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Privacy

This privacy statement explains how the Māori Trustee, supported by Te Tumu Paeroa (‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’) collects, uses, stores, shares and disposes of your personal information. Personal information means information about an identifiable individual, and includes information relating to a death maintained by the Registrar General for Births, Deaths and Marriages.  

This privacy statement reflects our commitment to respecting and protecting all personal information that we hold about you. We review this policy regularly and we might make some changes from time to time. You will always find the current version on our website at www.tetumupaeroa.co.nz

Our Policy 

We only use, store and share personal information collected in accordance with this privacy statement and with Privacy Act 2020.

Scope

This privacy statement applies to personal information collected through our website, social media pages, our platforms like My Whenua, forms we require from you, phone calls and mails we receive, your visits to our offices, meetings we conduct and other interactions with you. 

This privacy statement applies to the following persons:

  • our clients such as landowners, tenants and trustees and their authorised representatives
  • potential clients such as those applying to lease land blocks we manage and those wanting to avail of our services
  • beneficiaries of estates or trusts we administer
  • other ‘associated people’ (such as shareholders, company directors, responsible and advisory trustees) of our clients
  • persons who voluntarily provide us personal information, for example users of our website, those who contact us or connect with us on social media

This policy applies to all capacities in which we exercise our duties, functions and obligations, including when we act as an administrator of an estate, as statutory trustee, as responsible or custodian trustee, or as an agent appointed by other trustees, landowners or of the Māori Land Court.  

Collection

What personal information do we collect?

We only collect personal information where it is necessary to carry out our functions or to deliver the services that we provide you. For example:

  • If you sign up for My Whenua, we may collect your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and date of birth
  • If you want to lease one of our blocks, we may need your personal and financial details
  • If you are a beneficial owner of the land we manage as a statutory, responsible or custodian trustee, or as an agent of other trustees or of the court, we may collect your personal details, your whakapapa, IRD number and bank account number
  • If you are applying for scholarship, we may need your whakapapa 

How do we collect your personal information?

In most cases, we will collect your personal information directly from you, such as when:

  • You apply to use our services, for example on a lease application form, or a form to enable you to receive money you are entitled to as owner of a land or a beneficiary of a trust.
  • You register to use our platforms, for example My Whenua.
  • You contact us by email, phone or make an appointment to visit us.
  • You attend a meeting of owners which we facilitate.
  • You contact or connect with us on social media.

We may also collect information about you from other people, such as when: 

  • You authorise someone else to update your personal information, for example when someone else updates your details on our website, in which case we may ask your authorised person to show proof of connection to you.
  • The Māori Land Court provides us your information in the exercise of their functions like ordering us to make payments to you or to record you as a successor of a deceased land owner.
  • The responsible trustees of the trusts we manage as an agent or as a custodian trustee provide us with your information.
  • We search publicly available information like Māori Land Online data.
  • We engage third parties to undertake investigation on our behalf to enable us to perform our services like collecting rent arrears and locating a beneficiary of an estate or a beneficial owner of a land we manage.

Storage and Security 

How do we store your personal information?

We take reasonable care, or require any third party acting on our behalf, to keep your personal information safe from loss, misuse and unauthorised disclosure.

We store your hard copy personal information within our offices or in outsourced secure, off-site storage. Our primary database on which we store your electronic copy personal information is within a New Zealand-domiciled data centre. In some cases, aspects of your personal information may be stored outside of New Zealand for business continuity/redundancy, or specialised services that are not hosted in New Zealand.

The law requires us to destroy your personal information if we no longer require it for the purpose for which we collected it, or if it is no longer required to meet our legal requirements. If we have to keep it to meet our legal requirements, we will continue holding it until it is no longer required to meet said requirements.

How do we secure your personal information? 

Te Tumu Paeroa take security seriously. We maintain data on behalf of our clients, and as such our website and our systems have security measures in place to prevent the loss, misuse and alteration of information under our control. To maintain the cyber security of our systems and information, our systems are subject to ongoing security monitoring (including activity logging), security analysis, patching, security testing and auditing.

