Plain Language Bill

I move, That the Plain Language Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

The Plain Language Bill promotes the use of plain language in official documents and websites. The purpose of the bill is to improve the effectiveness and accountability of the Public Service by requiring their communications to be clear and accessible to the public. I would like to begin by acknowledging the original sponsor and drafter of this bill, my colleague the Hon Chris Hipkins, and former member of this House Charles Chauvel, who assisted with the drafting. This bill was inspired by the Plain Writing Act 2010 in the United States. The bill in the United States requires the US Federal Government to write all new publications, forms, and publicly distributed documents in a clear, concise, well-organised manner that follows the best practices of plain language writing.

As a new MP, I was asked to take on this bill, and there is a reason that I was delighted to do so. Fifteen years ago, I was a fresh, young graduate starting my professional career in a small public sector agency in Wellington called the Leadership Development Centre. I was given a role in communications, despite having no formal training in this type of work. Instead, I had spent quite a few years at university, where I had learnt to pad out my essays in order to reach the required word count. My boss, Bruce Anderson, who was a pedant and a former teacher of English, used to red-pen my letters and documents, and I soon learnt the importance of brevity and clarity. I was sent on some plain English courses with an organisation in Wellington called the Write Group. Now called Write Ltd, the team at Write, led by founder Lynda Harris, work with organisations to make their written messages clear. The training they gave me helped undo the habits I had developed at university and gave me the writing tools I needed to communicate clearly.

One of the criticisms often put forward against plain language is that by using plain language, we dumb down our communications. This is actually not the case. The best way to explain why plain language is so necessary is to use a real-life example. This one comes from the New Zealand Transport Agency’s 2017 annual report: “Transform the Transport Agency establishes a deliberate change management approach to successfully transition the Transport Agency to the refreshed strategy and the new ways of working. It drives improved organisational effectiveness through tenacious alignment of strategy to business planning, resource allocation and performance measurement. It embeds our new DNA and the shift required to ensure we are customer focused, collaborative, curious, and seeking innovation and value for money in all we do.” In other words, “We are going to improve our customer service and spend our money carefully.”

I could easily fill a full 10-minute speech with examples like that one. While there are some funny examples, there is a serious side to this bill. 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. New Zealand is at its best when we can all understand and easily participate in our democracy. Every day, Government agencies are engaged in communication with the public. When Government agencies are explaining services, benefits, or how to comply with requirements, they should use plain language and avoid jargon. Plain language that the intended reader can easily understand after one reading is the aim of this bill.

As an electorate MP, I’ve seen and read documents, brought to me by constituents, that are difficult to understand. I’m sure that this is an issue that every MP in this House has experienced. I am particularly aware of the need for letters and other written documents to be easily understood by people who have English as their second language. For example, migrants who are seeking to obtain visas or New Zealand residency have the right to receive letters from Immigration that are easily understood. I recently had a journalist ring me and read me a letter that a migrant with English as a second language had received from a Government agency. It took the journalist and I about three goes to figure out what the letter said.

This bill will make a real difference to how our Government agencies communicate with the public. The Plain Language Bill requires a reporting agency to use plain language and ensure that all relevant documents for which it is responsible use plain language. A relevant document means a document that is necessary to obtain a service or file a tax return, provides information about any benefit or service, or explains to the public how to comply with a requirement the Public Service administers or enforces. The definition of “plain language” in the bill means language that the intended reader can easily understand after one reading and is clear, concise, and well organised, and follows recognised guidelines of plain language writing.

The Public Service Commissioner may issue guidance on how reporting agencies may comply with the plain language requirements under this Act. The commissioner will be required to consult with reporting agencies when developing plain language guidance. Agencies will be required to appoint a plain language officer, who will have responsibility for training agency employees, dealing with complaints or requests from the public, and ensuring that the agency complies with the law. Members of the public will be able to raise concerns about documents with the plain language officer. This is an important component of the bill. If a member of the public receives a letter that is difficult to understand, they will be able to raise it with the agency’s plain language officer.

