Plain Language Bill

We come first to the Plain Language Bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

I’m pleased to begin the debate in the committee of the whole House stage of my bill, the Plain Language Bill. The purpose of the Plain Language Bill is to improve the effectiveness and accountability of Public Service agencies and Crown agents, and to improve the accessibility of documents that they make available to the public.

New Zealand is at its best when we can all understand and easily participate in our democracy. The Plain Language Bill is important because clear information from Government organisations is a basic democratic right. The bill will make it easier for members of the public to engage with public sector agencies. This bill will make a real difference to how our Government agencies communicate with the public.

For the purpose of the bill, plain language means language that is appropriate to the intended audience; and clear, concise, and well organised. The definition talks specifically about recognised guidelines of plain language writing, and it’s important, I note, that we place the obligations on defining those guidelines with the Public Service Commissioner.

The Plain Language Bill requires a reporting agency to use plain language and ensure that relevant documents for which it is responsible use plain language. A document for which a reporting agency is responsible is relevant if the document is in English; the intended audience is considered to be the general public; it provides information about what services are provided by, or on behalf of, a reporting agency, or information about how to obtain those services. A “relevant document” means a document that is necessary to obtain a service, file a tax return, provides information about a benefit or service, or explains to the public how to comply with Public Service requirements.

The select committee made specific reference to documents that incorporate te reo Māori. We noted that the Public Service incorporates te reo Māori in many documents and we do not want to discourage agencies from using te reo Māori in their documents. We inserted clause 4B(3) to make it clear that the Act would not restrict a reporting agency from including te reo Māori in any relevant document.

The committee also included clause 4B(4)(a), which outlines that a standard form or template may be considered a relevant document. This is because these documents may be used to communicate with a significant section of the public. On this matter, I’ve had representation made to me as an electorate MP about these particular documents, such as documents that are sent from Work and Income and Immigration New Zealand, that are template documents that are often difficult for people to understand and require some level of interpretation from an advocate. It was important to the committee that these documents were included. However, a standard email that a public servant may be sending to a member of the public just in a back and forth style email exchange would not be covered. So we made that clarification clear.

I also want to note that the bill does not apply to documents under the Official Information Act just because they are subject to the Official Information Act. Documents that are internal documents between public sector agencies and, for example, Ministers or other agencies are not considered to be public documents in the bill.

I’m looking forward to taking more calls throughout this debate on further parts. I’m looking forward to hearing questions and looking forward to the debates in the House on this bill. On that note, I’ll finish this call and come back shortly.

Thank you so much, Mr Chair. Now, look, this is a bill which, I have to say, could be renamed the “Lackadaisical Language Bill”, a bill that seems to think that people cannot look up a dictionary or even work through what things mean. Suddenly we’re going to have some plainer language and it’s all going to make sense! I thought it was because the member in charge of the bill, Rachel Boyack, raised the issue about the use of te reo in documents. We certainly, as MPs, often get complaints about people—that they find it hard working out some of the news these days because so much te reo is being used. Now, I personally support the use of te reo—it’s obviously an official language of New Zealand—but it is important to bring people along with us in that, and that we don’t end up making people feel that they can’t understand what’s going on.

She’s raised the issue of te reo, and I think we need to know—we know that, in English, it is not actually that hard to find easier, plainer words to say often the same thing. If we look at the history of English, we can look at—say, in the legal profession, of which I have some knowledge—the words “will” and “testament”. They used to be used all the time and now mostly “will”, and why is there “will” and “testament”? One, because “will” was the Anglo-Saxon term and “testament” was that brought over by the Normans. So we have quite a lot of those sorts of terms—“give” and “bequeath” is another—where an Anglo-Saxon term is used along with the Norman term, and what has happened, actually, is that usage over the years tends to have been modified to go for the shorter version, which is often the Anglo-Saxon word. I have to say that the Anglo-Saxon language seems to have quite a lot of very short words and often very blunt in their meaning. This is probably one of those bills that it could be used for—some of these blunt meanings.

I don’t understand how it is—and perhaps the member could answer this: has she undertaken a study to make sure that te reo has some more plain language words? I’m not an expert in te reo, and I wonder if there are te reo terms which are much shorter and plainer than some of the other te reo words, or is there simply one word that’s not dependent on who is speaking it? Is it just simply the word? So perhaps she could answer that, because I’m not the expert and I’d like to hear from her.

Thank you, Mr Chair; thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Plain Language Bill, which I would describe as a solution looking for a problem, because ultimately there’s a lot of words being used. I haven’t actually done a word count, but someone should do a word count, because I’m pretty sure it could be, basically, a sort of a letter from the Public Service Commissioner to the entire Public Service saying, “Please use plain language, kind regards.”—could actually have fixed the problem. Rather, we’ve got many thousands of words. But I’m not sure if the member has done a word count. I’d be interested to know if she has; and, if so, how many words are in this piece of legislation.