We may use information about your use of our website and other IT systems to prevent unauthorised access or attacks on these systems or to resolve such events. We may use this information even if you are not involved in such activity.

We may use services from one or more third party suppliers to monitor or maintain the cyber security of our systems and information. These third party suppliers will have access to monitoring and logging information as well as information processed on our website and other IT systems.

Use 

We only use the personal information you provided us to achieve the purpose why you provided the personal information, or to perform our lawful duties and functions as required. 

We may also use your personal information:

  • To perform a purpose directly related to why you have given your personal information to us, such as when it is necessary for us to perform our duties as a trustee.
  • Where the law permits or requires its use.
  • To meet our legal obligations, as well as obligations imposed by governmental, judicial or regulatory entities or authorities, and entities that supervise or regulate us.
  • To contact you about your request or query.
  • As part of ‘data matching’ activities, in which we compare your information with information that is public and/or held by someone else (for example, using a service provider to confirm your postal address details).
  • To help us understand your needs and preferences so that we can enhance or develop new products and services.

Sharing and Disclosure

Who would we provide your information to?

We do not generally share your personal information with third parties unless you gave consent or sharing it is needed for the purpose why you gave the information to us. However, we may share your personal information in the following circumstances: 

  • With people or organisations that undertake services for us (such as our technology vendors if we ask a market research provider to get your feedback or carry out ‘data matching’ for us).
  • With the responsible trustees of trusts where we act as agent or custodian trustee.
  • With the advisory trustees to enable us to fulfil out duties as trustee.
  • For a directly related purpose why the information was collected.
  • With the Māori Land Court when required by the court, or required or allowed by law.
  • When we need legal or other professional advice. 
  • With your attorney or authorised person.
  • To new trustees when we are being replaced as trustee or our appointment comes to an end.
  • To help meet obligations imposed by governmental, judicial or regulatory entities or authorities and entities that supervise or regulate us. 

When we disclose your information to third parties, we make sure they are aware of the importance we place on protecting your privacy. They are required to keep your information confidential, and only use it for the purpose for which we have supplied it.

In all other cases we will only disclose your personal information if it is permitted under the Privacy Act 2020.

Right of Access and Correction

How can you check and correct your personal information?

You have the right to:

  • Find out from us whether we hold personal information about you.
  • Access that information.
  • Request corrections of that information, if applicable.

If we have a good reason for refusing a request for correction, you are entitled to request that a statement be attached to the information of the correction that was sought but not made.

If you want to check personal information that we hold, please write to:

The Privacy Officer
Te Tumu Paeroa
PO Box 5038
WELLINGTON 6140

If you make a privacy complaint, we will follow it up through our internal complaints process. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, you can contact the Privacy Commissioner on 0800 803 909 or visit www.privacy.org.nz.

Cookies

Our website, and other web services we offer use cookies. Browser or ‘web’ cookies are small text files that are sent by a website and stored on your computer's hard drive to collect information about how you browse the website.

Cookies are used to:

Measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs.

Remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again.

You can manually disable cookies at any time. Check your browser's 'Help' to find out how (disabling cookies will not affect your ability to use this website).

Data collected may include:

  • Your IP address.
  • The search terms you used on this site.
  • The pages you accessed on this site and the links you clicked on.
  • The date and time you visited this site.
  • The referring site (if any) from which you clicked to reach this site.
  • The device you used to access this site.
  • Your operating system (e.g., Windows 10, Mac OS X).
  • The type of web browser you used to access this site (e.g., Internet Explorer, Google Chrome).
  • Other things like your screen resolution, the release of your installed Flash version and the language setting of your browser.

How to contact us

If you would like more information, have any questions or would like to provide us with feedback about this policy, please feel free to:

Phone us on 0800 943 682 (+64 4 474-4600)

Your call may be recorded. We use these recordings:

  • to improve our service
  • to ensure that we have accurate records of our calls
  • for employee training purposes.

Email us at [email protected]

Visit your nearest Te Tumu Paeroa regional office in Gisborne, Whanganui, Rotorua or Hamilton

Write to us at:

The Privacy Officer
Te Tumu Paeroa
PO Box 5038 
WELLINGTON 6140