The bill also requires agencies to report to the Public Service Commissioner on their compliance and progress using plain language. No later than six months after this Act comes into force, a reporting agency must report to the commissioner on compliance with the bill. Agencies will then be required to report annually to the public sector commissioner on their compliance. There are some things that are specifically not included in the bill. Nothing in this bill affects Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori 2016, the Māori Language Act 2016, or the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006. This is an important distinction to note. My bill is not designed to undermine the importance of te reo Māori or New Zealand Sign Language as official languages of Aotearoa New Zealand.

I must apologise to all those who have written to me asking for my bill to include our local councils. While this bill does not include local councils, I would encourage councils to strive to include plain language guidance in their documents. Since my bill was drawn, I’ve received a number of supportive emails and messages from people working in the plain language sector or who have worked in Government agencies and been frustrated with the language used. Plain language experts in New Zealand have expressed their excitement at the bill being drawn from the ballot. I received the following email from a constituent who was appointed to a voluntary board of a Government agency in my region, and here is what she said: “The paperwork was littered—absolutely littered—with acronyms. At a meeting, I got fed up with it all, and the response was to offer me the acronym dictionary. Yes, there was such a thing.”

As this bill progresses to select committee, I am keen to hear from members of the public about how this bill will improve their lives and their interactions with Government. I am also keen to hear from plain language experts about how we can make the law work better. It is a privilege to be able to guide this small but important bill through the House, and I thank my colleagues for their support. I commend the Plain Language Bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Well, I was doing my best not to laugh during that contribution. Look, I feel sorry for the member who’s sponsoring this bill, Rachel Boyack, because she’s a diligent and conscientious and hard-working member who has been landed with one of the stupidest bills that will come before the Parliament this term—I mean, it really is. You just have to read the bill that she’s proposed to realise some of the stupidity that the Parliament is now going to have to waste its time dealing with at the Governance and Administration Committee, as I’m sure the bill is going to end up there.

Now, I remember when this bill was drafted, because I was working in the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s office at the time, and one of my jobs was to monitor the legislation that backbench members of the Opposition were putting forward. And suddenly, one day, the Plain Language Bill appeared in the members’ ballot, in the name of the now Hon Chris Hipkins. And I remember thinking, “What on earth is this? The Plain Language Bill?” I remember reading it, and this was about 11 years ago now, and I remember thinking, “This is crazy.” I kid you not, the bill proposes that reporting agencies—so Public Service agencies; the entirety of the civil service—and Crown agents, so that’s NZQA, the Tertiary Education Commission—there’s a whole list of them; you can look them up in the Crown Entities Act. We’re talking about thousands of people working at different agencies. The bill literary proposes that every reporting agency has to appoint a plain language officer—a plain language officer; “1 or more individuals”. Their job is to educate agency employees regarding the requirements of the Act—and it’s worth noting that the Act is literally 11 clauses; so that won’t take very long—deal with complaints or requests from the public regarding their compliance, and ensure the agency complies with the provisions of the Act.

So all of the Public Service is going to have to spend time finding plain language officers inside the civil service, jobs-worthy schemes—it’s like a make-work scheme for civil servants and public servants inside the Public Service. I mean, it’s ridiculous enough that every corridor of every department in every building in Wellington has to have a fire warden and all the rest of it, and then endless meetings to discuss all that stuff, but, no, no, now we’re going to have to have, literally, plain language officers, who, no doubt, will have sort of monthly meetings to sit around and talk about how they can make one acronym into elongated words, or something like that. I mean, it’s just actually comical. So Rachel Boyack has had this bill landed on her, and I don’t believe her when she says, “I’m really excited the bill’s been drawn. I’m really excited about it.”

