The Commerce Commission says it won't name the bank its Chairman John Small referred to as "recalcitrant," because it wants to "protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence."
Speaking to Parliament's Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee on December 3, Small noted a recent meeting with a bank CEO about open banking.
"One of the other commissioners and myself had a meeting with one of the big bank CEOs 10 days ago. We wrote to them because we considered them recalcitrant in several ways. And the CEO came in, we had a cordial discussion, and resolved things that way," Small said, and Interest.co.nz reported on December 4.
Interest.co.nz then asked the Commission which bank Small was referring to and who else attended the meeting. The consumer watchdog turned this query into an Official Information Act (OIA) request. The consumer watchdog responded to this "request" on Friday.
The Commerce Commission says it decided to withhold the name of the "recalcitrant" bank under the following OIA section.
"9(2)(ba)(i): to protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence or which any person has been or could be compelled to provide under the authority of any enactment, where the making available of the information would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public interest that such information should continue to be supplied."
"In making these decisions to withhold information, we have considered the public interest in making the information available. In this case, we have determined that the public interest does not outweigh the need to withhold the information at this time," the Commission said.
It did say Commissioner Bryan Chapple attended the meeting with Small.
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13 Comments
yes be interesting if Governments and their agencies had to publish a justification for all policy decisions against a framework
Value for money
Who this benifits
How will it improve peoples well-being
What is the environmental impact
How does it address poverty and inequality
how will its success be measured
i somewhat agree, i am also a believer that the general public would not make good decisions.
i am an employee and i have opinions on how the company i work for could be better, that does not make my opinions correct and if i were in control could result in the demise on the company i work for.
there are several reasons why i do not have a say in some of those decisions, it could be lack of experience, maturity, skills in a relevant topic.
having to justify everyone policy would slow down decision making and cost more money, some thing need justification, some do not. they justify them on election when they either improved outcomes or not.
i am an employee and i have opinions on how the company i work for could be better, that does not make my opinions correct
You haven't thought this through. As an employee, you are paid by the company to do work to benefit the shareholders. Those shareholders have put money into the company and have every right to be kept fully up to date on important facts, risks and actions being taken by the company. As citizens we are more like the shareholders in every way, including the fact that we have to right to vote and change the "directors" running the show. The additional dimension to consider is that government and its officials must be accountable to the citizens. The more they hide from us, the more they evade their accountability to us. The exact same occurs when they place their accountability to other entities (whether they be billionaires, banks or Big Pharma) ahead of their accountability to their own citizens.
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