But I have got a number of questions that I will be asking about this piece of legislation throughout this afternoon. And I guess the first place I’d like to start is at the definition of plain language. And it says here in clause 4A “What is plain language”. Now, it doesn’t end with a question mark, it’s a statement, which I thought was a bit odd and it doesn’t sound very plain at all. And then it says, “In this Act, plain language means language that is—(a) appropriate to the intended audience”. So I guess the first question is: are there different levels of plain language that can be used, dependent on the particular intended audience for a document, and how are the Public Service departments going to be able to assess whether they’re using that appropriate level of language? Because clearly that is the first part to the definition that they have to meet. So first they have to clearly know, obviously, who the intended audience is, and then I understand some bits later on in the bill try to narrow that down, but they also have to know what the appropriate level of language for that intended audience is. So I guess the question is: what does “appropriate” mean in that context? Are there various types of plain language that could be used, dependant on the different type of audience?

Subclause (b) is: “clear, concise, and well organised.” Now, obviously we kind of all know what clear and concise and well organised means; however, does this require the particular Public Service departments to use any particular software? Because I know there’s a lot of software out there, such as Grammarly, which will provide a number of different ways for people to be able to use language. Does that require that sort of language to be used in that context?

The next clause is 4B, “What documents must use plain language”, and this is a really large section. So, for people listening at home, there’s a lot of words in this section, and I would say it’s clearly not plain language, the way this bill has been written. Again, I’d ask the member whether she’s considered whether this bill could have been written in more plain language. And I guess a broader question is: does this bill require legislation? Does this bill actually require legislation to be written in plain language? Because, I can tell you, there are a lot of people up and down this country who are paid to interpret legislation, and they do a very good job of it. And the point is that legislation is complex, but it’s also a public-facing document. Every piece of legislation is available on the legislation website in the archives—it’s available. So my first question here is: what documents must use plain language? Is legislation covered by the plain language requirements of this legislation? Because if it is, I would put it to the member that this piece of legislation that she is bringing to the House doesn’t use plain language in a number of cases and should be considered as to whether it actually complies with the very piece of legislation that she is bringing to this Parliament.

The next point I’d like to raise is in regards to the documents. And it says here in clause 4B(c) “the document—(i) provides information about what services are provided by, or on behalf of, a reporting agency”. So, look, there’s a range of different things here regarding the document “(ii) provides information about filing, registering, or lodging information”, “(iii) explains to the public how to comply with a requirement”. So there’s a range of different sort of narrowing down factors here to try to narrow down. So I guess the question is: how did the member come to the point where she’s come up with this definition of legislation or documents which should be narrowed down to? Where was the scope decided to be drawn to try to actually determine what documents should use plain language and what documents shouldn’t? Because I think the public have quite a lot of questions about that.

Thank you, Mr Chair. My question is around clause 4A(a). Clause 4A states “In this Act, plain language means language that is—(a) appropriate to the intended audience;”. Mr Chair, as you know, I obviously come from a family and a community that has English as a second language—believe it or not! I spoke Mandarin and only Mandarin when I first came to New Zealand when I was five and I had to pick up English through primary school, and that was quite an enjoyable process because I knew my fellow classmates were also just on their journey of learning the English language, especially the written language, the spelling as well.

To the member in the chair, I just really want to understand, in terms of consideration during the select committee process and advice from officials, whether the intended audience was people who have English as their second language. Was that ever intended? And what benefits would this bill bring in terms of the interpretation and the translation process, and what benefit would that bring in terms of making sure that the Public Service in New Zealand could communicate more clearly with that community?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, members, for the questions, and I’ll take this call just to go through some of those questions and respond to them.

I’ll just respond first to the questions from the Hon Judith Collins regarding te reo Māori and the use of te reo Māori in documents. This has actually been quite an interesting discussion through the select committee process. Even in earlier readings, some of my colleagues who’ve worked in the law, in particular, made comments, I recall, around the need for Māori, at times, to be written with plain language in mind. The bill is explicit that it refers to English within the documentation that’s used. The comments I do want to make on this, just for the committee of the whole House, just for clarity, is that there are often times when words come into everyday use from Māoridom that become used within documents—we think of words like “mahi”, like “kia ora”. In Nelson, we often say, “Nelson Whakatū”. These are the types of words, and there are phrases—there are many examples that often are used within documents.