Look, I know how this works, right? To the Labour backbenchers, I know how this works. Here’s how it works: you’re in Government, you’re not allowed to do anything controversial from the backbench, because, if it was controversial and it was a good thing to do, the Government would be doing it. If it’s a good bill and it should be advanced by the Government, a Minister will do it, right? I know that’s how it works; it’s totally understandable. So Government backbenchers have to come up with bills that are discreet, small, make no difference whatsoever, but are just controversial enough that they might indulge the support of the House and make their way to select committee. And, basically, in Government we used to call them “ballot stuffers”. They’re bills to stuff the ballot that won’t get in the way of Government Ministers actually doing their work. I know that’s how it works, because that’s how we ended up the left luggage bill that caused a lot of mirth and derision in the last Parliament. So I know that’s how it works, right?

And this bill is a classic ballot stuffer. It’s a bill that Chris Hipkins has dreamt up in Opposition 10 years ago—and then, by the way, he took out of the ballot for quite a long time, probably because he one day picked it up and looked at it and went, “Well, actually, I’m a serious political figure, and I want to be a frontbench Minister in the next Labour Government. Is it really a good idea to put to my name a bill that requires the appointment of plain language officers and, without any enforcement mechanism whatsoever, says that a whole swath of the Public Service have to issue six-monthly reports to the Public Service Commissioner on whether or not they’re using plain language or not, and requires training to staff on plain language and all sorts of other stupid, waste of time, jobs-worthy ideas?” So Chris Hipkins said, “Actually, I think I’ll just take a rain check on this one. I’ll put this one in the bottom drawer and, when we get into Government and I’m on the front bench, some poor sap backbencher is going to end up with this bill.”

And now here we are; Labour’s won Government—and, by the way, this wasn’t in the ballot, as far as I can recall, in the last term of Parliament.

💬 Hon Member: Yes, it was.

Oh, it was? Well, that’s even worse. It was. He actually did. And so here we are: Rachel Boyack wasn’t in the last Parliament, she’s become an MP, she’s won the marginal seat of Nelson—congratulations. Here she is in Parliament. She hasn’t come up with an idea for a member’s bill, and they’re doing the whip-round in the Labour caucus and Rachel Boyack has drawn the short straw and picked up the Plain Language Bill. It’s been put into the ballot, and I reckon she was secretly sitting there and going, “I really hope that bill doesn’t get drawn, because then I’m going to have to turn up and pretend that I’m excited about it, and I’m going to have to put out all these press releases and say it’s a great idea. Oh, I hope it doesn’t get drawn.” And then it got drawn. And now here we are, on a Wednesday night, coming towards the end of the year, debating and spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money debating this stupid piece of legislation that’s going to go to committee. And now we’re going to have the Governance and Administration Committee—I don’t know how busy they are, but they’re going to have to indulge this endless rigmarole of this stupid bill. I’ll make a prediction right now: the bill will not pass into law, because eventually the Government is going to come to its senses and Ministers are going to realise it’s a complete waste of time.

Why is it a dumb idea? Firstly—firstly—it is not needed. I mean, if Ministers want the civil service to engage in plain language writing in documents that go out to the public, I’m not opposed to that, obviously; I’m in favour of simple, clear, and concise writing. You do not need to pass a Plain Language Act to make that the reality; in fact, it’s likely to have the opposite effect. We do not have to waste Parliament’s time passing legislation to say that that is the law. There are endless ways for Ministers to do that. They can write letters of expectation. They can write various statutory documents that go to a variety of the Public Service agencies we’re talking about here. They can write letters of expectation to the chairs that are involved or to the Public Service chief executives. They can just actually direct it, and I don’t know if this story’s public or not, but it’s about to be: when Gerry Brownlee was the Minister of Defence—I think this is on the public record—endless briefing notes with acronym soup and he said, “Well, this is pointless. You’ve got 15 different acronyms on one page. You’ve got to sort this out.” And he just made them sort it out. That’s what an effective Minister can do. You see, this bill is not needed—that’s the first point.

