Curran Clare: New Zealand Business Number Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: New Zealand Business Number Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3193. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): This is a fascinating bill. I am actually really looking forward to the discussion in the Commerce Committee on this because as the Minister for Economic Development said in his opening remarks it is really about modernising the way that businesses interact with the Government—Kris Faafoi: Potentially.CLARE CURRAN: —potentially—and trying to provide the best possible framework for that to happen. Labour is supporting this bill to the select committee; you have already heard that.I have mixed views on my first reading of the bill the regulatory impact statement and some of the submissions that went into the consultation around the development of this bill. On the one hand I think the modernising of that relationship is critical; on the other hand you have got to have in place the checks and balances to protect the privacy of businesses and those who sit behind the businesses. And you have got to ensure that you have got that balance right. On my first reading of the bill and the information accompanying it I am not sure that that balance is right.To put that in context with the enthusiasm of the Minister getting up and talking about how you know it is all a great new world and everyone will have a New Zealand Business Number and it is all going to make things work a lot more smoothly etc. I think you have got to look at the track record of this Government around its management of IT across the Government—or its lack of management of IT processes across the Government—and also its management of privacy and its devaluing of privacy. I am certainly looking forward to the contributions that will be made by submitters on this bill because this is where the rubber hits the road in terms of the ability of the Government to act in an efficient and modern way while ensuring that the entities that it is relating to are protected.The phrase that came to mind when I was reading this bill was that it has the potential to be a big data-grab. That is where I would be raising questions and doing a bit of flag-waving. This is the era of big data. This is the era of data analytics of the ability of entities to use their ability to get as much data as possible to give them leverage. The Government is a big entity. How it manages the data that it gets from its citizens and from businesses is a matter of trust. It is a very important relationship of trust. My concern is around where the checks and balances lie in this piece of legislation.I will use the analogy of security and privacy. In any society it is absolutely critical that you have got an equal relationship between security and privacy. At the moment—and for those who are listening to Parliament by radio I am holding up my hands in an equal way—in any society security and privacy should be equal pillars. In our society the security side has gone up in terms of the way that national security legislation has been given more of a priority and personal privacy has been given a lesser priority. Well what we are talking about in this bill is the privacy of companies of businesses and of entities and my concern is that there could be some compromising of that privacy under this bill. What we have to ensure is that there is level pegging around privacy and the ability for the Government to gather data and to use that data and around what that data is being used for.Just to illustrate that I am going to quote from the Cabinet paper that lies behind this piece of legislation. This is all about the scope of this piece of legislation. It says: “We propose: extending the NZBN to all entities trading in the New Zealand economy including sole traders non-incorporated partnerships and trading trusts and to state sector and not-for-profit entities; businesses not to be charged for allocation of an NZBN or to remain on the NZBN register; a new legal register managed by MBIE”. The most important part of that proposal is to extend the New Zealand Business Number to all entities trading in the New Zealand economy including sole traders etc. So what that means is that the scope of this bill includes the individuals who are operating as companies and there are concerns raised within the regulatory impact statement around that—around what that actually means and what the implications of that are.There are concerns raised around whether or not it is compulsory to be on this register and there are concerns raised around what sort of information is being collected. All of those things are absolutely critical. In this day and age it is time for us to have this debate. Therefore my mixed views around this bill are such that I am concerned about the track record of this Government. But I certainly think that it is time to have this discussion. As I said this is the era of big data and the ability to collect data is really important but it should be done in the most ethical manner—the manner befitting a Government in a democratic society one that is progressive and one that puts privacy at the top of its agenda. This Government does not put privacy at the top of its agenda and this is going to be the challenge in this debate.I just want to draw the House’s attention to the regulatory impact statement where it says—this is in the table below paragraph 22 of the regulatory impact statement—that “Overall privacy risks to individuals and cost to society of identity fraud are likely to outweigh benefits to business and to government”. This is actually being specified in the regulatory impact statement as being a key risk. The Privacy Commissioner did provide advice alongside other entities such as Business New Zealand. It is noted that the bill takes into account some of that advice but it certainly does not take into account all of it. So that is why the submissions from the Privacy Commissioner and anyone who cares about privacy are going to be very important.In the regulatory impact statement the Privacy Commissioner has set out a series of issues that he thinks are critical which includes that this bill should include “a clear statement of purpose for the NZBN and the register that is not overly broad or unclear; a specific limitation that restricts the use of the NZBN to business purposes only and a prohibition on its use for non-business purposes such as social service purposes; a definition of the personal information that may be collected; clear maintenance of the Privacy Act prohibition … against an agency requiring an individual to disclose a unique identifier for a purpose other than that for which it was issued; [and] an explicit prohibition against agencies using the NZBN for a purpose other than that set out in legislation”. I am not sure that that exists in this legislation. Finally the Privacy Commissioner says that “an explicit prohibition to prevent agencies from requiring an individual to provide a New Zealand Business Number in order to receive”—