Hipkins Chris: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:243. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 Privacy seems to be a bit of a theme for the week in the House at the moment. We were dealing with another bill that related to privacy issues last night. The Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill is in fact part of a series of bills that appear to be coming before the House at the moment to do with the storage of personal information by Government agencies and the sharing and use of it. It is a debate that is well overdue. It is interesting.  
As a constituency member of Parliament I can tell members that there are two very clearly defined sides of this debate. There are those who believe that nobody should ever store any information about anybody and nobody should ever share any information about anybody with anyone. Then there is the other side of the debate that cannot believe that the Government does not actually share information with itself and gets really really frustrated by it and as a result loses confidence in public services because of that.  
One of the risks that is highlighted in the regulatory impact statement and right in the general policy statement of this bill is that the misuse of information stored by Government agencies can result in a loss of confidence in those public services. But I also put it that the opposite of that is also true—that the not sharing of that information can equally lead to a loss of confidence in public services no more so than in the case of very vulnerable citizens particularly children as many members have talked about. I think every member of the public finds it absolutely appalling when there is a case of child abuse or a case of neglect where agencies collectively have had enough information to have been able to identify and deal with it but because of a lack of information sharing between them seem to be unable to do so. I think that does lead to a lack of confidence in the process of government and it is something that we on all sides of the House need to take very seriously and take action to address.  
We live in an age where people are perhaps a little bit less concerned about privacy—some people are a little bit less concerned about privacy than others would have been. Younger generations of New Zealanders share a phenomenal amount of information about themselves in very publicly available forums—social media for example—far more so than would have been available about people’s lives in the past and they do so freely. The question really becomes around the control of information and the control of personal information—so who holds my personal information can I get it who are they sharing it with how will I know? Those are all very legitimate questions for any citizen to be able to ask and they are things that we need to keep in mind when we are considering any law change around privacy.  
I think it is really important that the Government takes a quite coordinated approach to all of the different strands of work that are being done in this area. That is one of the reasons why I think the Law Commission’s involvement in this process provides some assurance to the public that in fact this is not just going to be a knee-jerk reaction. It is not going to be something that is ad hoc or piecemeal but in fact there is a wider consideration of the underlying principles and values around privacy that are being considered and it is not just being dealt with as a one off.  
I want to turn to some of the problems with the status quo—the problems with not dealing with this. Obviously there is duplication of information collection and storage amongst Government agencies if we do not have an effective means for sharing of the information. All members I think around the House would like to see our public services operate more efficiently and provide a far more citizen-centric public service. So this is not one where our citizens are shunted from one department to the next to the next but one where that whole “no wrong door” concept should apply to the public service. So it does not matter where you go you are never going to the wrong place. They will make sure you end up in the place that you need to end up. Information sharing is going to be really important in that and it will become increasingly more so.  
I think one of the other problems with our current regime is it prevents some personal information being used in a way that would speed up the detection of fraud or deter fraudulent behaviour. People know they can get away with it so they do. Better information sharing will result in people knowing that they cannot get away with it because they will get caught. I think that is also really important. Therefore better coordination in those situations will be very beneficial. But I think by and large that the major benefit is around dealing with vulnerable people and making sure that people do not fall through the cracks. In that regard I think this bill is a very welcome move. We will be supporting its referral to a select committee so that it can have a full hearing and people can have their say on it.