Moroney Sue: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionMoroney Sue: Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14251. Text is subject to correction.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I moveThat the Privacy (Giving Privacy Commissioner Necessary Tools) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the bill as I hear it does not have much work in front of it.This Government has played fast and loose with the privacy of New Zealanders. From ACC and EQC to MSD right through to the GCSB and every acronym in between this Government has demonstrated that it has absolutely no regard for the privacy of everyday New Zealanders yet it would have us believe that the litany—the litany—of privacy breaches is the result of human error performed by some inept faceless public servants. But what could we expect when the first shocking privacy breach was a deliberate breach by a Minister?I am a bit old-fashioned when it comes to the role of Ministers. I believe that they should lead by example. So what example was Minister Paula Bennett setting when she released to the media the private details of two sole parents in retribution for them daring to speak out against her cuts to the tertiary incentive allowance? Did she stop to consider the impact on them or their children when she launched her spiteful attack on their private information? Well perhaps she did but then she must have decided that using the power and information held by a Minister against two women with much less power and fewer resources than her was the ministerial thing to do. Even the Prime Minister John Key was quoted in theDominion Postas saying that he was “comfortable” with the women’s information being released. He was pretty relaxed about it. We are kind of used to John Key being relaxed but I thought it was really quite a low blow for the Prime Minister to not even stand up for the privacy of those women.However the Office of Human Rights Proceedings was not comfortable with the women’s information being released by that Minister. The director of that office told the Minister that she had breached their privacy. That Minister responded by writing to the Director of Human Rights Proceedings saying “I do not accept that view.” Well how very arrogant. How very arrogant of that Minister to decide that she knows better than the Director of Human Rights Proceedings about whether or not those women’s privacy had been breached.So if I am correct and if Ministers do lead by example then what happened next is no surprise. In that Minister’s own department there were many privacy breaches that followed. In 2011 there were 10 Work and Income staff who were sacked after two inquiries into breaches of privacy. Seven staff were dismissed for appalling breaches including sharing information with family members but the allegation that personal details were sold to a debt collection agency was not proven. Three people were sacked from that Minister’s own department for breaching the zero-tolerance policy. One ofthem was sacked for emailing their partner about a client. Another one of them was sacked for emailing someone in another Government department. And the third of them was sacked for accessing and processing records of people they knew. But when they had a Minister who went out and deliberately as an act of retribution breached the privacy of two women who dared to complain about her cuts then why should we be surprised that that was the next thing that happened?Of course it was also at the Ministry of Social Development where the infamous privacy breach happened with the new system that it had in place where people could go and access their own information on a computer screen. Of course what happened was that the ministry had taken such a lax approach to it that other people were actually able to get sensitive information about other clients of Work and Income and their private information. The rest of that is history.She is not the only Minister under this Government who has led by example in breaching people’s privacy. The Minister of Justice Judith Collins—in fact in her role as Minister for ACC—was also embroiled in a privacy scandal. This was the ACC information that related to a complaint by BronwynPullar. We would never have known BronwynPullar’s name except that somehow her name as the complainant in this piece got leaked to the media. By the Minister’s own admission there were only four people who had BronwynPullar’s details—the Minister herself one staff member the then chairman of ACC John Judge and ACC’s chief executive. There were just four people. We still do not know to this day which of those four people leaked that information. [Interruption] Well I have not seen it publicly disclosed but I think we can all guess what the answer would be. Even Michelle Boag who is closely associated with the National Party—in fact she is its former president—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 a friend of the National Party and what she had to say when commenting on how BronwynPullar’s information happened to get in front of the media.While I am speaking about Judith Collins she promised at a conference that she spoke to during Privacy Awareness Week in 2012 that during the first half of 2013 she would table in this House a privacy bill that would replace the outdated Privacy Act. Well we are heading into November and we still have not seen hide nor hair of that bill—lazy Minister lazy Government. Obviously they are not on top of this issue and are not taking privacy issues seriously.So what does this bill do? Any party that is taking privacy breaches seriously will be supporting this bill tonight. If parties do not support it they cannot get up and say that they take privacy breaches seriously. So I look forward to the Government’s support on it.What does the bill do? It does two things. They are two things that were recommended in fact by the much-maligned Law Commission—the Law Commission that National has just spent the last hour maligning in this Parliament. The Law Commission does indeed do some very very good work. The two measures in this bill are the following things. First of all the bill gives the Privacy Commissioner the ability to investigate any privacy breach without having to have an individual complain to her first. That is very important because often as with the sole mothers in the example that I gave before people actually do not want to make complaints particularly against Ministers and with the power relationship involved in that. It is very difficult for individuals to make complaints.The second measure that it brings in is that the Privacy Commissioner can actually require agencies to do particular things to fix up their privacy settings within theirorganisations. Currently as the law stands the Privacy Commissioner can make recommendations but agencies do not have to take any heed of that. This bill will fix it. It is an important step forward for actually getting to the heart of this litany of privacy breaches that have been happening under this Government and I know that parties that take these privacy breaches seriously will indeed use this opportunity tonight to support this legislation.