Clendon David: Privacy Amendment Bill Tax Administration Amendment Bill Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Privacy Amendment Bill Tax Administration Amendment Bill Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8114. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora. The Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill was one that the Green Party would have liked to support. We looked very carefully at the original drafting of the bill. We made another decision after the Justice and Electoral Committee had done its work. As much as we might wish to we cannot support this legislation for a number of reasons. We recognise that the Government the State holds a great deal of information about people and we do not think for a moment that the regulations the boundaries around information sharing are quite right yet. For example I believe that there are difficulties between the District Court and the Family Court around some information that they may not share which is not helpful in some specific cases. I think there is a degree of public concern that information about children held by schools or other agencies may not be available to their parents and at times that is not helpful. So we do see that there is a need to address some of these issues but sadly this bill does not do it. 
My colleague Jan Logie in an earlier reading—the second reading I think—made the point that this is the fourth piece of legislation with significant privacy aspects to it that we have seen through the House in the last 12 months or so. That would indicate to us that what is actually called for is a major overhaul along the lines of the Law Commission’s proposition that we do need to take a step back and restructure the privacy laws. This sort of meddling these incremental changes around the edges are not actually serving the purpose. They are not achieving the goals. 
We have seen in the last 12 months—as a number of speakers have mentioned—some major failures of privacy. People’s information has been released inappropriately by the Inland Revenue Department ACC Work and Income the Ministry of Justice Immigration New Zealand—the list goes on. This does not give us any confidence that when we add another layer when we open more potential for information sharing it will be protected adequately—that there are sufficient protections in place. 
Technology has been mentioned and clearly modern technology enables us to acquire retain manage manipulate and analyse massive amounts of information—much more than was the case previously. Again that creates opportunities for things to go wrong either through malice or simply through human error. Occasionally of course the mistakes are purely through human error—people getting it wrong. The previous speaker Mr Little alluded to the fact as well that in the Public Service there are some very busy overworked people so these errors are more likely to occur. 
It is interesting in that context that we are told that the key purpose of this legislation is to facilitate public services in line with this Government’s programme of delivering Better Public Services—with capital letters to tell us how important it is to the Government. The Prime Minister last year said that this delivery of Better Public Services was all about being “innovative enterprising driven and focused on results”. Sadly those of us who talk to people in the public sector who understand what actually is going on in the public sector know that the most innovative people in the Public Service are desperately trying to apply that innovation to try to do more with less. They are trying to do their jobs well despite cost cutting despite the removal of resources. 
Sadly some of the most enterprising of our public servants have simply given up the fight and gone off to work in the private sector. They have seen there is no future in amongst the constant cost cutting and the other winding back of the public sector. I think many of them are nearly driven to drink by the constant restructuring of the Public Service the constant re-amalgamations and splittings and the shuffling of the deckchairs around the place none of which is helpful. Focusing on results sadly is too often a tick-box mentality. This is not what we want in our public sector. Putting the words “facilitating public service” into a piece of legislation does not make that achievable unless you actually resource that Public Service unless you give it the means to protect people’s information and to protect people’s privacy and unless we can retain good people who can make the good value and judgment calls about the sharing of information in the way that is appropriate and that we would like to see achieved. 
So one particular issue about this legislation that we have been concerned and continue to be concerned about is the empowering of the executive to create these information-sharing agreements by regulation. This to us creates a possibility that you could see agreements formed that are outside certainly the spirit of the Privacy Act if not outside the letter of it. It gives the public less reason rather than more to be confident that the integrity of their information will be retained that information will be used only appropriately for the right reasons and by the right people. 
Scrutiny of the agreement—again we are told that copies of any of these agreements will be available on websites or at the office of the lead agencies. That is again not a particularly forceful or innovative way of making information available to people. There are such people as those who do not have access to the internet. Not many people routinely trawl the websites of Government departments or indeed attend the offices of major Government agencies. We simply do not see that people will actually be adequately informed or have the opportunity to know which agencies are sharing what information that may affect their lives their businesses their families or whatever it may be. We simply do not think that the protections built into here are adequate or sufficient given the potential for things to go very wrong and the reasonable expectation people have of a very high level of security for their information when they give it to the Government in good faith. 
The Law Commission’s landmark report on privacy laws in New Zealand made two key recommendations neither of which is addressed in this legislation. The first was that the Privacy Commissioner should be able to issue compliance notices to agencies deemed to be in breach of the Privacy Act. That would seem pretty much a bottom line. I suspect many people would expect the commissioner to have that power now—to require compliance where there are breaches. We would expect the commissioner to have some very real teeth and the Law Commission encouraged us to put such provisions in place. But sadly in this legislation which was the opportunity to do that there is no such reference there is no such mechanism and we continue to have a well-meaning and very capable commissioner sadly lacking teeth and lacking the levers and the capacity to actually demand compliance when breaches occur. 
The second power the Law Commission suggested that we should give to the commissioner is the power to require an audit of an agency’s practices and systems for handling private information. It seems not unreasonable that we should have that watchdog body to cast an eye over the practice and the systems that are in place within departments. In the absence of such an audit in the absence of such oversight and as I have said particularly in the context of a very stressed under-resourced public sector with very low morale one would expect that there would be that power given to the commissioner to have oversight to ensure that the best practice was actually being applied. There could be considerable positive benefit in that as well as insisting that no rules were being broken and that nothing was suboptimal. That would be an opportunity as well for the sharing of best practice. Sadly there seems to be nothing to encourage or facilitate that. 
In essence then and in summary I guess we do see as I said at the beginning a need to improve our performance to put in place adequate regulation and protection of people’s information while at the same time facilitating the sharing of that information in a way that does genuinely enable various Government departments to do their job which is to serve the interests of New Zealanders. In this legislation sadly the balance is far too much to privilege the State to give much too much capacity and freedom to use information and to share it. There is far too little protection of people and far too little reassurance that the privacy and the integrity of that information will be maintained. For those reasons we will not be supporting this bill. Kia ora.