Little Andrew: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7767. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 I am very pleased to rise and take a call on the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. In the relationship between the citizen and the State the protections that the citizen has from intrusions by the State are absolutely fundamental. These are principles that go back to the Magna Carta. They are fundamental to the sort of liberal democracy that we have and that we celebrate here today. 
When the Privacy Act was put together—its genesis started with the fourth Labour Government—it reflected some foresight about the direction that the processes of Government might take. Data was able to be stored in significant volumes and in new forms—electronically and so on. So the Privacy Act has played a very important role in providing protections to citizens who must surrender their personal information to the State and for that matter conversely helping the State to function effectively and appropriately as well. So we should not when we are considering upgrades and updating to legislation as important as the Privacy Act take lightly the principles enunciated in it and the protections that they afford every citizen. 
Although Labour will support this bill and is supportive of reviews—comprehensive reviews—and the redrafting of legislation like the Privacy Act we nevertheless have some reservations that relate to the fact that the changes that are proposed for this bill are piecemeal. They are cherry-picked changes to the bill that give the appearance of suiting one or two purposes but in fact could be used for others. 
The bill effectively relaxes the protections that are afforded by the existing Act and its privacy principles or at least its personal information principles. The relaxation of those protections and of those rules is justified by what are described as Better Public Services—a mantra that we have heard frequently in the last 5 years and I am still waiting to see what exactly the better Public Service is that we are meant to have. Certainly a rapidly de-staffed one but I am not quite sure where the better Public Service is. 
It is also justified by an expressed need to deal with public health or public safety or the life or health of an individual. There is already an exception in terms of the application of the existing information privacy principles relating to public safety and prosecuting the need for public security and indeed an individual’s health or safety. This bill relaxes the protections by changing the description or the proviso that goes with it. Whereas at the moment the threat to public safety or public health or the threat to an individual’s health or safety must be imminent under the changes that would be brought about by this bill the threat need no longer be imminent and in fact a new set of words are used: “There must be an assessment”. In the interests of public safety there must be an assessment of the likelihood of threat. There must be an assessment of the severity of the consequences if the threat is realised and indeed an assessment of the time or potential time of the threat. These are all much more weaselly words to use a term. These are weasel words— 
Mike Sabin 
: Weaselly? 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: —and therefore they are more weaselly than the previous words or more weaselly than other words that are frequently used. It is a bit like Better Public Services. They are just as weaselly as those words if not more so. We can conceive of— 
Hon Annette King 
: How is it faster or better though? 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: Faster better—that is what they said. That is what they said about Superman was it not? Faster—faster and better. But anyway if I could draw the House’s attention back to the matters that you and I are most concerned with and that is that this bill here relaxes very important protections when it comes to the relationship between the citizen and the State. 
We can all conceive of situations in which it is appropriate and desirable for information held by one State agency to be disclosed to another and the classic situation is for the protection of children or a vulnerable child. Indeed one of the biggest complaints we have sometimes of the regime we presently have for disclosure of threats or endangerment to children is that agencies are reluctant to breach privacy principles. It is not just for children but also for patients in hospitals and particularly mental health patients. So you can see that there is a justification for having an exception to this sort of protection not only for children but for other vulnerable people as well. 
The classic Neil Pugmire situation which of course led to the Protected Disclosures Act which is really what this is about in privacy terms—this bill relaxes those protections as well. We do not want a repeat—well of course we want plenty of Neil Pugmires—of the situation he found himself in which was common at the time where people were reluctant to disclose information to hospitals even when the safety of individuals and indeed the public as a whole was threatened. 
Notwithstanding those justifiable exceptions and the examples I have given it is also possible to see how the relaxing of these protections can be abused. This is as I articulated before a much more opaque test. It is about carrying out an assessment of possibilities and probabilities. So when the words affording protection are more conditional are more contingent are more opaque and are more difficult to define then the interests of citizens are themselves under threat. 
We have seen already how there is a lack of respect by this Government and the departments under its control as it has conducted itself. We have seen how it has gone in the last year or so. We have heard tonight already about what happened with the Inland Revenue Department. The details of thousands of taxpayers were wrongfully disclosed. We have seen in ACC that there have been mistakes in terms of the management of personal information in ACC. I always favour cock-up over conspiracy when it comes to many of these things but one thing that we know was not a cock-up and was utterly deliberate was the disclosure of the personal information entailed in an email from a woman called Michelle Boag who wrote to the Minister and then found the contents of that message circulated to the public at large. That was a nasty and insidious thing and it is the sort of thing that currently would simply not be permissible under the Privacy Act but may well be inveigled through the more opaque test that must now apply. 
One thing that is absolutely crucial when it comes to matters like privacy and the protections that we give it is good enforcement and this is another issue that I want to draw the House’s attention to. Even with the present Privacy Act we are dependent on a robust a strong and an independent Office of the Privacy Commissioner to make sure that the law is upheld. How disappointing it is that nearly a year on—would you believe that it is nearly a year since the Bronwyn Pullar issue rose to public prominence? A week or two later that information that was provided to the Minister in charge of ACC under the usual confidentiality arrangements was then disclosed. A year on the Privacy Commissioner has been investigating but we are still none the wiser about what was behind that breach of privacy by this Minister—ironically and coincidentally the Minister in charge of this piece of legislation and the Minister in charge of the Privacy Commissioner’s office. We have no word on the progress of that investigation and on what has happened in that regard. 
This draws attention to the very point I started off with and that is the crucial importance of legislation like this in the relationship between the citizen and the State. We should not devalue it. We should not undermine it. We should pay very close attention to the sorts of changes in this legislation to make sure that our rights are not abused and that citizens continue to be protected and are entitled to continue to respect the State and the way in which the State conducts it affairs.