Cameron MarkMARK CAMERON (ACT): Morning Madam Speaker. The Data and Statistics Bill—what a wonderful piece of legislation; the exuberant sharing by the various members of this House and the political machinations of the Minister David Clark. My colleagues were as you can well imagine bursting with enthusiasm to take this off me. I think that might almost be a derogatory offering. But going back through history we know the importance of sharing language collating language numeracy. It was part of our history. It's how we collated and shared history and referred back to it. You can go back to the Greco-Roman period where it was put on limestone tablets and papyrus for the Roman era. The Rosetta Stone—I don't know if anyone here is conducive with history—Todd Muller: Yes.MARK CAMERON: —but it was a way of—well there you go; Mr Muller is acutely aware of it. But more recently it's modernisation digitisation and the sharing and storing of that has allowed us to access any manner of various parts of history and how they're stored. More recently it's important that New Zealanders have confidence in the way that data is collected. It's particularly important because sometimes people are forgotten—and you know we see it all the time. We have 60000 students chronically absent from school—data; statistics. There you have it. We have an extra 70000 people absent on the job seeker benefit since Labour came into power—data; statistics. This is how we use it every day.Sadly we have two Ministers that are absent in representing rural communities stored through data and statistics. But the data also shows a curious thing: ACT is not absent. ACT received 13000 votes back in 2017 and four years later we are somewhere currently polling at about half a million—data and statistics.Hon Member: That's right.MARK CAMERON: There you go. I think the bill is quite succinct. I think it's been well canvassed in this House. It's a 45-year reboot of a piece of legislation to come in line with modernisation and digitisation. Currently there are constraints and I think we would all understand that based on the advent of modern technology and how we use it. The ability to coalesce collate collect and store data—I think we'd all agree that's changed and how we analyse it; how we use it. It was well canvassed by the Green member. Health statistics ethnic statistics understanding those that are disadvantaged in society crime stats and the runaway problem with crime across New Zealand. But there are some concerns the ACT Party has raised. There are people that perhaps are reluctant to share their information. The bill makes direct amendments to the Official Information Act. Well arguably it excludes the term official information". Well we're trying to ascertain the premise for that. What is the clause for? The explanatory note doesn't say. What is the information in this clause trying to protect?I just want to go through the bill in part. The unintended impacts—the data and statistics systems rely on the collection and use of information including personal and commercially sensitive business information. Now arguably that speaks to intellectual property (IP) and how IP is potentially collated and potentially shared into governmental departments etc. Now suffice it to say there will be people worried by that. The former includes identifying information for Māori and Pasifika communities. Equally so people may be concerned about their privacy being eroded and how their information is shared. People with disabilities—arguably this is deeply important if we are going to get a handle on helping that part of our community.This bill will not be able to address all the risks and I think that's duly noted related to the Government agencies and their management and their use of data. And unfortunately we have seen data breaches more often than not recently. It will also not speak directly to address security and quality and consistency of coverage of data collected and what governmental departments have use to it. Now the ACT Party has been very clear. We actually support this legislation. We know the important nature of the use of data and statistics in New Zealand. I noticed the ruckus applause but it's actually something that's quite important and I commend this bill to the House."