Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Madam Chair thank you. I did want to come down and take a further call on Part 3. It's been of course some time since I was last involved in the debate. But I wanted to raise a point that is new and that is around the information-gathering powers in Part 3 and particularly—well it's sections 40 and 41 of the principal Act but it starts really at clauses 23 24 25 of the legislation in front of us.I wanted to raise a particular concern that the Privacy Commissioner brought to the attention of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and that is around the very broad powers of information gathering that the bill would put into the principal Act. The Commissioner noted that the overseas investment legislation already has very broad powers of information gathering in it. He noted—and I think I'm quoting fairly—that he was concerned with the width of powers that this amendment bill that is before us would put in place in the legislation. I think his concerns are valid and do need a little bit of time to be worked through. I will be tabling shortly as this debate progresses a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to make some of the changes that the Privacy Commissioner had suggested be made and in particular it really is specifically to section 41 of the legislation—clause 24 of the bill.The thrust of this is that the Overseas Investment Act as it currently stands provides at the moment that the regulator already has in fact quite broad powers to gather information to ensure that there are not offences being committed under the legislation. That's of course quite appropriate. You would need to have that sort of an investigation power. To be quite clear it makes it very clear that the regulator can gather information to investigate whether there has been an offence committed. It's not just once they know there is an offence so they can check in on offences and they can gather information relating to them. But the way the section has been rewritten in this amendment bill takes that much much further and the Privacy Commissioner suggested the bill takes it further than is justified. What it now says is that the regulator can gather information fairly much at will not only for the purposes of enforcing the legislation and offence detection but also to ensure monitoring compliance investigating and enforcing Act and regulations" and that's repeated in a number of places through that change to the Act.What the Privacy Commissioner noted was that effectively that gives now—or that would give if this bill was passed—the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) the power to gather information at will about any property transaction in New Zealand whether or not it has reason to suspect that an offence has been committed. That is an extraordinary number of New Zealanders who will be caught up in that information gathering and it really does get into a very very broad-brush access to large tracts of information about New Zealanders. The Privacy Commissioner noted something like 200000 transactions a year.This reframed information-gathering power would give the Overseas Investment Office—under the guise of administering this Act—the right to trawl through all sorts of details about property transactions as I say under the loose tenor of the maintenance and enforcement of the legislation: monitoring compliance investigation. That could extend simply into data collection or interesting research and analytical purposes but when we want to gather information as a country for those purposes we have frameworks for doing that. We don't give an enforcement agency the ability to trawl through huge tracts of information about New Zealanders that are likely to have no bearing whatsoever on their work simply for the purposes of seeing what they can find.The Privacy Commissioner was of a view and expressed this view to the committee that certainly there were some improvements that were made in other parts of the information-gathering powers in Part 3 but he was very concerned in particular with the recasting of section 41. I know that the Minister in the chair David Parker has stood in this House on many occasions and confirmed his support for the important work of the Privacy Commissioner. It is one thing that I know every member of this House takes very seriously—our obligations around New Zealanders' personal information.I think this committee should properly turn its mind to whether it is right—under the guise of overseas investment and the changes the Minister has said the Government wants to make; almost as an aside tucked away somewhere and not something that's had a lot of debate in this Chamber at all—to give the Overseas Investment Office the power to access huge amounts of information about New Zealanders going about their lawful business in the normal way.So the Supplementary Order Papers that I will be lodging in this respect are going to go through that section 41 and really try to address the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner. I would certainly invite the Minister in the chair to take a call and to explain to us why there is a need for this—why we've gone away from simply offence detection enforcement which I think we can all agree and accept is a necessary part of making sure that the framework that is put in place is properly adhered to—and why the Minister believes the Privacy Commissioner isn't right and shouldn't be concerned about the considerable widening of the information-gathering power.Now in the Privacy Commissioner's own words he said that the powers that the OIO already has under the primary legislation are extensive and broad. He said they had very very broad powers of information-gathering activities and authorities and he is very concerned that that very wide scope of powers would be extended this way.I haven't heard in this debate—and I've been in the Chamber for the vast majority of the debate—from the Minister why those powers need to be extended; what the problem is they're trying to address; and why in fact the Overseas Investment Office needs to go beyond enforcement. Is this in fact a statistical data-gathering exercise designed to give the Government information about the property sector more generally? If it is I think we should hear that and we should understand exactly what information is to be targeted how it will be collected and how it will be used.If it isn't for that purpose then I come back to asking why the extension is in place at all. So in the absence of a response from the Minister and of course one that this side of the Chamber finds to be convincing I think we do have to err on the side of caution.I've worked with the Privacy Commissioner over many years. He is a very sensible and rational and balanced man—as you would expect of a man in his job. I didn't always see eye to eye with him and we could have debates around the information that the Government needed. But Ministers in this House in my view should never take his warnings lightly. I think everyone in this House is very aware of the high level of public concern around excessive information intrusions and information gathering by the State—what that information is being used for.One of the core principles of privacy law—and I know this area reasonably well—is that information gathering shouldn't be any wider than is absolutely necessary for the purpose and that the purpose for which it is to be gathered and used must be very clearly set out and adhered to. So there is no compelling reason that we have been made aware of. Certainly the Privacy Commissioner in noting that he had worked with officials during drafting was of the view that he hadn't been made aware of any good reason why that extensive information-gathering power should be in there. In the absence of a compelling reason I think it is something this House should turn its mind to and show that it does value personal privacy and information privacy. And if there is going to be an extension as I mentioned that should be very explicitly laid out. I would like to see it recorded in Hansard—the sort of information that will be collected and the sorts of uses that will be put to so that the Overseas Investment Office can be held to account if they step outside that framework.When you have a debate on a bill as contentious and as strongly opposed as this one is it's very common that the focus is on the headline components of a bill—and that's as it should be and you'll hear lots of debate over the course of the evening from this side of the Chamber as you have to date. But we have to be careful that these small changes which can be very intrusive don't slip through the cracks. This is one of those changes and as I said it does deserve a response from the Minister in the chair and I very much look forward to hearing it. Of course if that doesn't come through then our SOPs will be tabled and we will certainly look to make further representations about why the committee should support those changes."