Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): Before I begin I just want to pick up on a couple of things that the Minister for Social Development said during her speech. One of them was that she talked about vulnerable kids and how important it is that the organisations support those vulnerable children and find the best way of doing that. Nobody in this House is going to disagree with that. The disagreement that we have as a party—and as a collective Opposition I guess—is the process by which the Minister wants to achieve that. It is the fact that since day one of this new implementation process and all of the overhaul and legislation going through the House that the Government wants to do—we have said from the start that we are concerned with the processes that the Government is going through and how on the one hand the Minister can stand up with what have been proven to be empty words trying to convince us that everything will be OK with the data collection specifically and then the results are obviously quite the opposite.One of the things that the Privacy Commissioner actually said in his report was that the Government runs the very real risk of not only losing the trust of the clients who want to use the services of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) but actually the people of New Zealand losing trust in the Government—and that is exactly what has happened.The second thing that the Minister said was that none of it can be achieved if they don't have security" and she was mentioning the data collection or the system that they were using and that is why she shut it down. She said that none of it can be achieved if they do not have security and if she is saying that today that means she must have known that it was the case previously. So why has it got to this point in the first place? If she knew that security was of paramount importance if she knew the consequences if that security were breached or if that security were questioned then why did she not go and ensure that the ministry—and all her officials in it and everyone else throughout the ministry—went through the processes that ensured that this situation could not occur?I do not think it is any coincidence—well I guess it is more of an irony—that the day the Privacy Commissioner released his report was the exact same day that there was a privacy breach that occurred. I think that just highlights the entire issue. I think it is a very important issue which the entire Opposition has been talking about for months and this is a good opportunity to speak about it.This whole entire situation is just a culmination and a manifestation of the utter arrogance of the Government. It establishes and shows just how out of touch and disconnected the Government is—especially the Ministry of Social Development and the Minister for Social Development—with the reality of the provision of essential services at the grassroots. It has been mentioned before but just a few weeks ago Rape Crisis came out and said that it is not going to accept any more funding if this data collection keeps going because of the fact that it knows that the most vulnerable people it works with will not give their data and that it will not be able to provide effective services to those people. That is the reality the day-by-day reality that those people on the ground are dealing with. What this example shows and what this situation that we are talking about today shows is that the Minister and the ministry and this Government are so far out of touch with the reality of what is happening on the ground today—every day.The entire premise of what the Minister stood up and said about data collection—and I am sure it is what members of the National Party have been given notes to talk about—is that no matter what they say this entire thing is just ideology. If we have a look at the actual facts of the matter if we have a look at the consequences of where things go wrong and the processes where things go wrong—because they have gone wrong already—you can see that it is not based on fact. It is just ideology. The biggest problem that this Government has is that the data-collection processes and the ideology with which they are moving forward are the absolute foundation of the social investment approach. It is using the social investment approach carte blanche across the entire social service and that in itself is based on ideology and not on facts.What the Government members like to try to hide behind is standing up in the House every day and saying how well they are doing with their Better Public Services targets how they are achieving them and rattling off a whole heap of information and data with no context whatsoever. When you start digging deep down a little bit more into the Better Public Services targets they mention you can tell that they are failing. If this philosophy of the Government had been actually working over the better part of the last decade then why are the most fundamental things that are intertwined into the social fabric of our country failing? I am just going to list a few of them: youth crime is up; homelessness is up; child poverty is up; youth unemployment—the "neet" rates are increasing exponentially—is up; house prices and living costs are up; domestic violence numbers are up; and child abuse is up. If this philosophy was working if this social investment approach was working if this approach that this Government has to social services and the provision of social services was working then why are all of the fundamentals in the "bad" columns up?But do we hear about that stuff? No all we hear about is the targets. If the targets were working so well then why does this Government not actually get them audited? Why does it end up setting them itself and reviewing them itself and then Government members stand up in this House and say how much they actually achieved?Today before I came into the House—because I pre-empted a little bit the urgent debate—I asked the Parliamentary Library to gather the number of privacy breaches or complaints that have been reported just over the last 8 or 9 years. Just reported ones—just reported ones. This is in the media so this is just the tip of the iceberg of what has happened. You can see it is quite a large stack of papers. It is in the vicinity of 40 to 60 breaches or complaints over the last 8 years. If the Government was very serious was taking this data collection seriously and ensuring and understanding like the Minister stands up and says the importance of the security of that data collection—with the history that MSD has of not being secure you would think it would want to get it right.Just in the last couple of minutes I would actually like to go through the most important part of the report that the Privacy Commissioner has released and that is the conclusion. He has seven points and I will just briefly go through a few of the most important ones. The first one he says is that "Implementing a significant new information gathering policy without sufficient evidentiary basis and without adequate consultation amounts to a serious deficit in the policy development process." That is the first one that he says in his conclusion.The second one is: "My view is that MSD has executed the collection … prematurely without adequate consideration of the privacy risks involved and appropriate mitigation of those risks."The third one goes on to say that this policy that the Government wants to implement is a new direction for the Government and it needs to proceed with caution. There was again an inadequate development process through this entire process.One of the most important points—there are seven but one of the most important points is where it says that "the success of MSD's policy is in jeopardy." This entire policy is in jeopardy. "The reach of these consequences are not limited to MSD and could threaten individuals' overall trust of the Government" which is what I was saying before. Like I said before it is a bit too late for that.There are a number of issues that unfortunately—I guess the most unfortunate part is that New Zealand First and the other Opposition parties have stated from the start of this entire process that we were concerned with the way in which the Government was approaching the big changes that it wanted to make for the right reasons. We stated that we had issues with the process and that we had definite issues with the data collection and the extent and the purpose of that data being collected. Unfortunately it has come to a head this week. We have had a privacy breach and we have had the Privacy Commissioner come out with some very very serious concerns. This is not a bad report; it is an ominous report for the future direction that the Minister and the ministry want to take social services. I think that the Minister needs to sit back and have a real rethink about the entire direction of the social investment but in particular the data collection part. Thank you."