Hague Kevin: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Release of Personal Information 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Release of Personal Information 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1077. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I think I might begin where the Minister for ACC left off. Certainly it is true that ACC has now fronted up and admitted fault but it has taken it some 3 months to do so and I think that that alone suggests a fundamental lapse in process on ACC’s part. 
ACC claimants represent a wide range of people—you know someone who has perhaps injured an elbow through to someone who has experienced very severe disability as a result of an accident or indeed mental harm as a result of sexual abuse or rape. Each of those people relies on ACC for professionalism and relies on its trustworthiness over their information. For each of those people regardless of whether their injury has been small with minor consequences or a major injury with really dramatic consequences for a person’s life that trustworthiness of ACC is now absolutely under question and that is something we cannot tolerate. We must therefore have an independent inquiry with a view to actually returning ACC to the position it should be in as a trustworthy agent—the friend—of those who have been injured. 
It is an institution with a very proud history. It represents a social contract between the State and New Zealanders who gave up something in order to have ACC. We gave up the right to sue and formed that social contract with the State and in return New Zealanders were guaranteed the Woodhouse principles: a no-fault scheme universal access full rehabilitation administrative efficiency and the rest of it. It is a scheme that the rest of the world has come to envy. They come to New Zealand to have a look and see how it works and wish that they could emulate our system. We sadly have allowed it to atrophy. 
In particular under this Government we have seen a change to ACC: the adoption of what I call a culture of disentitlement in which the good people who are working in ACC are gradually being squeezed out by requirements that come down from on high for a culture in which claimants are seen as the enemy and in which the purpose of interaction with claimants seems to be to disentitle them from rehabilitation and compensation. What we need desperately for ACC is to return it to those Woodhouse principles—to return it to a culture of public service. 
This whole episode starting with the breach of privacy—this extraordinary breach of privacy of some 9000 instances and 6700 people affected—that began I guess in August of last year with the leaking of this spreadsheet with these people on it represents an extraordinary breach of the social contract that New Zealanders have with ACC. There are some questions that emerge from that. Grant Robertson has referred to a few of them and I will refer to a few others. Why for example was this information all on a spreadsheet? What was the purpose of the information being held? Why did that staff member have it? It is a piece of information that is curiously absent from the discussion to date and I hope that will be addressed by the Privacy Commissioner. 
Further why when ACC has I have to say a track record of previous privacy breaches—and the Minister has referred to them—had the organisation not taken the basic steps required to better protect the data that it was holding about people? Why for example was this information not encrypted? Why was it that names and client details were not disaggregated so that privacy could not be breached? Another question that emerges for me is why it is that we have not heard about what has happened about the I think 45 breaches of good process that Ms Pullar and Ms Boag brought to the attention of ACC’s senior management. Why have we not heard what has occurred about those breaches of good process? That is yet another example that occurs to me. 
I freely admit that I have said to some journalists that I am actually quite pleased that this has happened to a National Party insider. I feel sorry for Ms Boag and Ms Pullar certainly but I am pleased about it because actually this routine breach of process is something that many ACC claimants experience as a matter of course and it is entirely minimised by the Government. 
Two senior managers from ACC met with them and I agree with Grant Robertson that there are some important questions about that. They now claim that Ms Pullar and Ms Boag effectively attempted to blackmail ACC—a claim that is denied by Ms Pullar and Ms Boag. Another question that occurs to me is if that is what ACC believes why on earth did it not complain to the police at that time? Instead we see that a conciliatory letter was sent to Ms Boag. Well that is not really credible is it? Secondly here we have two senior managers becoming aware of this gross invasion of privacy this gross breach of trust on the part of the organisation and yet we are asked to believe that those two senior managers did not bring that to the attention of their chief executive officer their board or their Minister. Well I have worked in the Public Service in a senior capacity and I would have to say that I find that entirely unbelievable. It is astonishing that those people were not brought into the loop when such an extraordinary risk to the organisation and its clients was brought to light. So there are some very important questions. 
Since the beginning of last week I have had literally hundreds of people calling my office and emailing my office with their very deep concerns about breach of privacy in some cases relating their stories—the stories of the harm that caused them to be having their interaction with ACC in the first place. It has been an absolutely harrowing experience for them and yet what we have heard from them is that in the calls they have had from ACC staff to tell them they were on the spreadsheet in those interactions they have felt not listened to they have felt that ACC has minimised their concerns and not taken them seriously and they have felt that in fact the error has been compounded. 
I particularly draw the House’s attention to the impact of that on sensitive claimants for whom the very fact that they were on this list comprises an extraordinary breach of their privacy. Consider for a moment those who did not get the call—who did not get the call from ACC. How are they supposed to feel? What they have learnt is that their information the fact of their sensitive claim is not being held secure by ACC. It could be breached at any time. Further we have learnt that the facts about sensitive claims are not held in this extraordinarily secure way within the sensitive claims unit; actually they are routinely available to a very wide range of people within ACC. 
So I am very very supportive indeed of the Privacy Commissioner’s inquiry. There are very many issues that need to be addressed: the breach of privacy in the first place the lack of management of the breach by ACC and then the poor way in which ACC has gone about trying to fix the breach. But I take issue with the Minister’s answers to my questions today. The matters related to the previous Minister for ACC the Hon Nick Smith will not be considered by the Privacy Commissioner in her inquiry; they cannot possibly be found to be within scope. They will not be addressed by that inquiry and we need a properly independent inquiry to address those issues. In 1999 Deputy Speaker Ian Revell resigned over the improper use of the Deputy Speaker’s letterhead. If Nick Smith were the Minister today I would say he ought to be sacked. Right now he needs to be stood down while this matter is under investigation. He is not a junior Minister; he is a senior experienced Minister and this is an absolutely fundamental breach of the  
Cabinet Manual 
 and ministerial responsibility. This entire thing is a circus and requires a fully independent investigation. I called on the Auditor-General’s office earlier today to undertake that inquiry.