By 3 News online staff
A major privacy issue discovered at Work and Income New Zealand this week is continuing to dog the Government, and now the Green Party is on the attack.
Party co-leader Meteria Turei says the Government department had ample opportunity to fix the issue before it was made public but did not.
“WINZ was told three times that there was problems with those kiosks and didn’t investigate any of those claims properly and in fact potentially defamed one of the agencies that they got in to look at those issues,” she told Firstline this morning.
Ms Turei says the Government has made significant cutbacks in the IT support for departments, which may have contributed to privacy issues – but says ministers are responsible too.
“Paula Bennett is a leaker. She leaks personal information about private citizens because they question her authority,” Ms Turei says, “If she is setting a culture that says leaking is a legitimate activity and disrespectful privacy is a legitimate activity then the whole organisation will have that same culture and I think that’s part of the problem.”
3 News
source: newshub archive
