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Privacy Act 2020

Complaints, investigations, and proceedings - Investigations by Commissioner

85: Compulsory conferences of parties to complaint

You could also call this:

“The Privacy Commissioner can require meetings to resolve complaints”

When someone makes a complaint, the Privacy Commissioner can ask you and the other people involved to come to a meeting. They might send you a letter asking you to come at a certain time and place, or they might contact you in another way that everyone agrees on.

The reason for this meeting is to figure out what the main issues are in the complaint. The Commissioner wants to help everyone agree on how to solve these issues and settle the complaint.

If you don’t come to the meeting when the Commissioner asks you to, they can send you an official paper called a summons. This summons tells you that you must come to a meeting at a specific time and place.

The rules for this summons are the same as the rules for witness summons in Section 159 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011. This means it’s very important that you follow what the summons says.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=LMS23458.

Topics:
Rights and equality > Privacy
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“Commissioner can require people to appear and provide information for investigations”

Part 5 Complaints, investigations, and proceedings
Investigations by Commissioner

85Compulsory conferences of parties to complaint

  1. At any time during an investigation of a complaint, the Commissioner may call a conference of the parties—

  2. by sending each of them a notice requesting their attendance at a specified time and place; or
    1. by any other means agreed by the parties.

      1. The objectives of a conference are—

      2. to identify the matters in issue; and
        1. to try to obtain agreement between the parties on the resolution of those matters in order to settle the complaint.

          1. If a person fails to comply with a request under subsection (1) to attend a conference, the Commissioner may issue a summons requiring the person to attend a conference at a time and place specified in the summons.

          2. Section 159 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 applies to a summons under this section as if it were a witness summons issued under that section.

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