Logie Jan: Electronic Data Safety Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Electronic Data Safety Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2396. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I am pleased to rise and take a call on the first reading of the Electronic Data Safety Bill which has been presented to the House by Labour MP Clare Curran. The Greens are supporting this bill which is a response to continued very serious privacy breaches within the Ministry of Social Development and other Government departments. We have seen breaches over the last few years in ACC Novopay Work and Income the Earthquake Commission the Ministry for the Environment the Ministry of Education and Immigration New Zealand—the breaches go on. We have had breaches from within Government departments and breaches from the very leadership—the Ministers of those departments the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Justice two critical ministerial positions when it comes to considering privacy.Really this bill we believe speaks to the issue of trust and the ability of New Zealanders to trust that this Government will solve those problems of privacy when the leadership it has shown has run so counter to the principles of privacy. It is clear this is a deeply serious issue that needs a serious solution. It is concerning to hear Ministers of the Government say that there is no need for this bill because everything has been sorted. They speak as if this is such a thing of the distant past when the last major breach—in fact of 600 ACC clients’ data—occurred just this year in January. This is not an issue of the distant past. The Green Party takes privacy seriously. One of our members Gareth Hughes has a member’s bill on internet rights and freedoms which will ensure the right to privacy online a right that currently is not legally protected within New Zealand law.I would like to speak this evening briefly a little more on this special need for a commission of inquiry into the Ministry of Social Development privacy breaches and most important the need for an independent inquiry with official status to look at systemic issues within the Ministry of Social Development because at the end of last year the Office of the Auditor-General released a report on complaints within the Ministry of Social Development. Within this report it found that there was significant room for improvement in the processing and recording of complaints and it expressed concern about the lack of ministry-wide analysis of complaints to identify systemic problems which goes to the very heart of this bill because if we cannot trust the ministry to identify complaints in relation to privacy and put systemic responses in place then we need an independent inquiry. This is clearly telling us that we cannot have that trust because those systems are not in place.We have been hearing this concern from advocates and lawyers for quite a while on a much wider level. Again it speaks to our ability to trust. Recently Frances Joychild QC also raised the issue of the lack of power and legal support for beneficiaries experiencing problems in the system. She has written a very very powerful article on this and the need for us to actually start turning round what has become a drastic imbalance of power. Again it speaks to our ability to trust and the need and importance for this bill. We have seen examples of legal rulings happening in courts against the Ministry of Social Development where it has not even after a ruling against it put systems in place to ensure a policy change. We cannot have any trust in this ministry at the moment when it refuses to put the systems in place to turn it round even with court rulings against it. We need privacy reporting to be public. We need an inquiry. Just recently we have heard of cases—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Electronic data is what we are debating.JAN LOGIE: It is absolutely about electronic data in relation to the Ministry of Social Development and privacy which is what this bill is about. We have had somebody contact us where they have been to the Privacy Commissioner they had had a ruling in their favour but that was a confidential ruling and they have evidence that no systems change or policy change has been put in place as a result of that ruling. We have no systemic ability to respond to breaches at the moment. Because of that lack of ability to trust in the system we need this independent inquiry. The Greens fully support this bill because it answers the public’s lack of trust.