Faafoi KrisKRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a pleasure to speak on Part 3 of this bill. As I was flicking through Part 3 in my office as I am sure many other members are doing I did come across a clause in Part 3 that I think for me—and I am no lawyer—I wanted to get some clarification around the language that is being used. This is clause 334AB which amends the Student Loan Scheme Act 2011. In particular it replaces section 207(1) with a new section 207(1). It may be justified in this example but I think some of the wording may set a dangerous precedent if it were to be used elsewhere.The new section 207(1) inserted in the Student Loan Scheme Act says No obligation as to secrecy or other restriction imposed by an enactment or otherwise on the disclosure of information prevents an authorised person from disclosing to another authorised person any information …" around a student loan or any unpaid amounts. If authorised people who are trying to deal with an unpaid amount of a student loan need to talk to each other that is a fine thing. But what I think might set a dangerous precedent if this language ended up in another piece of legislation—and I want to repeat this because we are saying that no obligation as to secrecy or other restriction imposed by an enactment or otherwise can prevent something from happening.I do not know whether this sequence of words is taken from some other piece of legislation but I would think that if we are setting a precedent here where we say that it is fine if there are other enactments that exist that are meant to keep information secret but do not need to be enacted here or do not need to be followed it is a dangerous precedent to set. When we are talking about student loans and information needs to be swapped I do not think that is too much to ask. It may be justified. But if we took this as a precedent to another level where the information is sensitive and we are saying "Well don't worry about the secrecy or the enactments that are upon you at that time because we're allowing you to share the information." there might be an issue with how that might be interpreted if an issue did arise with some sensitive information being swapped between one agency or one person and another.So the question that I would like to pose to the Minister in the chair the Hon Judith Collins I guess first and foremost is whether this is a normal thing to be put in legislation especially when we are talking about there being "No obligation as to secrecy or other restriction imposed by an enactment …". So these are laws that we pass in this House to be obeyed. In the wording here it is basically saying that despite what the law says it does not matter. That is how I read it.As I say it might be justified at a low level transfer of information but when you are getting into some serious information that might be being transferred from one person to another in a Government agency—if we are setting a precedent here where we are saying that it does not matter about what restrictions you may have on that information it does not matter what legislation may pertain to you and the restrictions on that information that you are sharing because we have got a set of words here that says it does not matter. I think that is potentially a dangerous thing to do. It might be a low level thing that we are doing here as I say and as I have said already in my 4 minutes and 10 seconds it may be justified. But I think we need to make sure that we are not setting a dangerous precedent because the laws that we pass in this House should be obeyed and not just thrown away with a piece of wording that could be used in other legislation for other purposes. If the Minister in the chair could clarify that it would be quite useful."