There are often times within public sector agencies, and other organisations, where they will actually also translate that—it doesn’t happen all the time. I’ll note, though, that—for example, with the weather, there is often translation. So what was really clear for the Governance and Administration Committee is that that’s actually something that we like to see. We want to encourage te reo Māori as an official language of New Zealand, and we want to ensure that that is upheld within documentation, but recognising that this is changing over time, and that, over a period of time, more words like “mahi”, for example, become more widespread and more understood by society, and people are more willing to accept those words within documents.

Just to talk specifically around the use of the phrase “intended audience”, the original writing of the bill had “intended reader”. Through the select committee process, one of the things we considered was that “intended reader” could be quite defined, whereas what we want to do is ensure we’re talking about the public generally, or, potentially, groups of people within the public. And I just note comments from my colleague Naisi Chen—who was also a very helpful member of the select committee as we went through the bill—that there could be times where a document is intended for a particular group of people, a particular ethnicity, a particular age group, a particular region, where it might be necessary to ensure that we’re thinking about that audience.

On that point, what the bill does—and we’ll come to this when we come to Part 2, but I’ll just foreshadow now that there is an important part in Part 2 around placing the obligation of setting those guidelines around plain language on the Public Service Commissioner, and that, actually, the select committee’s view was rather than rushing all of that detail into the bill, into the legislation, it should go into guidelines issued by the Public Service Commissioner, rather than stipulating all of that in extreme detail across into the bill. We will come to that in a lot more detail in Part 2 of the debate, and I’m very happy to engage at that point.

Mr Brown also made some acknowledgment around software. Again, I’ll probably come to this a bit in Part 2 as well, but just noting that for people who have accessibility needs, there often is software that can be applied, such as readers of PDFs—that’s incredibly useful for people who have impaired vision, and this is another matter where I’ve had constituents come to me directly around documents they’ve—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: So why isn’t that in the bill?

RACHEL BOYACK: —received. And so—we have written that into that bill, we’ll get to that when we get to that point in Part 2 around accessibility. I recall that conversation that we had in select committee around accessibility—we put that in for that exact reason.

Just noting, as well, around the type of documents that will be covered, there are two essential components to this. One is around services that people have access to. As someone who lives in New Zealand, there are services and benefits that people have access to, and understanding what those are is really important. The other part is the obligations placed on people. Again, those are, essentially, the two pieces. As a New Zealander, as somebody who lives in New Zealand, what are your obligations, and what are the benefits and rights that you have. The bill seeks to ensure that that information is presented to the public in a way that can be understood, to ensure people have access to the benefits that they’re entitled to and that they comply with the requirements of them. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Mr Chair. I have three questions for the member in charge of this bill, but before I do, I think the comment in our interjections on the bits that were in Part 2 highlight the folly of this bill—that is this is a bill to provide for guidance. Actually, what we should be doing is just providing guidance through the Public Service Commission on what plain language is, because there’s no absolute requirement to follow the guidance. That’s why they call it guidance. So my first question to the member in my examination of Part 1 of the bill is: given that this bill was in the ballot for the thick end of about 12 years, why is it that there wasn’t a departmental disclosure statement, there wasn’t a regulatory impact statement, nor was there a cost benefit analysis—no advice—to support the consideration of the bill? So why were those 12 years wasted?

My second question to the member is: does she have regard for the organisations like the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee, like the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the New Zealand Law Society? And if she does, why was their advice not followed? Because, going in order, the LDAC, the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee, recommended the bill not proceed. It said that “Legislation should only be made when it is necessary and is the most appropriate means of achieving the policy objective.” Now, if those guidelines were being followed, what the member in charge of the bill is saying is everything has to be by law and that the most appropriate means of implementing a policy is to just pass a law.

We know that not to be the case. Certainly, LDAC knew that not to be case because they said, “Don’t do this.” The Office of the Clerk used very coded language, but his office was very clear that there were problems with this bill and that it shouldn’t proceed. He said that the requirement in the bill is uncertain and without consequence, that the lack of a consequence for non-compliance undermines the intent of the bill, and that plain language is not—in the writing of the bill—a clear legal requirement. So that’s my second question: why, if she has any regard for those organisations, was the advice not followed and the bill not put in the bin?

Now, I was a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, and I should just preface my third question by saying this: when the member in charge of the bill talks about what the select committee decided, it has to be very clear that it was the majority of the members of the select committee, because while we engaged in good faith and, generally, we have a good rapport across the Governance and Administration Committee, this was a waste of time, and National members can’t get that time back and don’t support any of the conclusions that the select committee came to. But I want to go to the interpretation section of the select committee’s commentary. Obviously, the interpretation is in Part 1. I note for the committee members that there are seven references in the section on interpretation that are concerned about interpretation and definition. So in a bill sent to a select committee, specifically designed to set an expectation for documents to be written in plain language, the bill was a mess. The select committee said, “We believe the term ‘intended reader’ could be problematic … [We suggest] the definition would be better framed ... We also note that ‘plain language’ may differ depending on … the audience … [and] readers may have, for example, varying levels of understanding … We also consider that it is impractical to require that the intended reader must be able to easily understand the document after 1 reading.” So we dispensed with that requirement altogether. Definitions are not specifying which guidelines are being referred to. This could create interpretation issues. The committee considered that mentioning “tax returns” could cause interpretation issues. The whole bill, designed to improve plain language, couldn’t be understood and is basically being rewritten. So my third question is this: if it’s so hard to interpret plain language in the bill that the member is sponsoring, why are we not throwing it in the bin?

