Macindoe Tim: Privacy Amendment Bill Tax Administration Amendment Bill Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Macindoe Tim: 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:8111. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) 
: 
 I am also pleased to take a call in this third reading debate on the bills arising from the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. Members will recall that I chaired the Justice and Electoral Committee as we considered submissions and prepared our report on the bill to the House last year. I want to thank the submitters who contributed to this important process. I also want to thank the officials who provided us with valuable guidance. I want to take this opportunity to wish my successor Scott Simpson well as he assumes the role of chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee. I know he will do an excellent job. 
I also want to acknowledge Labour’s current spokesman on justice Charles Chauvel and wish him well as he prepares to leave this House and take up his new position with the United Nations. Mr Chauvel and I were on the Regulations Review Committee in the previous Parliament when he was chair and I was deputy chair and in this Parliament while I have been chairing the Justice and Electoral Committee he has been Labour’s lead justice spokesman. I consider that despite our political differences he and I have always worked very well together. I therefore genuinely wish him well and I thank him for the assistance he has given me. I seem to follow Mr Chauvel in every debate in which we have both spoken in the current Parliament. So I am a little bit worried about where I will get my cue from from now on. I am obviously going to have to have my wits about me to know when to take a call. Perhaps I will have to ask the new junior Government whip to ensure that I am alert including stopping me from moving procedural motions in the wrong debate in the House. 
As this is a third reading debate and for the benefit of those who may be listening and have a strong interest in this measure I would like to reiterate the background and the purpose of the original bill. The Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill aimed to improve rules around the collection storage and use of personal information while making sure there are safeguards to protect an individual’s right to privacy. That is a hugely important balance to strike and in this era as information technology communications gadgets and all sorts of other things make the sharing of information—frequently through social media and also other more formal means an absolutely day-to-day occurrence—we have to ensure we do get it right. 
Members will know that one of National’s key priorities is to deliver high-quality modern public services for all New Zealanders and this measure is absolutely part and parcel of achieving that goal. It supports better public services by providing a new mechanism to share personal information more effectively and with more certainty. 
I am pleased to reassure Ms Curran who spoke before me that the remainder of the Law Commission’s recommendations for changes to the Privacy Act are indeed being considered by the Government with a view to updating this important legislation. We need to improve the way personal information is collected stored and used to help people. The bills that the Associate Minister has moved and spoken about this afternoon balance the need for better information-sharing with the need to protect individual privacy. The information-sharing aspect of privacy reform was fast tracked ahead of other privacy work because of its potential to help vulnerable people including children. Of course one of the Government’s core focuses at the moment is on better protection for vulnerable children in our communities. 
Information sharing has major benefits in allowing agencies to see all sides of an individual’s case rather than just through their narrow lens. By sharing personal information agencies can work together to examine and understand customer needs as a whole instead of each agency viewing them through its own lens. It is another important way of stopping that problem of the nine cars all parked up the one driveway. Instead here we have a far more coordinated approach. The legislation improves the sharing of personal information between agencies. This is a direct response to the Law Commission’s review of the Privacy Act in relation to this all-important area of our law. 
The legislation is also expected to save information-handling costs across government so it is another part of meeting the need for greater efficiency to ensure that we are spending the taxpayer dollar wisely. 
For individuals information sharing can relieve them of the need to supply the same information to several agencies. It will enable integrated assistance—for example for a family that requires a complex and integrated response from a range of agencies. This leads to significant service benefits and improved outcomes for individuals reductions in information-handling costs across Government and efficiency gains in service delivery. This could benefit programmes such as ServiceLink and Whanau Ora where iwi and Government service providers could use agreements to give each other a better picture of what services are and are not being provided. Across the public sector agencies are rethinking the way they deliver services and undertake their business which includes reviewing the way information is used. 
This legislation allows agencies to share personal information at an earlier stage when it is deemed there is a serious threat to public health or safety or to the life or health of an individual. The Law Commission recommended removing “imminent” from this test to assist agencies that feel they cannot release information where there is a threat that is real but not immediate. We have done that in this legislation. It has all sorts of admirable qualities. It is an important area of law and I am very pleased to see it going through to its enactment today.