The second point is there is no enforcement mechanism in here. And Rachel Boyack says “Oh, it’s going to make a real difference. We’re going to enforce plain language.” How? There’s nothing in there. It’s just a series of feel-good statements. It just means that we have to have a plain language officer. Every reporting agency has to have one of them. They have to educate people. They’ve got to deal with complaints. They have to make reports to the Public Service Commissioner. Oh, we’ve got to issue guidance! The Public Service Commissioner can issue guidance on how reporting language may—not “must” by the way; it’s not a “must”. It’s not a didactic imperative; it’s a “may”. So they’ve given a little bit of discretion. How generous of the member to give some discretion to the commissioner! I reckon the commissioner will choose to do so, though. The commissioner may issue guidance on how reporting—and that’s it. It’s literally 11 clauses. The first four are the perambulatory ones—the title, the commencement, the purpose, the interpretation, and it binds the Crown. So, actually, in reality, it’s six clauses. That’s it. It’s only, like, four pages. It’s a 3½-page, 4 if you’re luck, bill. There’s no enforcement mechanism, there’s no way of making language more accessible and cleaner and simpler. There’s nothing in there. There’s literally nothing in there. There’s no enforcement mechanism. What is the penalty for the poor Public Service officer who writes a briefing note that the Minister doesn’t understand? What’s the penalty? What’s the Minister going to do? Ring up the Public Service Commissioner and say, “Mr Smith, I got this briefing note and I did not understand it. You need to punish him or her.” I mean, is that what’s going to happen? No, obviously it’s not what’s going to happen. It’s ridiculous. There’s no enforcement mechanism.

So it’s not needed. There’s no enforcement mechanism. It’s just a make-work scheme inside the Public Service. Frankly, the Public Service have better things to do with their time than spend their life coming up with plain language documents or plain language officers and reporting up to the plain language commissar inside the Public Service agency they’re talking about. They should have much better things to do with their time than that. This bill is one of the stupidest bills to come before Parliament. We will oppose it because we oppose over-burdensome regulation, including for the Public Service. Rachel Boyack is a hard-working and diligent MP, but I feel sorry that she has ended up with this dog of a bill.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Wow! I rise to support this piece of plain language legislation. And I guess, in listening to our previous speaker, when he’s used words like “stupidity” and “dumb ideas”, I’m not sure what school he may have gone to, what university he may have gone to, but, for some of us, we need plain language, not because of our intelligence but because we live in a different world. Not a world that’s based in Wellington, not a world that’s based here in Parliament or in universities or in high-class boarding schools, but people who just live real lives. So I find it offensive that he would say that this is a stupid piece of legislation, and I believe that we need to ensure that we have plain language wherever we go.

Now, language is always evolving, always changing. It’s responding to human needs. And I’m guessing that Chris Bishop doesn’t want to respond to human needs, he just wants to have his own little beltway life with his own language and way he operates. But as language evolves and as it spreads around, it creates different areas and different spaces, and, whether it be in law, whether it be the marketplace, whether it be learning or religion, whether it be in politics or in the Public Service or in storytelling, it’s always reshaping and reforming to fit in with what’s going on within the culture of the time.

Now, having language means you’re able to communicate, having language means that others can understand you, and hopefully you can understand others—I didn’t quite understand that last speech, but that’s OK. But language, when you have it, becomes more powerful when it’s understood by a wider community. Power grows when we can communicate with more people in more spaces. The question I have this evening, and the question I have for Chris Bishop is: “Who is the language serving when it comes to our Public Service, when it comes to what’s happening within Government—who is the language serving?” And often it’s serving the bureaucrats, the politicians, it’s actually not serving the people. And for me, I came into this House to serve the people and ensure that people understand.

Now, I have a quote here from an accessibility activist who talks about “Language is not only a key component of communication, it is also a key aspect of identity. The words you choose to use become part of who you are. Through language, you become part of the community that speaks that language … The more you master a language, the more powerful your connection with your community [becomes].” And I think, when I read this quote, I think about my early life in community development. I remember speaking with a young woman and she was going through a Government department, and she actually wanted to fess up because she was living with her partner and she hadn’t declared it. But she was talking to me one day, and I said, “Well, good, fess up. It’s always nice when you do that. Why haven’t you already?” And she said it was too hard, and I said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” she said, “I’ve got this form I’ve got to fill out and I don’t understand it; it’s 13 pages long. That’s why I haven’t bothered declaring that I’m living with my partner that I shouldn’t be living with and getting this payment.” So we went through it, the complexities of it, because it wasn’t in plain language as it should be.

