Beaumont Carol: Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading Third Reading 
Beaumont Carol: Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading Third Reading 
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CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak in favour of the Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill in its second reading. This bill is obviously an amendment to the Privacy Act. It is primarily about the cross-border transfer of data and is aimed at preventing New Zealand from being used as an intermediary for the circumvention of other country’s privacy laws. 
This bill was introduced by the Hon Lianne Dalziel in 2008. She has had a long interest in the issue of privacy rights. I looked at a previous speech from her in which she talked about the right to privacy as a basic human right. She was part of the Justice and Electoral Committee that in 1993 dealt with the original Privacy Act. As well as introducing the bill the previous Labour Government also launched the Law Commission’s review of privacy which was part of updating privacy law in New Zealand in an effort to strengthen it. 
It is important to note that the House is in urgency today. Although this is a good bill and it is one that we support it hardly seems to be at the top of the list of important things that we need to be doing for New Zealanders at the moment. It is a little bit like the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill we were discussing this morning—good solid changes ones we need to make but hardly urgent. What is more urgent is looking after the interests of New Zealanders who are struggling at the moment who are struggling to make ends meet and who are facing ever-increasing costs including those imposed by this Government through things like increases to GST. 
That the first reading of this bill was in April last year is evidence that it is not really urgent. It has taken all of that time since then to come back here. The first reading was on 1 April 2009. It was referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee and submissions were due on 14 May 2009. The select committee reported back on 30 September 2009 and here we are nearly a year later having the second reading. That does not show that this is a particularly urgent legislative change. While I am talking about the Justice and Electoral Committee I noted with interest that there were only two submissions on this bill. I assume that that means it is relatively non-controversial. I thought that was quite interesting. 
I absolutely accept that this bill is important in the current economic environment and for a country like New Zealand which is so internationally connected and so reliant on international trade exporting and dealing with many other countries. Under the Labour Government New Zealand was at the forefront of building trade relationships and developing trade agreements so it is important that we deal with an issue that is of concern to business partners overseas. Dealing with it will help us with our international competitiveness. This bill contributes to that aim by ensuring that international business partners can be assured that their customers’ personal information will be protected. 
My colleague Charles Chauvel talked about this legislation being seen as pro-business. But other legislation that is seen as pro-business by this Government is in fact very short-sighted and ill-founded in many cases. The examples I will give are the changes in employment legislation changes like those I referred to earlier today in relation to access to worksites. Those changes may be seen by an ideological few as pro-business but they are unnecessary and potentially hamper the good organisation of workers so that they can get decent wages have a strong voice at work and be part of ensuring that their workplaces are more productive. I consider them to be very anti-business. 
The Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill essentially deals with the cross-border transfer of personal data. It also includes the ability to enforce cross-border provisions in privacy law. That is important so that we are able to take action where there is potential for a breach. It is intended to stop New Zealand being used as an intermediary for the avoidance of other States’ privacy laws by removing current restrictions on who can request private information enabling public sector agencies to charge for making personal information available to overseas foreign nationals providing for the referral of cross-border complaints to the appropriate privacy enforcement authority and establishing a mechanism for controlling the transfer of information outside of New Zealand where the information has been routed through New Zealand to circumvent the privacy laws of the country from where the information originated. 
The issue of privacy is an important one and the voting will show that. We all recognise that privacy is important. Over time the ability for us to have our privacy undermined has grown as the ability to store and transfer data and also the surveillance of individuals has increased. This is the sort of legislation that requires constant consideration. It is a bit like the consumer legislation debated earlier this morning—the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill. Things change very quickly so it is timely that we look at this. It would be interesting for people to consider that even in 5 years the flow of information round the world has sped up and the magnitude of those information flows has increased. Privacy is important and this legislation both considers whether our legislation is robust enough—and clearly we have come to the decision that it is not—and future-proofs our Privacy Act to ensure that we take account of changed circumstances globally. These are the reasons why Labour members are supporting this legislation. 
In an era of increasing globalisation and e-commerce our current inability to give privacy assurances to our trading partners is a potential impediment to trade. One of the particular matters that this bill deals with and that the select committee considered is the European Union’s particularly stringent requirements in relation to this area and the bill takes that matter into account in its provisions. Getting privacy law right is important for both individuals and for businesses. Businesses have to be able to ensure that the benefits obtained by the use of new technology do not compromise individuals’ expectations for security in the use of personal information. 
As I mentioned earlier this bill complements the Law Commission’s review of privacy laws and I have to say that there is more work to be done on that. To reinforce the point I made earlier this is yet another bill that arises from work done by the previous Labour Government. There have been many such bills this week and it will be interesting to see what the Government will do in terms of substantive and positive forward-looking legislation of its own. The main provisions of the bill provide the Privacy Commissioner with the discretion to prohibit the transfer of personal information from New Zealand to another State if the commissioner is satisfied that that will breach OECD guidelines for example governing the protection of privacy or may circumvent privacy or data protection laws of the State from which it has been or will be received. So the Privacy Commissioner gets some new powers in this bill. The commissioner may not prohibit the transfer of information however where the transfer is required or authorised by any enactment convention or other instrument imposing international obligations on New Zealand. There is a limit to the ability of the commissioner to prohibit transfer in that particular situation. 
Currently our Privacy Act provides that an individual must be a citizen or permanent resident of New Zealand to make a request under the Privacy Act—that is a request to obtain confirmation of whether an agency holds personal information to be given access to personal information or to correct that personal information. That changes under this bill which is very important. It removes that residence restriction to enable foreign nationals to access that information.