Plain Language Bill

During the last debate on this bill, it was call No. 7 that we ended on; so the next call is for speaker No. 8, which is a member of the Labour Party. I call Ginny Andersen.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’d like to congratulate the member in charge of this bill, Rachel Boyack, for promoting a bill that makes good sense. As members of Parliament, we know the importance of having things communicated clearly, and that’s even more important for people we’re dealing with in our constituency. I can say that having a bill that promotes plain language is a good thing to do. Look, while it might sound—I want to give an example of where “bureau-speak” or Government-speak can cause real confusion and difficulty for the average person in New Zealand to be able to understand what the Government or what agencies are communicating. Here’s a great one, here’s one from the New Zealand Transport Agency’s 2017 report, and it says that they are going to “‘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.” So, in other words, they want to improve the customer service and spend the money more carefully, which would be easier to say it that way.

So while in Government documents it’s important, it’s also just as important if communicating to people—and as I say, in my role is as an MP, quite often people will front up with a letter they’ve received and it might be even from the local city council, it might be from a Government department, and a big part of that is reading line by line and helping to translate what the intent of the communication is. So it can be a barrier for people to access Government services and also to access justice if they’re wanting to understand.

I had someone who came to my office, probably just about a month ago, and it was in relation to accessing legal aid and, look, I had to ring up the number myself. I read through it three times and it was still not clear about what the entitlements of the person were. So having it in clear, everyday language is an important way of making sure that people know their rights, know what they are entitled to and be able to access those services.

It’s interesting to note that in the explanatory note of the bill, the member has noted that “The US Congress passed the Plain Writing Act of 2010 [and] This requires the US Federal Government to write all … publications, forms, and publicly distributed documents in a ‘clear, concise, well-organized’ manner that [they must follow] the best practices of plain language writing.” So the point of that bill back in 2010 in the US is to improve the effectiveness and also to improve accountability of federal agencies by promoting clear Government communication that the public can understand. This bill does exactly the same: it promotes the use of plain language in official documents and also online in official websites.

“Comprehensible information from government organisations is a basic democratic right.”—it’s important that people know what they’re entitled to and that that is made clear in plain English. To make that “a standard for all official public and private communications in New Zealand.”, will make that clearer to people who want to know what they’re accessing. And that’s even important because more and more people are going online to access their information and to make sure that that is communicated clearly.

So, look, I would like to commend Rachel Boyack, the member in charge, for picking up this bill. New Zealand is at its best when we can understand and easily participate in our democracy and this bill aims to further that by making sure that everybody is on the same page. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Plain Language Bill. I think I would reinterpret that title in plain language. It’s a bill looking for a problem. This is a bill which is really just—I just think, in plain language, just a joke. I mean, this is a bill which is, effectively, just trying to increase bureaucracy at a time when the Public Service is an all-time huge, massive beast, and now we are saying that we need to employ more people so that we can have plain language. Look, that’s a great intention. We all want to see documents in plain language. We all want to see, when we get a letter from the Government, that it clearly states what we are required to do. That’s all very good intent, but here we are, passing a piece of legislation which is just another piece of bureaucratic intent, which is going to clog up our Government departments. I can tell you that this will not make one single difference to people’s lives in New Zealand. The difference it will make is a whole lot of additional jobs in the Public Service.

We’re now going to have plain language officers running around. Each department has to appoint a plain language officer, who is responsible for ensuring that every document and every communication in that organisation is written in plain language that is easily understood. I’m looking forward to seeing how much that’s going to cost the taxpayer. How many millions of dollars we’re going to have to employ? What the qualifications for a plain language officer? What degree? Do they need a degree in linguistics?

💬 Hon Member: Failed School Certificate!

Just a School Certificate? Well, School Certificate’s a bit old for me. I guess that’s NCEA level 2 or NCEA level 3. I didn’t do School Certificate; I did the English standards under the NCEA framework. I mean, that’s something we could put into plain language, isn’t it? We could turn NCEA into something much more plain language which people can understand a bit better. I’m sure there’s plenty of little opportunities for these little plain language officers to be running around, meddling in lots of business. Will they be having to check every email which goes out to a constituent or to a person or a customer of that particular Government organisation, making sure that the language is checked and it’s plain language, it’s easily understandable?

