Curran Clare: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7937. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I would like to take a call in the Committee stage of this Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill and reinforce some of the comments that have been made by previous speakers on this side of the Chamber around the fact that this bill is being produced in a context of the most extraordinary privacy breaches that this country has seen perhaps ever. The way that this legislation is proposing to address issues of privacy and information sharing can only very kindly be described as piecemeal—piecemeal. In fact to be honest this bill is actually a pathetic and very shallow piece of legislation when considered in the context of those dreadful privacy breaches which no doubt will continue to be listed one by one by members on this side of the Chamber because the fact is that this Government is not doing anything to address these issues. If you are going to make information sharing more possible which is what this bill purports to do then you have to ensure that there are commensurate protections for people’s privacy and that they are put in place alongside that. Unfortunately this bill does not go anywhere near doing that. 
When you look at what the Law Commission said when it released its report on that 4-year review of privacy it had over 100 recommendations for change. There were over 100 of those recommendations and when you look at what has actually been incorporated in this piece of legislation it is pathetic. It is tiny and it does not go anywhere near doing what the intent was of the Privacy Commissioner—and after a very long and extensive piece of work. I think it is actually embarrassing for this House to be considering this bill in the light of that. I just want to mention what some of them are because it goes very much to the purpose of this bill. But unfortunately the stated purpose of this bill is not really borne out by the reality of what is in it. 
The privacy complaints process would have been streamlined if this Government had taken account of some of those recommendations. Essentially it would have given the Privacy Commissioner more powers to ensure that there were binding decisions on complaints when a person had asked for information about him or herself and had been refused. Groups of people would be able to bring representative complaints which are similar to class actions. Even being given the opportunity to discuss that at a select committee would have been a really useful thing to do especially in the light of some of these privacy breaches that have occurred in recent times. 
Take for example the 7000 people whose documents were available from the Ministry of Social Development networks through the Work and Income self-service kiosks. They were just a fraction of those that were available but the blogger Keith Ng was able to download those 7000 documents to make the point that it was possible to do that. Those people need to be able to bring some sort of complaint around that. Are they able to under this proposed legislation? Bringing a privacy case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal which would have been simpler—a more direct route—was another recommendation of the Privacy Commissioner. Two new powers were being proposed which were the ability to issue a compliance notice where a Government agency or business was acting in breach of the Privacy Act and also the ability to require an audit of a Government agency or business where there was a good reason. I will tell you what: there have been some very good reasons for an audit of Government agencies or businesses particularly when you look at all of those privacy breaches. 
There is a member’s bill in my name which will be brought to this House in coming weeks around setting up a special commission of inquiry into all of those privacy breaches because we should not be dealing with this issue on a piecemeal basis on an agency-specific basis. We should be looking at what the underlying reasons are behind these privacy breaches. What is it that is drawing us—