Chauvel Charles: Urgent Debates — Social Development Ministry—Security of Private Information 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Urgent Debates — Social Development Ministry—Security of Private Information 
[Sitting date: 16 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5823. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed her seat Louise Upston accused members on this side of the House of trying to distract attention from the true subject matter of the debate. Well that is actually what she just did in the final couple of minutes of her speech. What this is all about is whether or not we have a Government that can guarantee the security of data that it holds on behalf of New Zealanders. Plainly it cannot. 
Just have a look at the examples that have occurred over the last couple of months. We had in September the Inland Revenue Department breaching the privacy of 30 people. At the same time in the 2 weeks ahead of the tax return deadline 70000 phone calls to the Inland Revenue Department went unanswered and it has $7 billion worth of tax yet to collect. This is a department that needs decent IT. It is being starved of decent IT. The Minister of Revenue in perpetuity apparently the Hon Peter Dunne—he has been the Minister now for 7 years—seems to have no urgency in his mind about addressing this. He says there is a plan to upgrade the Inland Revenue Department’s systems over the next 10 or so years. Well who knows how many privacy breaches there will be over that time? 
And then there is ACC. The Privacy Commissioner recently examined how the private information of 6748 people was sent to Bronwyn Pullar with ACC’s compliance. It is just mind-boggling that that could occur. The independent inquiry into ACC on that occasion found “such an error was more likely to occur because of systemic weaknesses within ACC’s culture systems and processes.” Then of course Bronwyn Pullar’s details somehow miraculously made it into the public domain. It is only necessary for me to quote the former president of the National Party Michelle Boag who said: “When you can’t send a communication to a Government minister without fearing that the privacy of that communication is going to be breached that’s very very dangerous.” That was Michelle Boag in the 
 New Zealand 
Herald 
 on 28 March. 
 Then we come to the departments that are within the responsibility of this Minister. In 2011 10 Work and Income staff had to be sacked after two inquiries into breaches of privacy. Seven staff were dismissed for appalling breaches including sharing information with family members and three were sacked after a second inquiry for breaching the so-called zero-tolerance policy that was in place at that department. Well some zero-tolerance policy! Then in September 2012 Work and Income sent a client’s private details to another client. Someone’s one-page application was included in a pile of papers the client received at the meeting. When the client rang Work and Income to report it the client was asked to just destroy the document. Then in August 2012 there was a further breach. A woman who was absolutely vigilant about her safety was called at home by a man who said he was conducting a survey to ascertain whether she was happy with her experience with Work and Income. He knew her name and had information about her. She had never consented to the release of that information. That is the record of this Government on protecting privacy and keeping data secure. 
In answer to the previous speaker the reason why members on this side of the House have real issues about the sincerity of this Minister on this issue can be summed up when we look at the way that she dealt with the privacy breach in relation to Natasha Fuller. The Human Rights Commission found that Paula Bennett breached that woman’s privacy. She was asked whether she would do the same thing again and she said: “it would depend on the circumstances”. The Prime Minister backed her to the hilt. That is the culture of compliance that we have under this Government. The apology that we heard that was read out by the Minister cannot be taken seriously because of the Minister’s form and the handling of this issue: blacken the names of the people who reveal the breach say that they were after money and leak their identity to the media. 
We have got a real issue here. We have got a Law Commission report on privacy half implemented. We have got another Law Commission report on the Official Information Act which is inadequate. Nothing less than a royal commission into the security of the way the Government holds the data of individual New Zealanders is going to be able to fix this problem. If we do not see it from this Government we are going to see it hopefully through a member’s bill because I am certainly keen to see one drafted to bring about that reality.