something and not have the Government break its promises in the future. I would like to offer my congratulations to the member Sue Moroney on her excellent choice of issues and luck in getting her bills drawn which I am seriously envious of.The Green Party will be supporting this bill. This bill enables the Privacy Commissioner to issue compliance notices and demand information-handling audits across the public and private sectors without the need for people to make complaints. The current system as has been noted is complaints-driven and the commissioner is very limited in her ability to take initiative. That limits the commissioner’s ability to address underlying systemic problems. It is important that she has the ability to compel action in response to her concerns.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. Earlier this year we saw a full town hall in Auckland on the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill which was another demonstration that New Zealanders have actually been pushed over their trust threshold with this Government and they want their privacy back.The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has been significantly underfunded and its funding has remained static for the last 8 years. It has been told that that can be expected to continue for a while longer. It has funding of around $3.5 million a year to fulfil all of its functions except that it told a select committee earlier this year that it cannot fulfil all those functions within that funding it does not have the capacity to do everything and it is having to prioritise.In that context this Government has had oversight of multiple very significant privacy breaches within Government departments namely the Inland Revenue Department ACC Work and Income Ministry of Justice Immigration Novopay the Earthquake Commission and the list goes on. That means that potentially every single New Zealander has at some stage in the last few years had their privacy breached.We need to be focusing now as a Parliament on how we can increase people’s confidence in their information rather than increase the risk that potentially undermines that confidence. This bill is something that we can do as a House to help rebuild people’s trust in the State’s ability to handle their information and in their ability to get redress without having to make a complaint personally. This initiative is not covering everything. It is a member’s bill and members’ bills are not supposed to supposed to cover everything but it is one action that we can do to help rebuild trust and the Green Party is happy to support that.