SpeechHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Statistics): I'll address some of the points that have been raised so far. I do want to acknowledge as the Hon Michael Woodhouse has done the correspondence we've received from groups concerned to make sure that the Act is doing or will do responsibly those things we would expect it to do to keep people's data safe. One comment I would make from the outset is that the greatest part of the Act itself from the old Act is carried over. Though it is approaching 50 years they've been 50 good years. And our statistics agency is respected globally. It is an agency that is in high standing and rightly earned.It's also true that what the bill does is codify current best practice across Government. When an Act gets that old a lot of what it stipulates is no longer directly applicable. The bill doesn't mention data at all because it wasn't a term that was being bandied around in 1975 and yet there is data collected across Government every day. Different departments collect data for different purposes for research. The private sector collects your data every day. We're dropping data all over the place it's the nature of modern society.What this bill does is make sure there is an ethical framework that sits across the collection and use of that data and it makes it much more explicit. The bill incorporates effectively the Five Safes framework; it was developed originally by the UK Office for National Statistics. The Australian Act and this bill draw on that Five Safes framework. Anyone who works in the area of statistics will know it by that shorthand but for the purposes of the committee that is principles that must be considered as part of assessing a request for Government-held data. So when we're talking about research certain questions have to be asked: why the data is being used—the projects principle; who is using the data—the people principle; where the data is being used—the settings principle; what data is appropriate—the data principle; and how the results of the project are used—the outputs principle. Those things have to be done in the public interest so there's careful thought given in the context of any research that's done.Indeed the data is produced so that we make good decisions as a country so that citizens you know when they get GDP data can analyse trends; from statistics that are produced can research around those statistics and use those as reliable inputs into wider research; can look at the methodologies; the Consumers Price Index data that's collected is used in a certain way and can be trusted and analysed research can be done around that and people's interaction. And I referred to this report Te Matapaeroa 2020 which has been in the media in the past week—research done using data collected within Government but done in an ethical way to ensure that we are improving the wellbeing the lot of parts of our society and improving opportunity for people.So the bill reflects principles that guide ethical and culturally appropriate data use including decisions on research access. It's a bill designed to bring us into the modern age; to recognise that data is being collected; to make sure that we're collecting and using it in a responsible way; and where it is used or passed between departments for specific purposes that that's done in a way that is responsible.