Govt plays down latest privacy breach

The junior office worker responsible for the latest Work and Income privacy breach isn't going to be "hung out to dry", Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says.

Ms Bennett and Prime Minister John Key on Wednesday played down the breach, saying it was the sort of human error anyone could make.

It happened when a Work and Income client was handed a piece of paper listing the names of beneficiaries and the type of benefit they receive.

It had apparently been used as scrap paper and had a hand-written note on it.

The woman who received it says it was included in an envelope of her own paperwork, and had a note written on it telling a staff member to contact her.

"I think we have to cut people a bit of slack," Mr Key told reporters.

"It was human error, someone wrote something on a piece of paper and there was information on the other side of it."

Ms Bennett says it was an innocent mistake that shouldn't have been made.

"We have got a relatively junior office worker who made a genuine mistake and I'm not going to hang them out to dry," she said.

Ms Bennett was questioned in parliament about the breach and opposition MPs jeered when she said her ministry "takes security issues seriously".

She said mistakes had been made for years, and had happened under the Labour government.

Labour's social development spokeswoman, Jacinda Ardern, says she has discovered another breach - a job seeker was given a list of positions, took it home and discovered among the documents information about a client who had recently been released from prison.

"The minister needs to acknowledge that we now have a raft of breaches," she said.

Ms Bennett said she had only recently learned of that incident.

The latest revelations follow a huge security flaw in Work and Income's computer system which allowed blogger Keith Ng to access details of children in care, foster parents, lists of debtors and the name of a person who committed suicide.

All the kiosks have been shut down and all the state sector's publicly accessible systems are being reviewed.