McClay Todd: Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading Third Reading 
McClay Todd: Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading Third Reading 
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TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Deputy Speaker— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Nice tie. 
TODD McCLAY 
: —and I thank the member opposite for the compliment on my nice tie. I agree with him. Actually his tie is very nice as well. 
It gives me pleasure to speak on the Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill. In particular I think it is important to speak on this bill because the amendment is designed to ensure that personal data originating overseas and sent to New Zealand is subject to New Zealand’s privacy protections. The bill’s transfer prohibition notice mechanism will ensure that foreign personal data cannot be sent via New Zealand to jurisdictions without adequate privacy protections. 
Well that sounds good but why is it important? I think it was a Green member speaking in the debate earlier who mentioned the European Union and the difficulties it had had with other countries of the world—namely the USA. The EU has a data protection directive in place. It was one of the first parts of the world to decide that the protection of individual data when it crossed borders was important. Its directive states that when data is sent to a country outside the European Union that country must have rules in place that will protect that data to the same degree as it would be protected had the data remained within the European Union. 
After a number of difficulties in the world—September 11 and other terrorist atrocities—the Americans decided that they wanted to collect additional information on people before those people travelled to their country and indeed at the time they were issuing visas to people who might want to travel to the USA for whatever purpose. The difficulty was that in deciding that when people travelled from Europe to America information would need to be shared it was the view of the European Union that the US data protection rules were not the same as the union’s. Therefore there were many years of discussion about that between the US and the European Union and I understand that that has been rectified. 
It could be that New Zealand will have similar difficulties with the European Union or with other countries that have very strong legislation on data protection but this legislation means that guarantees can be given. I think our data protection rules will be the same as those of the European Union and most other countries of the world and the legislation will mean there will not be any hold-up as far as trade is concerned with people travelling to New Zealand or with information we might share or be required to share with America or anywhere else. For that reason it is important that we support this bill. 
I am glad the legislation is about to enter into force very soon. I recognise that members opposite have said that the previous Government introduced this bill to the House. As with many many other bills that Government introduced it paid a bit of lip service to it but did not have time to put it through; I am not sure that that Government was very serious about it. But are we not glad we changed Governments and that the Opposition will be supporting the bill today? 
I think that the tie of the member opposite cost him more to buy than mine cost me but it is still a very nice tie. Thank you. 
Bill read a second time.