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity, and I commend my colleague Michael Woodhouse for outlining what I think are some genuine questions for the member to actually answer. Because the reality is that we have to ask ourselves: why are we here spending time on a piece of legislation which doesn’t even have any teeth or any requirements to actually make a difference? Now, we come to Parliament to actually write legislation which is actually going to make a difference. Basically all this could do is lead to some guidelines being published and then basically being put in the file and forgotten, so it’s an absolute waste of time.

But I did note in the member’s response there that she actually failed to answer a question, and it relates to what Michael Woodhouse was talking about, which is the question that I ask. Is “legislation” covered by the definition in clause 4B, “What documents must use plain language”? I ask that question because, plainly, according to the plain—that’s my lay reading of this complicated piece of legislation. It does say here in clause 4B(1)(c) that “the document provides (i) information about what services are provided by, or on behalf of, a reporting agency or information about how to obtain those”—so that’s unlikely to be legislation. But when you get down to “(iv) provides information to the public about a requirement that a reporting agency administers or enforces that may affect their rights or interests;”, when I think of legislation, I think about rights and interests. I think about administration; who administers that. I think about enforcement; legislation includes enforcement—most legislation, except for this one, obviously, for other reasons.

But the question I’ve got there to the member in the chair is: is legislation included? And I would say in the plain language reading of clause 4B(c)(iv) that legislation does provide information to the public. It’s a public-facing document about a requirement that a reporting agency administers or enforces that may affect their rights or interests. And if that is the interpretation of this piece of legislation, then this really does put significant responsibility on all Ministers and members in relation to the language used in terms of legislating in this House.

I know that there have been great efforts made over many years to try to make legislation more accessible so it is more easily read. But the reality is it’s legalese; it’s effectively the way it’s structured, the words and particular phrases that are used, the way clauses interact with other clauses, and the way that sometimes even legislation refers to other sections in other legislation, which does have an impact. All of these things have an impact in terms of plain language.

So I really genuinely would like to know from the member whether this legislation does include “legislation”, because the Crown Law Office obviously would be, I would say, an agency which—well, they’re clearly an agency; they are a Crown agent or a public service agency. They are covered by the definitions of the piece of legislation, is my understanding, and therefore, they have a significant responsibility in terms of drafting legislation for Ministers and in terms of making sure that the legislation that is taken to Cabinet is in plain language and obviously brought to the House before being passed.

So I seriously would like the member in the chair to give this committee some answers to that question. And I think the point of that question is that it shows the level of where this issue starts to affect throughout Government departments. Of course, we’ll get to Part 2 shortly, which talks about plain language officers, and I’m really looking forward to that conversation around plain language officers. But, of course, the more requirements or the more agencies or the more documents which may be covered will lead to more officers needing to be employed to be able to fulfil the grand purpose of this legislation and its great ambition to somehow make all documents plain language, through this piece of legislation. So I look forward to announce that question, and I’ll have more to come after that.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve got a few further questions on Part 1. Some of them have been raised by some of the contributions from this side and also from the member who is in charge of the bill.

I looked at this bill and wondered whether or not this bill itself was written in plain English. Well, is it that plain when we have a word like “Minister” in clause 4—in the Interpretation clause—where that takes 29 words to explain what a Minister is? And that I’ve kept out the “means” bit, because I think that’s unfair to use that.

So a “Minister”, under this, is “the Minister of the Crown who, under the authority of any warrant or with the authority of the Prime Minister, is responsible for the administration of this Act.” A lot of people will take a while to work that one through.

Simeon Brown: We still don’t know which Minister it is.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Or any Minister, really. It’s a Minister of the Crown—“the” Minister, whichever.

I think one of the problems we have—one of the glories of English as a language is that it is a very precise language. There are opportunities to use a multitude of different words for things that, in some other languages, have only one word. If we think of some of the Inuit people, I think they have, you know, hundreds of words for “ice”. In our case, we have different words for different things.

