Fenton Darien: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9984. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): I rise on behalf of Labour to oppose the Electronic Data Safety Bill and I note that our spokesperson is on her way to speak on this bill.Hon Member: On what basis?Hon Member: Anti-technology.DARIEN FENTON: Pardon?Hon Member: That’s right they are a party of the past.DARIEN FENTON: Yes well hang on. So you know I accept what the member says about a member of the public being able to download 7000 documents from the Ministry of Social Development’s computer network. I am glad that he is concerned about that and certainly Labour is concerned about the problems that we have with electronic data. That has been in many Government departments actually. We have seen I suppose a year full of scandals on this issue but I am not sure—I think our problem is that we do not believe the bill will deal with the issues by setting up a commission on this. I think we have other options that are included in other bills that hopefully we will get to debate at some time on a members’ day.The purpose of this bill is to establish a special commission of inquiry and that would look at the privacy breaches and any other similar significant or recent breaches—but I think I may have the wrong bill. [Interruption] Thank you very much. I do apologise. I say that as a whip we often get to do this. We often end up having to speak about bills that we know very little about but OK I will keep speaking.This bill the Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill is about what is known in the IT sector as spam and the sole purpose of the bill is to fill themember’s ballot so that Opposition bills are less likely to be drawn and considered by the House in a timely manner. As to why Paul Goldsmith is the member in charge of this bill rather than Amy Adams the Minister for Communications and Information Technology you would have to ask the other side of the House. I think that is a very interesting question. If it is such an important matter we have to ask why the Minister is not indeed introducing this bill. Certainly when the original bill was passed in 2002 the Hon Paul Swain was the responsible Minister but once again Amy Adams is missing in action when it comes to information and communications technology.This is simply another example of this Government undermining the processes of Parliament for its own end. This time could be used to debate matters of importance to New Zealanders and instead we are standing here talking about a piece of legislation that is completely pointless. Let me tell you why this bill is completely pointless. The other bill that I mistakenly began speaking about is not pointless and we will get to debate that bill at some stage. I have no doubt that the National Party will stand up and oppose that bill as it is wont to do. Actually the Minister Amy Adams should be showing leadership in this sector and is not.What this bill tries to do is solve an issue that does not even exist. Apparently the point at which an agreement comes into effect has been muddled by the growth of technology and its use in business negotiations. Currently the law states that a contract comes into effect when the acceptance of the offer is communicated to the offeror. There is an exemption for postal communications where the contract becomes effective once it leaves the offeree’s hands as opposed to when the offeror receives it. However this is not relevant to digital communications. The delay between sending a notice of acceptance and receipt of that notice of acceptance is so negligible as to be non-existent. So in effect what we are debating here today is whether it is the responsibility of the offeree to ensure that the email or digital message is read or the responsibility of the offeror to check their inbox frequently.This point could be quite interesting to a court of law. I understand that it has been raised in other jurisdictions and precedent would indicate that the onus lies with the offeror to check their inbox. Unfortunately this bill fails even to ask that question. So on those grounds Labour is opposing the bill.I congratulate the member on having a bill drawn from the ballot—I know it is a big deal—but Labour cannot support it. We think it is another example of ill-thought-out badly researched and hurriedly drafted legislation from the Government. If it were really serious about these issues its Minister for Communications and Information Technology would be bringing to the House bills that would deal with the real issues that are happening in information and communications technology. Thank you.