Ministry of Social Development U-turn to release wage subsidy data
Monday, 15 June 2020
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has U-turned on its reluctance to release a list of businesses that have received the Covid-19 wage subsidy.
In April, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said businesses that applied for a handout as part of the $11 billion scheme would be named, to help keep employers honest. The names then became publicly searchable via an online search tool.
However, the search tool returns only five results at a time, so Stuff – and other media – sought the full dataset behind the search tool. It seemed a straightforward request given the information had already been made public, just in a different form. Plus, the same result could be gained by searching every New Zealand company, one by one.
But MSD wasn't willing to provide the dataset, saying it would first have to manually remove sole traders with three or more employees from the list.
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'It was agreed with the Privacy Commissioner they could be included in the search tool because the privacy intrusion for this group of sole traders was moderated by the fact that they can only be searched for on a case by case basis,' said Nadine Kilmister, a deputy chief executive at the ministry, in a statement.
Businesses with fewer than three employees were already excluded from the online search tool, for privacy reasons.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner in a statement said its primary concern with the publication of wage subsidy data was the 'individual privacy of self-employed/sole solders where the only employee is the business owner.'
Its advice pertained only to 'single-person businesses'.
Emma Tomblin, a partner at law firm Duncan Cotterill, said sole traders typically employed one or two people. A single owner was responsible for running and managing a sole trader business. They took home the profits but were also liable if something went wrong.
It would be surprising if there were many sole traders with three or more employees, Tomblin said. 'At the very least, it just wouldn't make sense from a tax perspective.'
Following further advice from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, MSD on Monday released the dataset to Stuff.
In a statement, Kilmister said: 'The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has informed us they are comfortable with us using different methods to provide access to this publicly available data, including making it available as a single dataset, as long as the privacy of individuals where the only employee is the business owner can be guaranteed.'
A snapshot of net payments to employers as at June 11, it showed businesses with fewer than three staff members had received 22 per cent of payments, or more than $2.3 billion.
It remains unclear whether MSD will eventually publish details of all applicants, even very small businesses. During the application process, all were told their details, including their company name, number of employees, and amount received, would be published 'as a searchable file'.
A spokesman for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said: 'We received a number of enquiries from individuals who were nervous about being identified, including sex workers.
'It’s easy to understand why sex workers and others in marginal industries might not want to be identified in the register.'