Also in my work with young people—and how often we are negotiating different services within the Public Service—and often it’s sitting down with them and spending time, which I’m not sure if the previous speaker has done in terms of working through different forms when you’re interfacing with Government agencies.

So for me, this isn’t stupid legislation. This is a brilliant idea because, for me, the people I connect with and work with need plain language, because language is power. And often we like to retain that power. That’s why we don’t want, maybe, this piece of legislation to pass, because maybe, in this House, we might lose some of our power. I want to thank Rachel Boyack for sponsoring this bill. I look forward to seeing it go through the first reading and go to select committee, just to ensure that all people in Aotearoa New Zealand have access, all people in our nation are able to understand, to communicate, and that the language of this House, the language of the Public Service, serves everyone in our nation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise and take a call on behalf of the Green Party in support of the Plain Language Bill. While she may not have written the bill, I would like to congratulate the member Rachel Boyack for getting it drawn and for this opportunity to marshal it through the Parliament, because that is a really special experience.

This is a piece of legislation that the Greens believe will make a real difference. I understand that the National Party member, Chris Bishop, talked about this as a “dog of a bill”. Well, I would see it as a golden retriever of a bill: a really cute, fluffy bill that actually is going to be committed to supporting New Zealanders in being able to find their way around our systems. That is something to celebrate, being a bit of a dog fan as I am. I do just feel like Mr Bishop’s speech was just a little bit mean, to be honest. It was pretty kind of blunt, and it did feel to me like, as an ex - university debater, he was throwing his privilege around like a giant red flag—even to the point of saying it’s bad enough we have fire wardens. Personally, I can’t quite imagine feeling safe in a place where there are not fire wardens; I thought that was pretty much a basic. And saying that “Ministers can do this; this is not required by legislation”: I can’t quite imagine what Chris Finlayson’s direction for plain language would look like, because, I’ve got to say, his speeches in the House were not my understanding of plain language.

The point of this bill is to get the consistency and to recognise that plain language writing is a skill. Anybody who has managed to get through our university system has been trained in writing in a particular way that is actually inaccessible for most New Zealanders, and most of the people in our Public Service come out of our university system. I remember that translation of going into the community and standing aside and sitting beside people, and young people in particular, and trying to talk with them and explain things after I came out of university. It was a massive education for me. To think that a Minister can provide feedback and, suddenly, the entire Public Service is going to have the skills to be able to write simply, in a way that is understandable for people with English as a second language or whatever their literacy skill is, is magical thinking. It requires active support to learn that skill, and that is what this bill is recognising. It really is quite seriously true.

I will say, as well, that this bill—we are very supportive of it, because it’s critically important that New Zealanders understand their rights and their obligations, and our Public Service is the conduit and the communicator of those things. We need the interactions between people and the State to be really as easy to interact with as possible. A lot of marginalisation comes from a sense of disenfranchisement through not understanding what on earth the Government is doing or is expecting of them. We hear from a huge number of beneficiaries who have been sanctioned—that they’ve been sanctioned and they didn’t even know that they weren’t allowed to do whatever it was that they were sanctioned for. We are not—the evidence is very clear—communicating to people in a way that they understand what people’s rights are and what we expect of them in return, and we need to step up to do that better.

I do think this bill possibly could go wider. And I really feel for, particularly, you know, friends who are deaf, who are really struggling with the lack of access to New Zealand Sign Language, the fact that we don’t have enough interpreters, that at Parliament hardly ever do we get that interpretation happening, let alone our Public Service organisations providing easy-read material. Most of our political parties are not doing that either. We need to step up for everybody in this country, because it’s core to feeling like we are part of this team of 5 million. We have to be able to understand each other. This is a good start, and the Greens are happy to support it.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to table the 10 pages of guidelines issued by the Hon Chris Finlayson in 2014, headlined “Finlayson embarks on a jargon jihad”.

Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection?

💬 Hon Member: Yes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): There is no objection.

💬 Chris Bishop: I think she said yes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Does Labour want to take its call?

💬 Chris Bishop: I think she said yes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh. There is objection. So Labour doesn’t want its call?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise this evening on behalf of ACT to speak on this bill. So the purpose of this bill, according to the text here, says, “The purpose of this Act is to improve the effectiveness and accountability of the Public Service by requiring their communications to be clear and accessible to the public.” Well, that sounds like a great idea. I think we probably needed that on 4 October when the Prime Minister announced the Government’s phased approach to reducing alert levels in Auckland, which is apparently going to give way to a traffic light system anyway. So you never know, actually, this bill could do some damage—it could be a problem for the Government, especially as the wheels of the well-oiled PR machine slowly start to fall off. I also can’t quite tell if this is a good or a bad thing for taxpayers in the long run, with Labour spending something like $300 million since 2017 on spin doctors. They might even need more with this, so a little bit of a worry there.

Definition in the bill: “plain language means language that—(a) the intended reader can easily understand after 1 reading;”. Well, thank you for clarifying that, and also thank you to the member sponsoring this bill for pointing out that this doesn’t include New Zealand Sign Language. That was an important point that we needed, I think, somehow.

In Part 2, clause 6(1) “A reporting agency must ensure that all relevant documents for which it is responsible use plain language.” The problem with all of this with simplifying language is that we can create different meanings and different interpretations and all sorts of different standards from Government, and the last thing we want to do is cause confusion. In clause 8—Chris Bishop has already landed on this a little bit—the plain language officers: “A reporting agency must appoint … plain language officers”. What a fantastic sounding bureaucrat, honestly! And no later than six months after this Act the reporting agency must report to the commissioner its appointment of a plain language officer. And I just think, “What, on every Government agency, and how many will they actually need within six months?” I mean we’ve got a bit of a skills shortage right now, don’t you realise. It might actually be quite hard to find people to do this. So, I mean, just imagine the amount of unnecessary red tape that this bill, if it becomes an Act, will cause.

I just wanted to also touch on the issue around migrants and English as a second language. Look, I think that’s a well-meaning thought, but, frankly, I think this is a solution looking for a problem. I’ve worked with migrants for years, not just here, of course, but also in an immigration law firm, and I’ve read countless letters from Immigration New Zealand. Admittedly they are a little bit convoluted at times, and that’s being generous, but this bill will not solve that. Those one-on-one or transactional letters from Immigration New Zealand are usually case officers or immigration managers to clients. There is no way this bill, with its plain language standard and its plain language officers, is going to change that. There are thousands of letters and emails sent every day. I think it’s just such a nonsense argument to use the letters from Immigration New Zealand to justify this.

But in any case, this bill has been floating around for years. I kind of hoped that it would come here to die. And I agree with Chris Bishop, I think this is just one of the stupidest bills I’ve ever read. We oppose this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call in support of the Plain Language Bill. I want to begin by congratulating my colleague and friend Rachel Boyack on having her first member’s bill drawn from the ballot. I know, contrary to views expressed by members opposite, she is genuinely excited to have this bill drawn and I’m genuinely excited to be supporting her on this bill.

See, I remember back in my law school days—where they do teach plain English there now—and in the first year we were told that historically drafters were paid per word. It’s how we ended up with many long, convoluted, and complex pieces of law that somebody in the street just can’t understand without legal training or help. It’s how we ended up with phrases like “null and void” and “common practice”. Both words mean the same thing, either one would do, but why use just one when you could get paid for two!

