Chauvel Charles: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Chauvel Charles: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9025] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 It is a delight to rise and speak to the financial review of the Privacy Commissioner. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Not for the people listening. You’ve already had two goes tonight. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Mr Brownlee should give it a chance; he might find it a delight yet. 
It is great to hear that the member from the ACT party has such fine things to say about the Privacy Commissioner. It is an entity that as the financial review demonstrates is performing extremely well. The Justice and Electoral Committee conducted the financial review for the Privacy Commissioner on 15 March. That is when we heard evidence from the current commissioner Marie Shroff. I was very new to the committee on that occasion and it was a pleasure to hear her evidence and have her answer the committee’s questions. I have always thought that the entity of the Privacy Commissioner is probably slightly misnamed. Really the job of the office is all about information management rather than simply privacy but judging by the material we received from the Audit Office and the patently very satisfactory answers we received to our questions it is very clear that the office is good hands under the current commissioner. We noted that the office received good ratings for all aspects of its financial management and those same ratings were received in the previous financial year. 
One thing we did have some questions about was the fact that organisations in the justice sector like the police the Ministry of Social Development the Accident Compensation Corporation the Immigration Service and the Department of Corrections tended to feature consistently on the list of entities that were highly complained about in terms of raw numbers to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. So we asked her about that. She said that in fact the numbers that had been reported showed a decline on previous years and that she felt that the fact there were this number of complaints about these agencies was perhaps at least partly explicable by the nature of their work and the sheer amount of personal information they administer. But it was a good thing to hear that performance was improved there. 
We also asked about technology—particularly the effect of increasingly sophisticated technology—on issues such as the greater likelihood of electronic crime including identity fraud. The commissioner told us that she was aware of these threats and that she was working very hard to ensure that there was proper awareness by the public about them. In a 2006 public opinion survey for example more than 80 percent of respondents signalled that the handling of information on the Internet and by businesses was a key privacy concern. The office has also initiated a regular forum where Government and non-governmental organisations meet to receive information and discuss technology issues regarding the handling of personal information. It is good to see that the commissioner is on the case there and is dealing with contemporary issues as they arise. 
She commented also that the private sector was increasingly taking its privacy obligations seriously and that the public sector needs to be continually monitored in terms of the administration of data-matching programmes to ensure that those programmes are being appropriately administered. We welcome that scrutiny. 
We were also concerned to ensure that the public had access to information about the role of the commissioner. We heard about a toll-free phone service receiving 6000 calls a year a website and about the plain English information on privacy rights included on it as well as a text search engine. 
We were also very interested to hear that the commissioner’s office was engaged in public education—for example on changing best practices relating to privacy and information management. One example given was the Credit Reporting Privacy Code 2004 issued by the commissioner which requires the credit industry to give people free access to their credit records and to limit the information it may store about an individual. 
Finally we heard about the international context of privacy and information management. The office has concluded a memorandum of understanding with the Australian Privacy Commissioner concerning cross-border information exchanges and is also aware of APEC developments in the privacy and information management area. It is good to know that our international competitiveness is being safeguarded in the privacy and information management area by a very competent and capable public entity such as the Privacy Commissioner.