Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd firstly like to congratulate the Hon Willie Jackson who seems to have been able to set his alarm clock very well this morning! So it's great to see you in the chair Minister.I want to talk about the collection of information and I'd like to—and while I accept this is a vital part and a role for the commission to actually utilise the information that they have and that can be gathered by them and other agencies to help inform for future disasters and the management of the disaster that they're in at that time. However I would point to the evidence given in the Finance and Expenditure Committee by the Privacy Commissioner. Their role of course is to scrutinise—or one of their roles—legislation and to consider how that may or may not affect the privacy of individuals. In their submission firstly they pointed out they weren't able to see the legislation before it was entered into the House and I think that is not a good thing in the first instance.I think really what's been happening with this Government's been quite schizophrenic in some ways—where it's rushing headlong in with great haste to do some things and with other things they're putting all of these commissions and inquiries in and so on. But a little bit more care would be much more helpful I think to ensure that we get good legislation because we all accept right across the House that the Earthquake Commission (EQC) has a vital role to play and that being set up as a good organisation is underpinned by legislation. And if we don't get the legislation right then we're not doing a good service to those people who were badly affected in Christchurch and will be in the future if we don't get this legislation right.Their comments on the bill relate solely to new section 31A in clause 5. That was where their big concerns were and they were very concerned they didn't have the opportunity to review the bill prior to its introduction. So they said there was unintended consequences for privacy and lead to greater complexity for EQC." And I think those are things that we should be concerned about. We want this organisation to be able to run smoothly and provide the service that we all expect. And so they proposed that new section 31A be removed. So I'd really like to have the Minister tell us what reaction the Minister has to that. What does the Minister think would be achieved for the greater good without impacting on the privacy of individuals? I think it's vital that we don't trample on those rights of individuals.It says in new section 31A(4)—they don't support the new section as it departed from the definition of personal information under the Privacy Act. They think that "Creating a bespoke definition for EQC's specific circumstances is unnecessary" and once again we support EQC. We support the whole premise of the legislation. However we have to be mindful of people's privacy. And so a little more care I think in the work behind drafting this legislation would have been well rewarded and would have made things much simpler for people in this situation. I know the select committee spent a lot of time going over these issues and I think that we owe it to ourselves when entering legislation on to the books to do a good job. A select committee process is part of that but getting things before institutions such as the Privacy Commissioner ahead of the introduction of a bill would short circuit a whole lot of these issues. So I'd really like to hear from the Minister in the chair on his reaction to that. He looks bright and sparky this morning. I'm sure he's ready to answer the question and ease all of our concerns on this side of the Chamber so that we may go further through with this bill with a greater sense of confidence that New Zealand is going to be well served by this legislation. Thank you Madam Chair."