Stewart, Blair --- "PANZAand Meeting, Wellington, March 2003" [2003] PrivLawPRpr 15; (2003) 9(10) Privacy Law and Policy Reporter 199

PANZA+ Meeting, Wellington March 2003

Blair Stewart

The 16th meeting of the Privacy Agencies of New Zealand and Australia plus Hong Kong (PANZA+) was held in Wellington on ,26-27 March 2003.

PANZA+ is a closed meeting ,of the privacy commissioners ,from New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong, together with certain government officials having relevant responsibilities for privacy matters in their jurisdiction. The twice yearly meetings are hosted by different agencies each time and move around within Australia and New Zealand. The meeting in Wellington was timed to coincide with a major conference, ,the Privacy Issues Forum, being ,held at the Parliament Buildings on 28 March. Given the important developments in Asia, it was decided to invite a number of Asian officials ,to join the meeting as observers on ,this occasion.

Five Privacy Commissioners participated in the meeting, from Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, New South Wales and Victoria. Representatives also attended from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department, South Australia ,Privacy Committee, Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet and the New Zealand Ministry of Justice. Officials from the New Zealand Ministries of Consumer Affairs, Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade, joined the meeting for particular items. Amongst the invited observers were representatives from the Korean Information Security Agency and the Justice Affairs Bureau, Macau SAR.

In addition to discussing issues from the jurisdiction reports received from participating agencies, discussion ranged over a variety of items ,such as:

• aspects of privacy complaints handling including mediation techniques and classification ,policies;
• funding of commissioners’ offices with reference to issues surrounding income obtained from other than government grant (sources, methods, quantum benefits and pitfalls of income generating activity);
• increasing reliance upon single purpose documents (such as driver licences) as identification to access government and non-government services;
• the 25th International Conference ,of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners to be held in ,Sydney in September; and
• the trans-Tasman Joint Therapeutic Products Agency.

International issues featured more prominently than is normally the case. For example, presentations were received on the Asia Privacy Forum and the Asia Pacific Telecommunity as well as receiving jurisdiction reports from Korea and Macau. UNESCO’s consultation on a revised outline of ,the International Declaration on Human Genetic Data was noted. Considerable time was devoted to receiving a report back on the APEC Data Privacy Workshop and Senior Officials meeting (SOM I) held in Chiang Rai in February and to discussing the resultant project of the APEC E-Commerce Steering Group (ECSG) Data Privacy subgroup. The ECSG is to develop Asia Pacific privacy principles and guidance on implementation mechanisms. The meeting was fortunate to receive a briefing from the chair of the subgroup.

The next PANZA+ meeting ,is to be held in Melbourne in ,November.

,Blair Stewart is the Assistant ,NZ Privacy Commissioner.