Tabuteau Fletcher: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11151. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Thank you for the opportunity Mr Chairman. I just want to touch on a few of the contributions that have been made this evening and acknowledge the kinds of issues around the electronic signature problem that the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has been working through over the years. And the reality is in modern practice—and we look to most of our banks at the moment—we see there is very much a safe and appropriate mechanism for the electronic signature and it is taking a while but we have got there. I think it is absolutely appropriate which is part of the reason why New Zealand First is supporting the legislation.But what I did want to touch on in particular because it is an issue—and it is still perhaps for me and for New Zealand First—that needs further exploration and some commitment from the Minister one would hope is the co-location and secrecy issue that was raised in terms of discussions within the Finance and Expenditure Committee.So firstly let me put it into points. The conversation started with the fact that the IRD was going to have to share locations in terms of physical office space with different Government departments and that would raise some privacy and secrecy issues. I just wanted to note though that the IRD considers that no amount of training best-practice guidelines or adopted behaviour is likely to adequately address the substantial risk of the IRD employees inadvertently disclosing taxpayer information to other Government employees in a co-location environment. So what we have here is the ministry itself acknowledging that this is quite a huge problem and there does not seem to be even with the best of intent the ability to mitigate—well maybe mitigate is a possibility but to eliminate these privacy issues is a real concern for the ministry itself and the staff involved.So in the select committee we had very in-depth conversations about what that would involve. I note Mr Cosgrove made a contribution about that earlier in the evening. I would like to support his words because it was a contentious issue. What we have done within this legislation is we have said: “Well actually let’s acknowledge that this is a possibility. Let’s acknowledge that despite the best efforts of ministry staff best practice implementation and procedures we will have issue.” So that is not a debate. I think that is perhaps the primary concern for New Zealand First. There will be an issue. There is no debate on that. It is how we get around the problem for individual staff.So with great reluctance as part of that committee my contribution was to support and say that yes let us come up with some additional safeguards for employees if it was proven that they were not deliberately trying to disclose private information—that that was unfair and unreasonable to take them to court proceedings if that was established in the first instance. But as that conversation was fleshed out actually we decided that is what a court is there for. So the court is there to establish the intent and the degree of the intent and if there was intent then the court would come down hard and appropriately on those individuals. Conversely if there was no intent then the court would establish that and the argument would be that well clearly there was no intent and it was a true mistake on behalf of the employee—“Why has it come to us? Let us dismiss it for the accident it was.” And yet we have more legislation around this. I think it is quite an issue that needs further exploration and consideration from the Minister.I think in terms of cost saving we may have gone a bridge too far; for the expediency around a few dollars we are compromising the privacy of New Zealand taxpayers. It is an important issue that needs I think more consideration from the Minister and the Government. But in the main when we consider that this legislation is about updating the technology and the practices available to the ministry I think we can support it.