A discreet, private person

By EUGENE BINGHAM

Bruce Slane is king of the funny anecdote. So it is surprising that when I ask for his favourite story about cases he has dealt with, there is a long pause. Sure, he can rattle off tales from overseas - the American weight-loss clinic which sold its database to a chocolate company; the credit card holders who were horrified to find processing of their bills had been contracted to a prison inmate work scheme.

But a decade of being New Zealand's privacy watchdog has left Slane guarded about sharing details of the worries of complainants.

Eventually, he comes up with this: a man writes to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner complaining that the police have ignored his request for his file. A new staff member writes to the police seeking an explanation. The police reply, "Oh, sorry, we will hand it over but we seem to have lost contact with the requester". When this is passed on, the man writes back, "I don't know why the police have told you they've lost contact with me. I'm still serving life in Paparua Prison."

There are bound to be countless other strange encounters, but the outgoing Privacy Commissioner is discreet , no matter how they must tickle his sense of humour.

The Government announced this week that Slane, after 11 years in the job, was retiring and would be replaced by Cabinet secretary Marie Shroff. The appointment does not take affect until September, so Slane will still preside over the 10th anniversary of the Privacy Act on Tuesday.

In his 11 years, he has fought and won victories across a wide range of public policy areas. But he also rues that some important protections have been lost and that he has not always been able to hold back the tide of political pressure to extend the power of the state.

Slane had been in the public eye as a former president of the Law Society, chairman of the Broadcasting Tribunal, newspaper columnist and talkback host (both media forays under the pseudonym Bruce Christopher), but he was not known for his links to privacy when the Government began its hunt for a commissioner in 1991.

He had read the legislation which led to the creation of the position, but only because a client, the Casino Control Authority, wanted him to make a submission on their behalf. He applied for the job but did not think he had much of a chance until the Justice Minister of the day, Doug Graham, rang to tell him he would be the country's first Privacy Commissioner.

Slane set up office in his home town of Auckland, taking over the premises of what was later discovered to have been a bondage and discipline parlour. "We still maintain a disciplined approach," he says.

Slane has been involved in a variety of issues, from the goings-on of the Security Intelligence Service to the rights of sperm donors and their offspring. Often, his victories have been largely unnoticed - the insertion of privacy considerations into dozens of pieces of legislation, or adjustments to policies to protect the fundamental right to privacy.

When sports agencies wanted to introduce drug testing, Slane fought for athletes' rights. When the Companies Office wanted directors to declare their age to make sure they were legally entitled to hold office, Slane and his staff suggested it would be better to ask directors to sign an annual declaration.

He has not always won. Early on, he clashed with Social Welfare Minister Jenny Shipley, who wanted the right to immediately suspend the dole from someone if there was a hit on a data-matching programme. Slane thought the person should be informed first in case there was a mistake. Shipley won, but Slane notes wryly the provision has never been used.

He is frustrated that many of the 150 recommendations proposed in his 1998 review of the Privacy Act have not been acted on. He recommended public registers should not be sold in bulk for commercial use, but they still can be. And he is baffled that anyone can still obtain the name and address of a car's registered owner by jotting down the number plate.

"When there was a lot of attention on home invasion, we said, 'Well, some of this information on public registers can be accessed and you get gang members standing outside showgrounds taking down number plates'. But we weren't even able to get through that."

Some of his toughest battles have been over increasing police powers. "Police tend to always talk about, 'Why are you protecting the rights of the criminal?' when what you're trying to protect is the rights of the innocent who are not criminals but are going to be subjected to the same regime as the criminals.

"The battle was interesting because civil liberties groups are not strong in New Zealand and there is no privacy lobby either," says Slane. Without a privacy lobby, he felt people viewed him as some sort of radical.

"From the point of view of protecting liberties of the individual, one of which is the right to privacy, often it might be that the Ministry of Justice, ourselves and the Law Society are the only bodies arguing against the desires of a bureaucratic system to take more away from people. It hasn't bothered me, but I think it's a pity and I think it goes back a little bit to the media."

