SpeechDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): E te Māngai tēnā koe. I rise on behalf of the Green Party in support of the Data and Statistics Bill. Many thanks to the Governance and Administration Committee and all of the organisations and people who submitted in the hearings which of course did result in several amendments made to their draft bill. While we welcome the repeal and replacement of the Statistics Act of 1975 we recognise the outstanding concerns raised by those organisations and submitters including professionals across the sector. We heard several of those concerns raised in the committee of the whole House and it's a good reminder that if you feel strongly about something the hearings are not the end of it. You can keep coming to us and asking us to raise these concerns for you and we can put up those Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that are heard in that committee of the whole House and while none of those were deemed worthy by the Government those issues were roundly aired and debated in the House. So the Greens very much appreciate that the bill contains a specific section on Te Tiriti o Waitangi where it aims to recognise and respect the Crown's responsibility to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi—the Treaty of Waitangi—by providing for the interests of Māori in data statistics and research because let's be honest it's not a strength of Governments to provide for Māori interests. No shade on the current Government; it's been all 53 Governments so far. So we are thankful that it is there and we recognise that the effective implementation of such a provision is contingent on working with Māori leadership in that area and working with whānau hapū and iwi as it relates to what the kaupapa is. Fortunately Stats NZ does have a mana ōrite agreement with Te Kāhui Raraunga—the Data Iwi Leaders Group and although the Minister assured us there's a strong relationship with them that relationship was not strong enough for the Minister to incorporate their recommendations outlined in Tawhiti Nuku the Māori data governance co-design outcomes report. It did not allow Te Kāhui Raraunga to look at the bill before it went to Cabinet it didn't respond to any of the concerns they raised in their submissions and it didn't consider the SOPs which were put out by the Greens and Te Paati Māori on their behalf. So we just thought a review clause—this is what they suggested. If we can't have all those other things let's just look at a review clause that would allow us within three years after the commencement of this Act to commence a review of the operation and effectiveness of the Act in accordance with the terms of reference set out by the Minister and the Data Iwi Leaders Group—Te Kāhui Raraunga. We included the Privacy Commissioner and the Chief Ombudsman in that.Of course privacy is one of the major concerns we have consistently raised and I acknowledge the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties—thank you for coming to meet with us and I'm aware you met with and sent information to colleagues across the House. We appreciate the ongoing and consistent lobbying because if people do not trust what will happen to the data they provide they may choose not to provide that data or not to make sure it's accurate when they provide it. De-identified" is not the same as "anonymised" and the more data you have on a single individual or a community the easier it is that you're not going to get either of those things. This bill accelerates a shift from data collection that uses formally designed surveys and big surveys—like the census itself—into using administrative data. Now the standards for that collection of data is far far lower and far fewer protections are in place for those people who have provided it and so it can be easily skewed in different ways. The quality of that data provided against Government agencies then that is coming and that is then going to be available for other researchers and other people and businesses to use needs to be on the same high standard. Finally as one of the many Māori takatāpui researchers in this country—and I know there are other researchers in this House—I'm currently involved in several community-based research projects. So I do want to shout out to all the people that do this work in the community generally unpaid: Counting Ourselves for trans and non-binary people Identify for young LGBTIQ people at the trans perinatal care project and I'm an ambassador for the Manalagi Project for rainbow pasifika. Just a shout-out to all of those people and all of those teams doing incredible work—I use your data all the time. But the other researchers any actual MP knows that we need to have our hands—we have to have that good evidence that quality information because the creation of good quality data is core to what we do. The respect of our sources must be core to what a researcher does because when we collect information and stories directly from individuals and whānau they trust us to protect what they have gifted us and that's why we call it a taonga. In many cases a breach of privacy could cause them real harm. In a world that discriminates for example against people with diverse gender sexualities and sex characteristics there are people who actively look for such information to hurt us. As researchers within communities where little accurate data exists we must create it so we routinely use the vast amount of information collected by Stats NZ and all Government departments to extrapolate from what data is available to identify needs and strengths and to advocate for our communities but also to test the validity of Government data with our own research and life experiences. We must protect that data we must make sure it's accurate and of high standards and we must protect the privacy of those people. We must protect the integrity of the chief statistician. On that basis we consider this bill does go towards that and so we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora."