Little Andrew: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionLittle Andrew: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14255. Text is subject to correction.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call on the Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill and to say how disappointing it is that a member from the Government side should say that the reason they are opposing this very important bill on this very important issue is that it fails to take account of the Law Commission’s recommendations as a whole. The problem with that proposition is that the Law Commission’s recommendations were reported more than 2 years ago—August 2011. Then more than a year ago we had the Minister of Justice Judith Collins saying that there was going to be a bill in the first half of 2013. We are still waiting.It is not good enough for members on the Government side to say that this bill does not go far enough when they cannot present their own schedule of changes—an upgrading of our privacy laws. “Show us what you’ve got.” I think is the response to that—“Show us what you’ve got.” In the absence of anything—[Interruption] We have moved on from Len Brown I think Mr Mallard. In the absence of anything at all this bill actually does make some meaningful difference and some meaningful change.This bill does two things. It allows audits of agencies and “agency” of course is defined in the primary legislation. It is pretty widespread—both public and private organisations. It also allows the Privacy Commissioner to order compliance to take a coercive approach to those organisations that demonstrate a systemic failure in their privacy management. That is long overdue. We need that. Actually we need an Office of the Privacy Commissioner that is better resourced than it is at the moment. We have a very good Privacy Commissioner who does—Hon Trevor Mallard: Have they finished with that complaint about Judith Collins yet?ANDREW LITTLE: Well we would like to see some complaints actually brought to fruition. One of the most important complaints in the last couple of years was the complaint against the Minister of Justice who happens to be effectively the “Minister for Privacy” because she is the Minister responsible for the Office of the PrivacyCommissioner. We are still waiting for the conclusion of the investigation into the breach of privacy from her office.As Sue Moroney said in her opening gambit we know that there were four people who had access to the information about BronwynPullar—who actually had access to the email from Michelle Boag that had the information about BronwynPullar—and that was the Minister herself a staff member and two senior personnel from ACC. I think it is pretty clear that the people from ACC had nothing to do with the disclosure to the media. They were under the hammer. They had no interest in it. But the Minister and her office are well in the frame and they are still in the frame for that breach of privacy.There have of course been other breaches of privacy for which that same Minister is in the frame. We had the leak of theKitteridge report. Of course we had a different person investigating that leak because of course you do not want the person who has investigated the first leak to investigate the second leak because then they start to see the pattern of conduct. So we did not have the Privacy Commissioner investigating the leak of the report on the Government Communications Security Bureau; we had RebeccaKitteridge. She did a report and the report was leaked. It was pinned on Peter Dunne. I have to say I do not believe that Peter Dunne leaked that report. I am going to say that I think Judith Collins leaked it because she had the most to gain from that leak.Hon Trevor Mallard: And she’s got form.ANDREW LITTLE: And she has got form. Then of course associated with all of this is her relationship with a person called Cameron Slater otherwise known as Whale Oil. He has been in the news a bit lately for another breach of privacy not Len Brown’s privacy—he is a public figure—but the breach of the privacy ofBevanChuang.I just say that it is no wonder that this Government does not take privacy seriously. It is no wonder that we have a Minister in charge of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner who has no interest in beefing up our privacy laws because she sits at the centre of some of the most egregious breaches of privacy that we have seen in the last 2 years. She is not going to change them. She has no interest in it. She is the source of the greatest privacy breaches.We support this bill. It is an important bill. It will do important things. This House should support it.