I’ll just take us to an example and I’m going to ask a question of the member. If we look at a word like “legislation”—which we’ve been talking about this afternoon—well, what is legislation? Some people might say, “Well, that means the law.” So why don’t we just say “law” instead of “legislation”? Well, because “law” also includes the common law, it also includes the interpretation of legislation, and it can include statutes. Then, people would say, “Well, what’s that?” Well, that’s Acts of Parliament; we have to explain that one. Well, what about Orders in Council? So the simplistic word “law” is the general word, but then there are all the subsections under it. And that is just one of the issues that we have when we look for the plain language meanings.

Let’s even look at the word “commissioner”. Well, why doesn’t this bill just say what the commissioner is? Public Service Commissioner? Why not just say, “public service boss”? Isn’t that what it means? Is there some other meaning? What is the meaning that’s meant here? Surely it should just be “public service boss”, so we all know, because “commissioner”, of course—as I’ve explained already—is one of those sorts of words that comes from the Norman French that came over to England, and that means four meanings when I had a quick look up for the benefit of the member. That was a member of a commission; someone commissioned to perform certain duties; an official in charge of a Government department, especially a police force; or someone who commissions something—in other words, commissions a painting. So there’s four quite distinct meanings for the term “commissioner” and where the word “boss” might not be such a good alternative.

So my question to the member in the chair—who I have to say has at least been making some attempt to answer the questions, unlike most of the Ministers in this Government—is: how many more pages are going to have to be written to explain what is meant using the precise word that’s already available in English? How many more; has she taken that into account?

Because we already know that there has been, over the last 30 years, a real move towards more easily understood language being used in documentation. Partly, I think, because a lot of it’s now on websites. But has she looked at how much more is going to have to be written? How many more people will have to be employed? And who is going to police it, other than this “boss” of the Public Service Commission? And couldn’t the Minister in charge of the Public Service Commission just tell the “boss” of the Public Service Commission to try and have more plain language?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m just going to take a short call to respond specifically to some questions from Mr Brown, and my apologies for not answering that in an earlier call. Before I do that, I just note that there have been comments and questions specifically around the role of the Public Service Commissioner and the role of plain language officers, and I’m looking forward to getting into that in a lot more detail when we get to the debate on Part 2.

Mr Brown’s question, which I think is a good question to ask, is specifically around whether legislation is covered by the scope of the bill. That is not the intent of the bill. I just note from the departmental report some quite useful information regarding the role of legislation, which is that the premise of the Legislation Act 2019 is centred around promoting high-quality legislation for New Zealand that is easy to find, use, and understand, including allowing legislation to be simpler, shorter, and more consistent, and providing tools for modernising and simplifying legislation. I note that the Parliamentary Counsel Office has been doing a lot of work over a number of years to make legislation, as they work through it, easier to understand. So the bill does not cover legislation and that has not been its intent.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. It’s an absolute pleasure to take a call on this bill, and let’s get straight to it. Let’s get to Part 1, and clause 3, “Purpose”. My question here to the member is in regards to the statement that “The purpose of this Act is to improve the effectiveness and accountability of public service agencies”. My question to the member is quite simply: can she articulate to us how she believes that this legislation is actually going to lead to an improvement in the effectiveness of these organisations?

As we know, quite simply, the definition of effectiveness is around increasing the outputs or the results of these Public Service organisations, and I guess what I am reading into this aspect of the clause is that there’s an inherent conflict in that, because, surely, we’re now creating a bureaucracy that has to go through and review, within a period of six months, all of these documents that are out there within the Public Service and make sure that they comply with this bureaucratic legislation. But that effort has to be undertaken by someone—right? It has to be undertaken by a very finite workforce that we’ve got at the moment, and that means that you can’t do two things at once. Particularly, this Government can’t, but most people can’t. So, if they’re going to be reviewing this to make sure that this legislation is in place to improve the effectiveness, how are they going to be able to focus on the true deliverables that our Public Service entities should be delivering? They can’t do both, so I want to understand from the member in terms of how in practice this will improve the effectiveness.

The second aspect around that is in regards to the implication of undertaking this piece of work, which will mean that other work will not get undertaken, and what impact has the member assessed in regards to the potential delays that this will cause in decision making within our public sector system? The reality is that if you’re going to have to go through and undertake checks and balances and reviews of materials that are published to the public to make sure that they’re compliant with this legislation, then that will take time, and that means that as a result the ability for Public Service entities to actually get information out to the public will be delayed—right? So that’s in here, under clause 3.

So my question is: what consideration has been given under improving the effectiveness of Public Service organisations by the fact that, quite simply, this legislation will cause additional delays in decision making by Public Service entities, because they have to now undertake this new piece of work that previously they wouldn’t have had to do. So how is that being considered, particularly if you think that we’ve just been through a period of a COVID pandemic, and there was the significant need to make decisions under pressure and at pace. Can you imagine now going through that COVID process—hopefully we don’t have to go through that again. But you can imagine that—and I’m going back to this clause 3 of the bill, under Part 1. Well, now, before we send out that communication, we’d better just make sure that it complies with this element, and even if that takes half a day, that’s going to impact the decision making. Therefore, it conflicts with the whole purpose of this bill around improving the effectiveness of our Public Service agencies.

