Grigg NicolaNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): It's quite an experience to get up in the House and speak on a bill where clearly all parties are in violent agreement. I trust that will happen again in future and I'll look forward to that occasion as well. But we're all clearly in agreement that there is an essential need for a legislative framework that protects our online information and data.I think every person in this House has recently experienced the need for robust data-protection and cyber-access in the recent environment of having been locked down at home and working at home on Zoom and all those online platforms that we've become so used to. We've also seen the need for legislation like this to be brought before the House because again this COVID environment has really thrown into sharp relief the exposure that New Zealand has to international cyber-attacks and the fact that our borders are not as watertight and secure as we would like them to be.All of this brings me to the point that it's essential that a piece of legislation like this is watertight and robust but as a couple of other people have mentioned it must be futureproofed. The rapid pace of change that we're seeing in the technological environment is quite extraordinary and one would assume will only continue at that pace if not faster. I actually made some comments in the House last night on another bill that was around enabling regulations to prevent the live streaming of objectionable material and I also made the comment that we must ensure that bills like this are written in such a way that they can adapt to the changing nature of these environments and are as flexible as the environment that they're there to regulate.So of course as my friends on this side of the House have previously mentioned we in the National Party obviously do support a bill like this because it is supporting the best use of data to achieve outcomes as well as growing trust and innovation in that digital economy. And this digital economy is a growing economy. The Minister mentioned in his own comments something very close to my heart which is the opportunity for export market potential here. His own figures had it at likely to be worth about $17 billion by 2026 and I'm certain that it could be that and more. I saw in my time with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise—I know Simon Bridges liked to claim that most of the digital technology and innovation is coming out of Wellington but I would argue that a lot of it is coming out of Christchurch and Canterbury. We're seeing a number of really innovative small businesses starting up as a result of the loss of infrastructure and physical office environments from the earthquake. Everybody decided and saw that things needed to move online more and that has seen the genesis of a huge amount of digitally based businesses coming out of Canterbury and so I do hope that a framework like this will enable those businesses and indeed enable their export opportunity offshore.A couple of people have mentioned the need for the select committee to play a role in this in scrutinising things and I think one of the considerations should be ensuring that this legislation aligns with similar international jurisdictions. As I mentioned a lot of these businesses are looking at export potential given the multinational nature of the digital economy and environment. We do know—and look I am analogue I have to confess to this House; I'm a digital dinosaur—that more and more of our data is moving into that digital cloud environment and as other nations innovate New Zealand needs to be proactive in regulating this evolving technological sector and aligning our legislation with countries.I think someone else made mention earlier of the prospect of digital driver licences. I don't know about everyone else in this House but the only reason I carry a physical wallet nowadays is for my driver licence. Everything else is on my phone: my EFTPOS cards my ability to pay online my Flybuys—that's very essential; I use that regularly as well. But the only thing that's not on my phone is my driver licence so I do wonder about the potential for that and that would be a classic example of the essential need to be able to protect essential information like that.It will also be important on State-held information to balance the role of the State as a digital steward with opportunities that innovative New Zealand companies can offer New Zealanders in developing new tools to verify identities online and I do wonder as well whether the select committee might want to consider how this particular bill will interact with the Electronic Identity Verification Act that's been mentioned earlier.The wonderful thing about this is that it is industry-led. Many people have mentioned the Government-led RealMe platform and the dinosaur that that has become. But the industry-led innovation is I would hazard a guess as up with the play as anything else. And so the plan for a digital identity framework I believe has had very strong buy-in from the digital sector and New Zealand companies most of whom are already developing in this space.So a framework that will ensure consistency in the basic principles of privacy and data protection is welcomed by us on this side of the House and indeed all sides of the House and in a very quickly changing and evolving digital world it is going to be essential to incorporate a framework that will engender trust in the public. So we are pleased to commend this bill to the House.