Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm intrigued that both the Clerk and the member for Christchurch Central have indicated that we are talking about the Privacy Bill because I recall as a very young MP probably about 10 years ago speaking on a similar matter and remembering that as a child my parents could never agree on the pronunciation of the word. My mother always used to correct Dad because Dad would always say pri-vacy" and Mum would correct him to say "priv-acy". Well sadly Dad's been dead for nearly 14 years but Mum's still hale and hearty and she's probably watching this debate—unless Coronation Street is on at the moment. I don't think it's on on a Tuesday night. So I'm going to curry favour and probably stick mainly with "priv-acy" but I might lapse back into "pri-vacy" occasionally in case Dad is looking down disapprovingly. I do want to acknowledge that Dr Webb has recently left the Justice Committee and that he was one of the members of the select committee who've worked hard on this bill. I'm a very new member of the committee. In fact I attended my first meeting last week and therefore I haven't had the opportunity to work on the bill but I have nevertheless been studying the work that the committee did and for the benefit of those who are watching it's a pretty weighty tome—there it is the Privacy Bill—and I am genuinely impressed as I read the report at the obvious work that was undertaken by the committee members and particularly pleased that there's pretty broad consensus.Well one of the reasons the consensus is so apparent on this side of the House is that yet again this is effectively a National Party bill. I want to acknowledge my very dear friend the retiring member for Selwyn and former Minister of Justice in the last Government the Hon Amy Adams because it was Amy Adams who did much of the work that has been picked up—and I'm very pleased has been picked up—by the current Government and it's good to see that it is now at the stage where it's completed its work through the select committee. We're into the second reading and presumably it's well on the way to being enacted because as Dr Webb has just said this is an important measure and as I say it contains some very significant provisions.It's certainly not possible in the time I've got available tonight to do justice to all aspects of it so I am going to cherry-pick some of its key features and try to convey some of the issues that the Justice Committee encountered and how both they as a committee and this bill responded to an environment or are responding to an environment that is rapidly changing. It's quite hilarious really to reflect on the fact that the last measure of this type was about a quarter of a century ago and at that stage the internet was very much in its infancy. None of us had smartphones. Very few of us would have had personal computers. I don't think I had access to the internet back in the early 1990s. I'm not quite sure if you remember Madam Speaker the first time you did. It certainly was something that emerged through the 1990s. But the point is clearly the environment has changed considerably and the implications for people's personal privacy—I'm just thinking of Dad now—are significant and do obviously need to be tightened up in the bill that is now before us.So some of the key provisions that are included in the bill in recognition of the new technologies that have rapidly increased—the type the quality the quantity of personal data available to Governments and businesses obviously need to be dealt with. It's important that we have better protection for personal information that is sent overseas. I think Dr Webb just covered that pretty well. It retains the complaints system because obviously the ability to complain about breaches is vitally important and the bill introduces new ways to enforce privacy principles giving the Privacy Commissioner some new powers to make binding decisions on complaints about access to information. It also requires agencies to notify the Privacy Commissioner of unauthorised access or disclosure of personal information. We're all aware of the fact that in recent times there have been some high-profile breaches of people's personal information sometimes by Government agencies that have caused widespread consternation. This bill is attempting to ensure that those sorts of things are if they can't be prevented at least adequately dealt with under the law.Well as I say in the time that's available I'm simply going to cherry-pick. But I do want to make clear that while the National Party supports the bill in principle we do have residual concerns over two areas of this bill. The first is to do with the threshold for agencies to notify the commissioner as soon as practicable after the agency has become aware of a notifiable privacy breach. The amended bill as we've got it before us now would raise the threshold for agencies to report but we in the National Party consider that there is still a risk of over-notification. By that what I mean is that our concern is that over-notification runs the risk of trivialising those very significant genuine concerns and also will have the effect of causing considerable compliance costs sometimes maybe for small businesses or entities that would be ill-placed to be able to cope with those. So we are a little bit concerned about the balance.The second thing—we are aware that the Privacy Commissioner recommended quite substantial changes to the bill and some of them went well beyond the scope of the bill as it was introduced and did cause us some concern. For example it was the Privacy Commissioner's view that there should be a right to erasure also known as the right to be forgotten. Well we're pleased that the amended bill doesn't pick up that particular suggestion and we're actually pretty sceptical that such a measure would be required in New Zealand.Considerable consultation was undertaken. Just to name some of the organisations that the Law Commission which did much of the work in 2011 to review the bill and led to this stage undertook: they consulted with the Bankers' Association the Law Society Business New Zealand Google TradeMe Facebook NetSafe Telecom Vodafone InternetNZ Consumer New Zealand and the New Zealand Medical Association to—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm terribly sorry to interrupt the member—Hon Tim Macindoe: I'm heartbroken Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): —but the time has come for me to leave the Chair. This debate is interrupted. It is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 10 p.m."