He does not believe the media challenges the bureaucracy and Government as much as it should over expansion of powers by the state. Slane is also uncomfortable about the willingness of politicians to usher through increased police powers for the sake of looking tough on crime.

"You now have the phenomenon of some parliamentary committees prepared to give away rights more rapidly than the bureaucrats were asking for."

Slane has been aware that his role has meant he has to criticise Government policy while at the same time relying on the Government to finance him. He dealt with this by concentrating on the issue, not the person or politician pushing it. But he has not always felt his office has been treated well by Wellington.

"I was told that because parliamentarians were uncomfortable about privacy principles, they don't want to give any more money to the office. Certainly in the years of Doug Graham, I never got any discouragement. It came back to me from others that he had defended the office.

"I know about him, I don't know about others [ministers of justice] having done that. But if I feel a sense of failure, it's a failure of not getting sufficient funding for the office to deal with the level of complaints. When we needed more money it wasn't forthcoming, and it wouldn't have taken much."

He watched as other bodies with complaints functions - the Ombudsmen, Health and Disability Commissioner and the Human Rights Commission - received enough money to deal with their complaints workload, but it was not until this year that funding was put aside to deal with the backlog in his office.

"There was, I think, a discrimination, but I never said to myself to get money I'd better pull back on some particular issue."

The backlog of complaints was building with more than 1000 complaints received last year, an increase of 15 per cent on the previous year.

With workloads heavy and staff feeling that the office was neglected, Slane says it has been hard to maintain morale over the past four or five years. "I think there was possibly a view that we could get rid of more of these cases that were trivial. It wasn't until we had consultants in last year that I believe the ministry was completely convinced that there was no prospect of catching up."

Nonetheless, Slane says he has had excellent staff. He believes most came on board not because they were interested in privacy, but because they thought it would be an interesting job. "We didn't have people who arrived here with an agenda of their own ... I think that has been different from other human rights organisations."

Slane credits his assistant commissioner, Blair Stewart, for helping to build the reputation of the office here and overseas.

If nothing else, the office has become renowned for its Christmas cards, designed and drawn by one of Slane's three children, cartoonist Chris Slane (whose illustration of his father appears on this page.)

Slane came to the job media-savvy, but he has not had an easy ride. He jokes that early in his tenure, he was responsible for the rare feat of having all the editors of the country's papers agree on something - they all wanted the act repealed.

He has also disagreed with some of the arguments mounted by the media in support of the right to photograph and publish stories about celebrities.

"The argument was put up that because Paul Holmes sold his wedding rights, when he was seen on a balcony off the street, he was fair game [to be photographed.] It is very close to the argument that if you've had sex then you can't be raped."

Slane believes the office has made great gains in the health area, where many people are careful about where their information is passed. He has had cases where people go to their family doctor for most problems, but for extra-sensitive conditions, they go to another doctor. "In an integrated healthcare system that shares records, should your regular doctor get records from your other doctors?"

The thing about privacy is that it is such a private issue. "What worries one person doesn't worry another. Some people will be very close about their income, others will tell everybody what they're getting. Some will be absolutely close about their health information, others will bore you to tears with descriptions of their ailments and what the doctor said."

But over the decade, people have become more assertive about their right to privacy, and as people's awareness of the right to privacy has risen, fears about certain aspects of the issue have diminished. When he first took the job, the privacy bogeyman was data-matching, which conjured up images of Big Brother.

Slane believes that time and careful monitoring have allowed public confidence to grow.

"Although there are still people who write to us and say, 'I want to know all the information Government departments know about me', and they have this idea there's a central box."

Slane's mouth curls into a familiar smile to raise the tantalising hint of another story about a complaint. But once again, the Privacy Commissioner's instincts kick in. We don't get that story.