There are laws in effect today that were still drafted under those times, and I believe if you expect people to follow the laws, then they need to be able to read them, understand them so they know their rights, their obligations, and what’s expected of them. They should be able to be understood easily at a glance with one read through by somebody in the street. I support this bill because it will go some way towards achieving that goal by promoting the use of plain language in official documents and on official websites.

As the member, my colleague Rachel Boyack, said earlier, every day Government agencies are communicating key messages to people in our communities, to the general public. And when they are providing information about their services, as I said, individuals need to clearly know what their rights and responsibilities are. So that means that the onus is on those agencies communicating the messages to keep those messages clear, concise, and as simple as possible. That way, New Zealanders can easily understand and participate in our democracy.

Plain language, as discussed tonight, is about using simple, clear, concise language that is well ordered and easy to understand. But take this sentence, for example, “It was a written notice by a tenant given pursuant to the lease agreement.” It’s much simpler to say, “The tenant gave notice under the lease agreement.” See, that sentence has been shortened by five words and used words that are easier to understand without losing any of the meaning. There are lots of examples in official documents and on websites where multiple words are used where just one would be sufficient. For example, “a number of” could simply be out as “some”. Likewise, there are lots of examples of words which could be simplified in plain English standards: “accorded” could become “given”, “adjacent to” could simply become “next to”, “adversely impact” could become “hurt” or “harmed”. You get the idea; the list goes on and on and on.

Like many other MPs in this House, I too have helped many constituents who’ve walked into my office struggling to understand the documents that they’ve been provided with by our public sector agencies. That is why we need this bill. We need plain language so as our democracy is accessible to everyone in our communities. I commend this bill to the House.

I’m not sure that the Opposition members understand the purpose of this bill. It’s about creating a culture of plain language. That is clearly what has been missing in the Public Service. Official information is a way that the public can scrutinise us as parliamentarians and can access Government services. It is a democratic right. And what this bill does is it goes some way to busting the bureaucracy that so many of us in this House frequently complain of. I can’t tell you how many constituents have come to my electorate in Taieri, needing support just to understand documents that are coming out of Government agencies—important documents relating to housing, relating to immigration, to social welfare, to driver licences, there are so many examples I could give you. And these are not just immigrants who are coming, and second language speakers, these are also people with a good command of first language English who simply cannot understand many of these documents.

As Jan Logie mentioned, plain language writing is a skill. And, in fact, I believe that the culture of unplain or complex language in bureaucracies is part of the risk averse nature that happens when officials are needing to be able to make sure they cover all their bases in advice to Ministers or to other members of this House. But that is not the right language to be using for constituents who need clear, simple advice that doesn’t cover every caveat, that just simply says, “In order to do (a), you need to do (b).” That is why that culture has emerged.

There is a desire to have plain language in the Public Service, but unless people within the service lead on it, unless there is somebody who actually takes that responsibility and leads, it won’t happen, hence the need to appoint the officers. They need to take responsibility, they need to socialise it because a culture change cannot happen without socialisation, and people need to be trained. And yes, there is accountability, because they will be accountable to the people who write in and complain; they will need to respond when the plain English rule isn’t followed.

My colleague Glen Bennett very ably pointed out the real problem that this is trying to resolve. And it may sound trite, and I apologise to people at home who may feel a little belittled by some of the comments from the Opposition, because what this is about is that when complex language means that people don’t understand, those people don’t have access, and those who don’t have access aren’t included, and if they aren’t included then we don’t have a democracy that works. It also sends a very clear message to people from those communities that they are not welcome in governance roles; that the governance rules are only for the elite, only for the educated, only for the privileged.

I’d like to commend my colleague Rachel Boyack for taking on this important bill and also for ring-fencing te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language. Those languages have their own mana, they have their own cadence, their own wairua. They don’t need this bill, but we do, and we need it to make sure that our society is accessible and inclusive to everybody. The plain language of the sniggers and chortles from the Opposition tonight speaks for itself. It is the language of privilege and elitism. I commend this bill to the House and I am so grateful to my colleague Rachel Boyack for taking this stand. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.