Privacy law reforms an open book says Palmer

Law Commission president Geoffrey Palmer has suggested reining back the powers of the privacy commissioner, while casting doubt on whether "relatively light-handed" privacy legislation enacted in 1993 requires major changes.

Speaking at a conference in Wellington, Sir Geoffrey said the Law Commission would publish an "issues paper" next year inviting public submissions to a series of questions on which it had no fixed views, as part of its four-step review of privacy law.

The Privacy Act gives the privacy commissioner – Marie Shroff – the ability to impose legally-binding statutory codes to enforce privacy provisions or to exempt organisations from sections of the act, but Sir Geoffrey said that power would be better vested with the Cabinet. "It is anomalous that a public official should be able to make law in this way."

Sir Geoffrey said it was also "wrong in principle" that the privacy commissioner should be responsible for reviewing privacy statutes that set out the commissioner's own powers.

But he said that the privacy commissioner could be given the power to rule on privacy complaints, which currently need to be heard by the Human Rights Review Tribunal, while suggesting the tribunal or a court could be used to appeal any decisions.

"The way in which complaints are dealt with really does need some consideration."

Privacy law was otherwise relatively sound and had worked better than anyone expected, he said.

Ms Shroff said the results of a UMR poll she commissioned showed that people had become more concerned about privacy and the use of their personal information, and less trusting.

The survey invited people to express concern about a series of issues, such as information about them being held overseas, being used for purposes that were not originally intended, and shared between organisations.

Ms Shroff said the proportion of people who expressed concern about government departments sharing personal information had risen from 37 per cent to 62 per cent over the past two years – though she conceded this might in part have been because the wording of a survey question had changed.

She said it was difficult to tell what people's expectations were, given that government agencies were open to criticism if an agency did not share information with another agency, and the public interest was harmed as a result.

The changes to the role of the privacy commissioner suggested by Sir Geoffrey were essentially technical, she said.

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