So those are the questions that I’m really wanting to get some comfort on. I’m sure the work and the due diligence around that has been undertaken, but we haven’t even talked about what the actual implication around cost is as a result of that. But we’ll come back there when we get another opportunity. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you, Mr Chair. My perseverance has paid off! I acknowledge the interest in this bill from the Opposition parties. It’s taken a long time, but their calls have really engaged in this piece of legislation, which is, really, fairly common sense. My question relates to the disability sector. I’m interested in the work that the member, Rachel Boyack, has done in terms of engaging with the disability sector and how the member expects that this bill will support the disability sector in terms of engaging with Government agencies, with the Government legislation, with various policies.

Clause 4A in this bill outlines the fact that “In this Act, plain language means language that is (a) appropriate to the intended audience; and (b) clear, concise, and well organised.” If we talk about the intended audience, we have heard from a previous speaker on this Plain Language Bill who simply said all that people need to do is buy a dictionary and then they can understand everything. Is that a little bit simplistic? Is that a simplistic view of New Zealand as a society—that, if someone doesn’t understand something they’re reading on a Government website, all they need to do is buy a dictionary, and that’s fine. So I am interested in a response from the member around that.

We did hear from a submitter who was involved with the disability sector, who said the most obvious reason to use plain language writing is to make important information and ideas more accessible for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and others with disabilities affecting reading, comprehension, and other cognitive functions. So my question, as I stated near the start, is: how does the member expect that this bill will support the disability sector in terms of accessing Government agencies, Government websites, and the like? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. My question to the member is in relation to clause 5 of Part 1. Now, it’s a very simple clause, and it says this: “This Act binds the Crown.” Now, my question—I have a couple of questions about this. Firstly, they seem like pretty straightforward words—

Simeon Brown: What does “bind” mean?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, that’s right; what does “bind” mean? Who is the Crown? But most importantly, did the member follow the process that is set out in the Cabinet Manual before an Act to bind the Crown? The reason I ask this is that in 2002, under the previous Labour Government, very clear expectations were set—as articulated in the Cabinet Manual and in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet guidelines on this—and they say, among other things, this: “In July 2001, the Cabinet agreed that all Cabinet papers seeking policy approval for proposals that will result in Government bills must address the issue of whether the proposed Act is to bind the Crown.” That’s Cabinet papers.

But the overarching requirement is that it—Cabinet—will make explicit decisions on whether draft bills should include a provision stating that the Act will bind the Crown. So only Cabinet can decide whether this Act binds the executive and the Crown. I would love to know whether or not the Cabinet Legislation Committee sat around that big table on the eighth floor of the Beehive and said, “Yes, this is a great idea; we should be bound by this bill when it becomes law.”

Simeon Brown: Well, it’s Chris Hipkins’ bill, so I’m sure he would’ve been—

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well that’s right, Mr Brown. Chris Hipkins is the true villain of this piece, the architect of this nonsense piece of legislation. When he was a bright young thing—probably in a Minister’s office in the Clark Government, giving education advice, I think he was—he probably thought, “I know, I’ll come to Parliament; my life’s work will be complete when I can pass a bill that talks about requiring plain language officers to be introduced.”

I may sound flippant, but it’s very important to know whether the member has sought Cabinet approval through the Cabinet Legislation Committee, that a piece of legislation this House and this committee is now debating has gone through Cabinet. And if it did, were they unanimous in their support? I’m sure it went through the Labour Party caucus, but, in order to bind the Crown, it’s very clear that Cabinet needs to give it the tick.

There are obviously, because we can’t sit without them, Ministers present in this Chamber; perhaps Mr Jackson or Miss Radhakrishnan—

Hon Member: Willie will get up.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yeah, here we go! And here’s the folly of all of this. We now have a bill which says “This is an Act that binds the Crown”. And the Act will do anything but bind the Crown, because there’s nothing binding about it. There are no consequences for non-compliance with this legislation. There is no expectation that there be consequences if one of the 88 Government entities and departments that will be bound by this—

Simon Watts: Eighty-eight!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That’s right, Mr Watts; 88 Government departments, in an Orwellian move. Winston Smith would be pleased with this. He probably in his wildest dreams could not have written a bill quite this mad. The Act will say it binds the Crown, but the Crown is not bound to do anything. There are no consequences for non-compliance with this legislation. So I get back to my central question: did the member sponsoring this bill go through the process required by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, that before an Act becomes law and binds the Crown, Cabinet needed to approve it?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m not sure if the member Rachel Boyack was intending to take a call, but I’m very interested in the answer to the question posed by the Hon Michael Woodhouse, which I think is a very good question, around whether this bill has been through the actual processes or whether that was just something the member—or maybe Chris Hipkins actually put that in there years ago. It probably happened years ago when they were in Opposition and they just didn’t think about whether they had to do anything about it. But, you know, this is a real omnishambles of a piece of legislation and an omnishambles of a Government.

