Curran Clare:Inquiries Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare:Inquiries Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12731. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Notwithstanding what the Minister of Energy and Resources has just said to the Committee about the reason for the delay of this Inquiries Bill being brought back to the House I do think it is rather ironic and it should be pointed out that this Government has had a constant refrain of deriding Opposition parties that have called for inquiries on various important matters over the last 4½ years. And here we have an Inquiries Bill being brought to the House in rather a rush in order to ensure that an important inquiry can take place. The other point to be made following on from what the Minister said is that it would be quite good to see a list of those lessons that have been learnt from the royal commissions that have been undertaken and that we are seeing included as part of this bill.I have got a couple of points to make tonight on Part 2 “Establishment and membership of inquiry”. I just want to make the point that this bill being brought before the House does actually provide for—and it is important to remember also that it was originally a Labour bill—the establishment of both public and Government inquiries. I want to talk a little bit about some of the principles that can lie behind particularly public inquiries and what that can mean in terms of the evolution of inquiries carried out through this Parliament in New Zealand. There are some very important principles—and the Minister actually just alluded to the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 332 which has been put forward by my colleague Trevor Mallard and which I am sure will be discussed as we go through this Committee process—around open justice and why that is so important as a principle for allowing the public of New Zealand to get a sense of and build more trust in the Government in the way that inquiries in particular take place.I want to talk a little bit about that principle because I went and did a little bit of work on looking at where that principle came from. It goes back even further than but certainly from 6 July 1189 which was the date that King RichardI’s accession to the throne occurred and also around the time of his father King Henry II whom he succeeded. It is a common law principle that stretches back to the very beginning part of common law. There was an interesting speech given in the UK a couple of years ago around a vision for open justice in the 21st century which I thought I might allude to here.Andrew Little: By Richard I?CLARE CURRAN: Well no it was not Richard I actually; it was a lord—Lord Neuberger. What he talked about was that in the era of television the internet and social media the workings of every institution were exposed to far more public opinion than before and that with greater scrutiny comes the need to adapt and evolve. I think we all know that and we probably all agree with that. The law is no different. His principles around open justice referred to the court process but these principles can also be applied to the inquiry process. I think they are important to note because the perception is—and I certainly think that it applies to Parliament as well—that the law is frequently out of touch with society. The principle of open justice allows the principle that democracy requires that justice not only be done but is seen to be done.There are three points that he made that I think are worth noting. He talks about the importance of communication accessibility and transparency. Judgments should be as short as possible there should be better use of technology in those matters and justice being held in open court should be very carefully considered. I think Trevor Mallard’s amendment actually goes to that last part in particular. When you think about the sorts of inquiries that should have been held in the last 4½ years of this Parliament—of which there are many and I will not dwell on all of them—there is a particular issue that is of interest and has been of interest for several years. Those are the issues of electronic data safety and privacy which do relate to Part 2 and the establishment and membership of the inquiry. There is a member’s bill before this House that proposes to create a special commission of inquiry into all of the privacy breaches that have happened in—Hon Trevor Mallard: Whose name is that in?CLARE CURRAN: Well that actually happens to be in my name Mr Mallard. It is a very serious issue. I think every member in this House would say that this is a serious issue. How we propose to deal with it has been perhaps at odds between the different sides of the House. What I wonder is whether this bill before the Committee today the Inquiries Bill would actually make such an inquiry easier and whether it would provide the ability for the public to have more of an input into whether such an inquiry took place. That inquiry in terms of its membership is proposed to consist of three members who would be appointed as a special commission by the Governor-General on the nomination of a Minister. But I think that it would be interesting to consider how that inquiry would actually fit under the bill that is before the Committee today and whether or not that could actually occur more quickly particularly in regard to the nature of all of the breaches that have happened and that are continuing to happen which are giving New Zealanders such cause for concern.There have been thousands actually. I think we are up to around 150000 New Zealanders who have had documents containing sensitive information about their lives either downloaded by a member of the public or somehow made visible. Those include things like medical invoices documents about children in the care of Child Youth and Family documents around ACC breaches and Inland Revenue Department breaches breaches that have exposed holes in the Ministry of Justice’s website and further breaches from Work and Income. There is just a litany of these breaches that has gone on and on and on.We know that people make mistakes but there is a difference between making individual mistakes and the systemic issues of privacy that do require a further look right across the whole of Government. Unfortunately the current Government’s response to this has been to say that there are no systemic issues.Andrew Little: Buried their heads in the sand.CLARE CURRAN: It has buried its head in the sand. It has said: “Oh no. We’ll deal with it on an individual basis and we’ll just throw a little bit of money here or thereand pretend that we’ve done something about it.” What an inquiry would achieve as is proposed to be achieved in the Fonterra inquiry is that it would actually look right across to see what the issues are and what are the underlying systemic issues that can be improved upon. So under the current law which is where this bill has come from Ministers have two alternatives: the commission of inquiry which could take too long or a ministerial inquiry. This third alternative sets up a Government inquiry to carry out an investigation in any way seen as appropriate and is in the current circumstances important but what is probably more important is that it is something that has actually sat on the books for such a long time. There has been a myriad of reasons as to why there should be other inquiries taking place. Unfortunately many of those inquiries have not taken place and the issues are sitting there as issues that the public remain extremely concerned about. We believe that anything that casts sunlight on—