Tough stance could cost budget advice service

The co-ordinator of a South Canterbury budget advisory service is taking a hard stance against a new government policy to collect and share personal details by refusing to divulge client information.

Timaru Budget Advisory Trust co-ordinator Don Macfarlane said the trust could lose up to 80 per cent of its Ministry of Social Development (MSD) funding if it did not release client information as required under a newly signed government contract. ’’If [the ministry] wants data about debt, public net numbers ... we can give it all to them now, but we’re not giving out names.’’

Describing the collection and sharing of the personal information of clients as ‘‘unethical’’, Macfarlane said he could see similarities to the totalitarian ‘‘Big Brother’’ policies of dystopian novel 1984.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley challenged this, saying data collection was not about profiling people. ’’We need this information so we can better understand what services people need and use.’’

The personal details of anyone who sought help from a government-funded community support agency would be sent to MSD under the new rules. The ministry would collect name, date of birth, address, gender, ethnicity, iwi and country of birth as well as the number of children and date of birth of a client’s youngest child. It also required details of the services accessed.

Many community organisations were already operating under new government funding contracts, which required them to provide this information and allowed it to be shared with other agencies from July 1.

Macfarlane had complained to The Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which was investigating the matter and was expected to report its findings in late March.