Hon Member: What does that mean?

SIMEON BROWN: Basically, omnishambles can be—if you open the thesaurus, KiwiBuild comes next to it as the definition.

Simon Watts: That’s not plain language; you said “Kiwi” and “build”. There’s no building.

SIMEON BROWN: That’s right; there’s not much building happening by this KiwiBuild Government.

Simon Watts: Kiwis can’t fly.

SIMEON BROWN: That’s right; under this Government the red tape is holding Kiwis back. But the question I’ve got is—back to the interpretation section, which talks about the definition of “public”. Now, I’m not sure if people have given much thought to the definition of “public” before, but this bill includes a definition of “public”, and it says here that “public includes a section of the public”. Now, I’m not sure about that, but that’s a bit of a circular type of argument in terms of that particular definition. But “public” includes a section of the public. In my view, the public is the public—everyone, we’re all part of the public. But a “public” in this bill could include a section of the public. So the basic failure in the interpretation section is it actually doesn’t define the word “public”, because the definition of “public” or the interpretation of “public” includes the word “public”.

Simon Watts: You can’t do that.

SIMEON BROWN: Well, I would have thought you can’t do it. Now, for the people listening at home, this is the ultimate solution looking for a problem. This is a bill which could have just been a Minister writing a letter to the Public Service Commission saying, “We expect public documents to be using plain language. Regards, Minister.” But, instead, we’ve got a multi-page report with a multi-page bill which is going to make 80 different departments employ people to do X, Y, and Z, and it can’t even define the word “public”. Now, I just think that’s absolutely ridiculous. I would like the member to please clarify what is the definition of “public”, due to the fact that the definition of “public” includes the word “public”, and whether there’s a plain language interpretation to that. Of course, putting it in Hansard may help down the road when a plain language officer is having to interpret whether they are actually complying with the legislation, and they’ll be able to open up Hansard and look at Rachel Boyack’s comments during the committee of the whole House and be able to take from the wisdom of this House the real intent that was meant by Rachel Boyack, and I’m sure they will find great inspiration and help in those statements. So I look forward to the member please clarifying the definition of “public”.

But I’d like to now just conclude my comments looking at clause 4B. Clause 4B(5) again provides another, I think, not very plain language interpretation of what I think it’s trying to convey. But it says here that “If a document contains a part that meets the requirements in subsection (1) and a part that does not, section 6 applies only to the part that meets those requirements”. Now, I find that quite interesting. So section 6, of course, requires plain language to be used in the relevant document. Section 4B talks about what documents are plain language. So what it says here—my understanding of what it says here—is that a document may be considered a relevant document for part of that document, but another part of that document might not be considered a relevant document. So we could have a document produced by a Government department, but only part of it needs to be in plain language, and part of it doesn’t. I’d just like the member to clarify to the committee, is she saying here that some documents only need to be partially in plain language, and, if so, where do you draw the line? Is it the first half or the last half? I look forward to the answer to those questions.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to take the opportunity—I was seeking the call earlier but I was a bit slow—to respond to the questions from my colleague Jamie Strange around accessibility. Ultimately, that is a discussion for Part 2, where that comes in. The bill has received a number of submissions from organisations like Blind Low Vision New Zealand, Community Law, and Citizens Advice Bureau, who work with people who have disabilities and require support at times to be able to interpret documents. Certainly, I’ve had representation made to me by constituents, and so I’m looking forward to discussing that further in the debate on Part 2.

Thank you so much, Mr Chair. Although this has been treated as a jolly jape in the House this evening, I actually think that this bill brings something that’s extremely serious to the House. I am expressing some concerns about whether or not it goes far enough. I don’t mean to sound remotely critical, Ms Boyack, but the words “member’s bill” seem to be too complicated for members of the Opposition to understand, when they are asking questions about whether the member herself should have sought Cabinet approval.

Be that as it may, one of the people who made a fantastic contribution in support of this bill did raise the extremely serious question around democracy. This is something that I’d really appreciate your view on, Ms Boyack, especially with regard to this piece of legislation, because the submitter actually raises the extremely important point that this is a really important bill for democracy. I would like to hear your views on how this does actually bring forward greater access to democracy in this House.

