National fails to fix leaks | The Jackal

10 Apr 2013

National fails to fix leaks

Yesterday, there was a rather heated exchange during question time about the unprecedented amount of leaks of information by government departments since National gained power.

During the exchange, Bill English, speaking on behalf of the absent Prime Minister, made a number of inaccurate statements to straight forward questions. Here's an excerpt from the Hansard:

David Shearer: Following privacy breaches at the Earthquake Commission, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, ACC, the Inland Revenue Department, Work and Income, Novopay, Housing New Zealand Corporation, the Ministry of Education, the Medical Council, and now the Ministry of Justice, when will the Prime Minister act to make sure that New Zealanders’ personal details are not being revealed?

Bill English: He certainly acted before the Leader of the Opposition revealed his personal details about his bank account in New York.

David Carter - Speaker: Order! That sort of answer will not help the order of the House. Would the Deputy Prime Minister please address the question?

Bill English: The Prime Minister has acted. There has been an extensive review of the data-security procedures in all Government agencies. I think what has become apparent is that these kinds of events have almost certainly been going on for many years, but now they are drawing public attention and are unacceptable to the public. I can tell that member that the audit of security processes followed by agencies showed that under the previous Labour Government nothing was done. Many of them had no procedures whatsoever, and that is why the Government has to move decisively to upgrade those procedures.

Somebody should inform English that government department's leaking private information has been frowned upon for a very long time, and it being unacceptable isn't a new phenomenon. What is new is the amount and size of recent leaks, which seems to coincide with National restructuring our public sector.

Trying to blame Labour when there hasn't been even one documented breach of people's private information to the same extent of any we've seen under National is rather pathetic! Winston Peters highlighted just how pathetic the Deputy Prime Minister’s answers were, when he asked:

How can the public have any confidence in the assurances that have just been given when the first thing that happened to the Kitteridge report was that it was leaked?

The NZ First leader is right... The public should have no confidence in this government to implement the changes required to ensure our personal information is kept safe. This fact is more than adequately displayed by the continued leaking of people's personal information by government departments.

Yesterday, the question of Nationals incompetency was put beyond doubt by Judith Collins, when instead of graciously heeding Labour MP Clare Currans' warning about private information being accessible through the Ministry of Justice's website, the idiotic Minister of Justice incorrectly claimed that the "hacking" was unsuccessful.

Somebody needs to inform Collins that there's a big difference between accessing information that's on a public server and hacking, as I'm sure her mate Cameron Slater would attest to. Besides, if the "hacking" was unsuccessful, why did the Ministry close down parts of their website?

One has to assume that government departments have become totally dysfunctional since their restructuring, with widespread redundancies of key personnel leading to substantial technical and structural problems.

The irony is that National often claim the government doesn't create jobs... Well they can certainly take them away, and now we're seeing some of the consequences to their ideological drive to reduce overheads. Unfortunately the degradation to our state sector services will end up costing the country far more than is saved, and not just in monetary terms either.