I just think it’s going to be an absolute waste of time. I just think this Government needs to really reflect on its own use of language. You know, the Prime Minister talks about how she’s got a great degree in communications, and she’s able to communicate to New Zealanders. Well, before the Government goes and tries to meddle in every single Government department to try and make sure that every document and email and everything is in plain language, why don’t they consider looking at how their own communication is for New Zealanders? Because I can tell you that people coming to see me in my office are not lining up at the door with their little letters and saying, “I don’t know what this says. Can you please explain it to me?” or “This Government annual report, it needs to be explained.” What they’re coming in and saying is, “Actually, all these COVID rules and regulations and nonsense and, you know, everything the Government says about, you know, we’re now in—what are we in?—phase 2 of traffic light red after step 3 of level 2?”

💬 Hon Member: That’s not plain language.

I mean, that’s not plain language; that’s pretty darn confusing. New Zealanders are pretty confused. They’re frustrated. They don’t know how they’re going to get their rapid antigen test. They don’t know who’s actually a critical worker, who’s not a critical worker.

There are so many things this Government should be doing to actually make sure it’s communicating properly to New Zealanders, and that doesn’t require legislation. That just requires good management. That requires good communication. That requires the Government actually intentionally desiring for New Zealanders to actually know what the rules and regulations are as we go through this time of COVID-19. It doesn’t require a piece of legislation which will, effectively, create more bureaucratic jobs in Wellington—because, let’s face it, that’s where all these plain language officers will be employed. What we need is a Government which is actually addressing the real issues facing New Zealanders—the issues which mean that businesses can access rapid antigen tests, that everyone can access rapid antigen tests, so we can make sure we have the tools that will get us through this pandemic, not having a whole lot of plain language officers.

I just imagine they’ll have their plain language conference. They’ll come together for a plain language conference.

💬 Hon Member: What will they call it?

I’m not sure what they’ll call the plain language conference, but you can see they’ll all get together in Wellington once a year for their plain language conference. The Public Service Association will come along to give a presentation, and they’ll all have their cups of tea, and scones with cream and jam, and the reality is taxpayers will be paying millions of dollars, and all of those reports—there’ll be absolutely no difference. This is not a bill the National Party supports—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member’s time is up.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Plain Language Bill. I first want to acknowledge the member who is in the House this afternoon, Rachel Boyack, whose name this bill is in. I’m just reflecting on the previous contribution by Simeon Brown—

💬 Simeon Brown: A good contribution!

Meh. You were sort of joking, making really flippant statements about a conference for plain language experts, and I thought that that was really mean. Because, actually, again I’ll reflect back—when I graduated from Waikato University, started my job at Te Ohau Kaimoana as an in-house solicitor, one of the courses that I went on was a plain language writing course, and it was actually a really valuable course to attend. In my time, both working at Te Ohau Kaimoana and then amongst my community as a consultant representing in the Waitangi Tribunal claims, one of the things that I saw—a lot—was people’s difficulty in understanding what it is in legislation and what’s required of them, or what’s in Government departments’ booklets about processes, policies, and procedures. And so, often, my job was to attend hui and to interpret all of that and present it to them in a way that they could understand and that we could make decisions as a collective and move forward on.

Now, my belief is that people who are expected to abide by the law or to follow policies and processes and procedures when accessing things from the Government should be able to read it, should be able to understand it—they shouldn’t need a lawyer who is breaking it down for them, interpreting it so that they can understand it. We just had a bill on issues around access to justice, costs for services and so on, and we had a member over there dismissing this bill. This bill is actually trying to address the very issue that people have come forward to me asking me to help them with. So I’m glad I’ve sat through both of the debates and have picked up on the inconsistencies, or people not actually seeing what this means in application.

So this bill promotes the use of plain English in official documents and websites, and I actually think that that’s a great proposal. 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 think that that is a great goal that we should have. They may think that that’s what they are currently doing, but maybe through this legislation they will see that, in fact, there are lots of examples of where we are not achieving what this bill sets out to achieve.

