16 Apr 2021, 09:00

A man complained to our office in 2017 because Oranga Tamariki requested information about his criminal history from Police and discussed it with his partner. Oranga Tamariki said the collection and disclosure of the man’s information was part of its process to determine whether it was safe for the partner’s daughter to return to live with the couple.

The man claimed Oranga Tamariki breached his privacy by seeking his criminal history and disclosing it to his partner without his consent. He said the disclosure caused him stress, anxiety, humiliation and loss of dignity.

Privacy principles

The man’s complaint raised issues under principles 1, 2, 4 and 11 of the Privacy Act.

Principle 1 says personal information should not be collected by any agency unless the agency has a lawful purpose connected to its function or activity as an agency.

Principle 2 says the agency shall collect the information directly from the individual concerned, unless it has reasonable grounds for not complying with this principle.

Principle 4 says personal information shall not be collected by an agency by means that are unlawful, unfair, unreasonable or intrusive.

Principle 11 requires an agency not to disclose information unless it believes one of the exceptions supplied in principle 11 applies.

Our investigation

We contacted Oranga Tamariki about the complaint. The agency acknowledged it had collected information about the man’s criminal background from Police using section 66 of the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989.

Section 66 says every government agency shall, when required, supply information relating to any child or young person where that information is required for the purposes of determining whether the child or young person is in need of care or protection.

Oranga Tamariki explained the information was needed to develop a safety plan for the return of the partner’s daughter. The girl had been in the care of Oranga Tamariki for a period of time.

Part of this process includes a Police check on household members over the age of 17. The check was not part of a caregiver application but was to ensure the safe return home of a child or young person. As a result Oranga Tamariki said it did not need to get the man’s consent.

Oranga Tamariki said the disclosure of the Police information to the mother was necessary to promote the girl’s safety. The information was disclosed by an Oranga Tamariki employee in relation to the safety plan - one of the purposes for which the information was collected. As both the complainant and his partner were named as participants in developing the safety plan, the Oranga Tamariki employee believed it was okay to provide this information.

The agency acknowledged that best practice would have been for its employee to share the information with the man first, or at least at the same time as it was disclosed to his partner.

Our view

In our final view, we said section 66 of the Oranga Tamariki Act allowed the agency to collect information about the man from Police. Section 66 was acting as an override to the Privacy Act (see section 24 of the Privacy Act 2021). We concluded Oranga Tamariki had not breached privacy principles 1-4.

It was also our view that the disclosure of the information was one of the purposes for which it was collected – namely to assess whether it was suitable for the girl to be returned to her mother and to develop a safety plan around that return. We were satisfied Oranga Tamariki’s disclosure to the mother was appropriate.

We informed the man that Oranga Tamariki had not interfered with his privacy and closed the file.