I thank the member Sarah Pallett for the question. It’s an excellent question. It actually goes to the heart of the bill, and the purpose of the bill is to ensure that people can understand what Government is asking of them. Actually, one of the things that we, interestingly, in the Governance and Administration Committee have also been looking at is matters related to public governance, to trust and transparency in Government, and one of the factors is people actually feeling that they are connected to Government. When people have documents placed in front of them that are gobbledygook, that they don’t understand—they don’t understand what’s being asked of them; they don’t understand what their entitlements are—we see these people come into our electorate offices. As an electorate MP, people will come in with letters that they don’t understand. It’s often, for example, letters from organisations like Immigration New Zealand, like the Ministry of Social Development, and they require support from agencies like Community Law, like Citizens Advice Bureau, like our offices to assist them to understand what’s in their document.

I recently had one which is a good example—it wasn’t actually a public sector document, but it was a good example—from Chorus writing to an 86-year-old woman in my electorate about her fibre being replaced. She was concerned that her phone line was going to be cut off. She’d taken it to the local Age Concern, who raised it with me. These are the kinds of things that come across our desks as MPs a lot. There have been examples I’ve seen in my office where situations have actually been life and death and related to people attempting to escape warzones, out of New Zealand and back into New Zealand, and weren’t able to understand the documentation provided to them. I mean, it’s not actually a laughing matter. It wasn’t a laughing matter at the time when we were trying to communicate with that constituent who was in a different part of the world and was trying to escape a warzone.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: It wouldn’t be covered by the Act.

RACHEL BOYACK: Well, I would say actually that it would, because the communication went to a section of the public. It wasn’t a one-off document; it went to a group of people. It went to an intended audience.

Simon Watts: Are you going to answer the question?

RACHEL BOYACK: So, to answer that question, a group of the public—

Simeon Brown: What does “public” mean?

RACHEL BOYACK: The hint, Mr Brown, is in the clause that talks about intended audience. One of the items raised in the discussions was that there will be times when we are actually looking to communicate with a group of people quite specifically, and the bill will cover that. So that was actually a very good example of a group of people who received the same communication, and my office was contacted around those concerned and there was a representation made to the agency by my office.

So thank you very much for the question, on accessibility in particular, and I look forward to discussing that further in Part 2.

Now, members, I am anticipating a closure motion on my right; however, we’ve now been going for 55 minutes. I’ll be looking very much for new material.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Absolutely!

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): And since we have a new member here, I’ll call the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Mr Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity to make a fairly plain speech on this Plain Language Bill.

I have a fear that, actually, some of the concern about this bill represented by my colleagues who have spoken on it so far may well be because of the lack of plain language in the application of the committee stage that we’re going through at the moment, by the member in charge of the bill.

I wonder how far is this plain language going to extend. Will it simply stop with the legislative process or will it start to invade Parliament itself? In that regard, I’d refer the member to Standing Order 5, so not too far into the book. If I may say, quite plainly, if the member turns over five pages to page 4—because there’s one page that’s unnumbered—then she will find Standing Order 5, which deals with Limitation on moving suspension.

I think given the fact that so many people seem to be unable to fully understand the plain language nature of this bill—because of its extraordinary complexity for a bill that sets out to do such a simple thing—whether the member might like to consider this Standing Order? That is—and this a question I’m asking to the member—“A member who is not a Minister may move a suspension motion only for the purpose of allowing a bill, provision, or other matters in that member’s charge to proceed or be dealt with without compliance with Standing Orders or other order to be suspended.”

Now, firstly, I’d like an explanation from the member in charge of the bill how this particular Standing Order could be improved by some plain language so that more people might understand it; and then once that explanation is given, if the explanation is in line with the attention of this particular Standing Order, will the member consider taking the action that this particular Standing Order advises?

The reality is that this is the guiding document for the way the House works. The guiding document for how legislation is to be dealt with through this House; how public debates are to be dealt with in this House; how a range of other procedural matters are to be dealt with in this House. If this document is not covered by the current bill, then I think that is something that needs to be sorted out and I would hope that, perhaps, the member might consider a Supplementary Order Paper that extends the plain language provisions to impact Standing Orders as well.

If we wanted to make it more complicated, we could go to some of the very early rulings that are found in Speakers’ rulings. Rulings from the 1900s, a couple in there from the 1800s, and even some very confusing rulings from the early 2000s, when there were some interesting people occupying the seat at that time.

So I conclude my contribution—not wanting to take the full time allocated—to allow the member to answer that question. One: what does that particular Standing Order mean; how could it be rewritten into plain language? And once that explanation is given to the House, will the member consider taking that option and making a motion, as is allowed by that Standing Order?

I move, That the question be now put.