I do note that the member has made a comment here or is clear that 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. I can’t speak for those who use sign, but I can speak as somebody who is also fluent in te reo Māori. I know it’s not proposed in this bill to expand into that area, but some would argue that we should use some plain te reo as well—ha, ha!—because there are some words that are used that, you know, we have a similar problem of trying to interpret that and understand that. So to all of our licensed translators and interpreters, maybe something for us to think about, for te reo Māori. My husband being one of those qualified translators, and I also think the Hon Peeni Henare has his certificate too, so I don’t think that this is actually just an issue for English. Possibly our ethnic caucus will also say that this is common across other languages as well, but maybe we can set the trend that—at least in one of our official languages—we will aim to achieve plain language writing in all of our official communications, so that people who are trying to access the services of Government can clearly understand what it is that they need to do, the process that they need to follow, what actually is being provided, and so on.

So with that, I do want to commend the member for bringing this bill to the House, and I want to commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take the final call and have the right of reply in the first reading of my member’s bill, the Plain Language Bill. It has been nearly four months since the first reading of this bill began, and so as part of my speech preparation this morning, I pulled up the Hansard from those speeches in October and reread the comments from colleagues across the House so that I could respond to them now.

So I will begin with responding to comments from National’s Chris Bishop, which I must say were a disappointment to me and showed, I guess, a National Party that is out of touch with the needs of New Zealanders who come into our electorate offices every day seeking support understanding Government documents. He made some interesting comments that I thought were interesting, given Mr Bishop has spent time in a Minister’s office as an adviser a few years ago. He made some comments stating that Ministers, we don’t have to waste Parliament’s time passing legislation; there are endless ways for Ministers to do that. They can actually just direct it through things like letters of expectation.

So it was interesting to pull up some comments from the Minister the Hon Gerry Brownlee, that Mr Bishop worked for when he was Minister. So this is a comment from the energy and resources Minister back then, Gerry Brownlee, when his adviser was Mr Bishop. I thought, “Well, I wonder why Mr Bishop didn’t make a direction around this comment.” So I thought I’d read this one around energy and resources: “The regulatory function of the Electricity Commission was identified at the Jobs Summit by many sectors as delaying transmission investment and being a blockage to both infrastructure investment and expansion of jobs.”

💬 Hon Member: Makes sense to me.

Mmm, well, actually, I would respond to the member that, actually, this is what shows just how out of touch the National Party is, that, actually, many New Zealanders would not be able to understand that. I think that’s what we need to do in this House is ensure we’re actually making sure documents are understandable by all New Zealanders. So I just want to acknowledge that point was made by my colleague Glen Bennett—that point was made by my colleague very well, that, actually, it’s about our service to the people when we are writing these documents.

Just a note on the comments made from my colleague Jan Logie from the Greens, who described the bill as a golden retriever. Those of you who know me will say I just need to put on record, it’s a golden Labrador. So golden Labrador is how I would describe this bill, although I do like golden retrievers quite a bit as well. Ms Logie also made the point around ensuring this is part of our role as servants of the public: to ensure that people can understand documents. She also commented around the need to improve sign language services, and while that isn’t within the scope of the bill, I do commend the member for those comments and I agree with them.

My colleague Steph Lewis made some really useful comments around the role of lawyers—and we have many lawyers in this House. I do say, with respect, that often lawyers are our people where we need to begin some of this work with. She made comments around phrases like “null and void” and that when she was in law school, she was taught about how lawyers would often be paid by word, and so there was an incentive to increase the number of words being used. That’s part of the role of plain language is actually, like that sentence I read before, any sentence that’s longer than 20 words is actually considered under plain language rules as being too long.

I just want to note again a number of electorate MPs—unfortunately not Mr Brown, but a number of electorate MPs like Ingrid Leary, like Ginny Andersen, and like Willow-Jean Prime understand, as I do, just how often people come into our offices seeking support to understand letters from Immigration.

Just to respond to Mr Brown, actually, what they found in the United States when they introduced similar law, it actually improved the efficiency of the public sector. It actually saved money—it actually saved money. All the wasted money having to interpret these documents, that actually this type of approach saves us money and improves efficiency. So on that note, I look forward to hearing the submissions as part of the Governance and Administration Committee, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Plain Language Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m.

The House adjourned at 12.55 p.m. (Wednesday)