Kerekere ElizabethDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): E te Māngai kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Green Party on this International Day Against Homophobia Biphobia Interphobia and Transphobia in support of the Data and Statistics Bill which was largely developed by the Hon James Shaw as the Minister of Statistics last term. Many thanks to the Governance and Administration Committee for your work on this bill—you get all the best bits. This is also a very impressive turn-around from the report being presented to the House to us actually speaking on it. There are several other bills I wish would come in so quickly. We welcome the repeal and replacement of the Statistics Act 1975. This bill brings it up to date in this digital age and it ensures that the collection production and dissemination of New Zealand's statistics are in line with the best international principles and practices. I'll focus this short call mainly on kaupapa Māori. We note that the purpose of this bill is to recognise and respect the Crown's responsibility to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi by providing for the interests of Māori" in data statistics and research. This is largely addressed in clause 14 which outlines the duties of the Statistician relating to this but I want to point out the submission by Te Kāhui Raraunga the Data Iwi Leaders Group. They have a mana ōrite agreement with Stats New Zealand and were invited to be part of developing this bill but only after the release of the Cabinet papers that set the parameters for it. In its submission Te Kāhui Raraunga raised several concerns about how this bill met its own goals and its own aspirations in terms of the Treaty. So let's just think about that for a minute: the organisation representing iwi and Māori data interests with which Stats New Zealand has a formal agreement was not able to get its point into the draft bill in its area of expertise and had to make its own submission. So I just want to reiterate some of the points that they made which include that the bill should incorporate a general Te Tiriti provision—which is there in clause 14—but that it is also consistent with the other reforms that are happening across health and other parts of our legislation programme and it should recognise the special relationship that Māori have with data as a taonga. A big thing I think that's is missing from this is that if you're talking about the Treaty you are talking about the relationship of the Crown with iwi and with hapū and that isn't mentioned in this bill. It's all about "Māori". So we need that generic Māori data but there's a lot of data which must be iwi-specific. All of those great provisions which have been beefed up through the select committee process around engagement with and consulting with is all very specific to Māori and so it's no wonder that the iwi leaders forum is wanting us to be more specific about those connections to iwi and hapū. They went even further than that though. They're suggesting a Māori co-governance type of model and the establishment of a Chief Māori Data Steward. So I think these are very good ideas and not very dramatic at all. But generally we reiterate our support for the explicit clarification of the Statistician's professional independence. The quality of the data is paramount and we support the specific provisions accounting for the anonymisation of data for public release and the frameworks of scrutiny to make sure that we create very very safe mechanisms for sharing of data between Government agencies. We have had concerns raised with us by some of the members of our party but also other members of the community that the quality of the survey work done by other agencies is no longer approved by the Minister of Statistics and there is a risk when people are expected to rise to the standard of Stats New Zealand but Stats New Zealand are not actually checking that they have because the data across agencies should be consistent and it should be of the highest quality. All of this goes into our research projects it goes into the cases that are made and it goes into our Budget and that data has to be sound. We have to trust that it is good. Privacy is always a big issue for us and it's very much so for the State collection and use of data. For that ethical data environment transparency requirements are crucial but especially when data is not anonymised and we know who has said what. It is even more important that those people have given consent whether that's an individual or whether that's an organisation. We note National's concern in their differing opinion that was raised in the select committee report regarding the need to give specific reasons to delay the next census. We're pleased to see that Supplementary Order Paper coming through from the Minister to address that so we're really really would have supported that. In that next census—hopefully in 2023—for the first time the Government will finally gather detailed data on takatāpui trans intersex and non-binary people and we hope this data will come into the same safe and ethical data environment that is provided by our takatāpui trans non-binary and intersex researchers in our community and our universities who have carried this responsibility so far. I want to shout out to some of the projects that I'm aware of and I know that there are more but Counting Ourselves Identify the trans perinatal project and the Manalagi Pasifika rainbow research project. We have relied on their work and the work of the Human Rights Commission in the absence of this data so I'm very very excited that now we'll start towards some real core numbers. Finally we note that key organisations like Te Kāhui Raraunga the Privacy Commissioner and the New Zealand Statistical Association are all very broadly supportive of this bill. Given the select committee did not address all of the issues through this process we consider they all will have a role to play moving forward in the implementation of this legislation. So nō reira we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora."