Plain Language Bill

Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 6 to 11, “Plain language requirements”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I know everyone has been very excited to begin the debate tonight on Part 2, which has a lot of the substantive parts of the bill and which we’ve already had some questions on tonight, so I will possibly take a slightly longer call, depending on how long it takes to get through some of this information.

Part 2 states that “A reporting agency must take reasonable steps to ensure that all relevant documents for which it is responsible use plain language.” We amended, at select committee stage, clause 7 so that it was clear that the commissioner “must issue guidance”, rather than “may issue guidance”. We were quite clear as a select committee that requiring the Public Service Commission to have oversight of this legislation without actually requiring that they must issue those guidelines was inconsistent, so we made that change.

One of the important points we discussed at committee, which I do want to ensure is referenced a number of times throughout the debates in the House, is about the Public Service Commissioner looking at international best practice. There was a very specific reason why we did that. There is currently work going on internationally to develop an international organisation for standardisation (ISO) on plain language. For those watching, that’s an international standard that can then be applied for and applied by organisations internationally in order to show they comply with that standard. It’s very common in areas like health and safety and accounting practices, and we have some of our experts on plain language in New Zealand like the Write group, who are actually actively part of the development of that ISO. So what we want to point to quite clearly is that when that ISO is in place—and it could still be a few more years away—at that point, we would expect the Public Service Commissioner to be looking specifically at that ISO in order to develop the guidance.

I do want to take some time just to talk about accessibility. I’ve had members of my community come to me, for example, who are vision impaired, and there are really basic tools that can be used on documents—on things like PDFs—where all you have to do is push a button and the document is read out to you. I had a constituent come to me where that hadn’t been applied to a letter she received from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). She phoned the call centre to ask for the document to be read out to her because she couldn’t read it. They refused to actually read it out to her over the phone and said, “Maybe a friend could do that for you.” Considering the amount of time that she waited on the phone, the amount of time that that call took, the amount of time that it then took that person to go and find someone to read a document out to her, that’s all transactional time that didn’t need to occur if a simple tool like adding the button to turn into a reader had been used.

We had representation from members of the disabled community who said that guidance on some of these types of things—particularly on websites—had been issued by Cabinet but hadn’t been followed enough. They were really clear that they wanted to see legislation because they wanted the strength of legislation to actually show just how important these particular issues are to that community.

Madam Chair—it’s nice to see you, Madam Chair. We’ve had questions tonight about plain language officers, and I do want to talk about this quite specifically—about what their role will be. The plain language officers will have a very important role in terms of education and training of people within an agency. It is my view that there will be many agencies where that work will be picked up by an existing person working, probably, in a communications team within the agency. We have a number of public sector agencies that already have people assigned to do this work, that work very carefully on plain language within their documents, and that engage organisations like the Write group and others to consult on those documents and to train their teams in order to be able to write in plain language. When I was a junior public servant myself, in my first role, I was sent on some of those courses specifically for that reason. There could be times when an agency does not have someone that would be able to fulfil that role. There may be times when an agency is very small and does not have the ability to have someone in their team where they may need to outsource that work. Each agency will need to be able to assess that on their own merits.

There has been a lot of commentary in previous readings and in the media around suggestions from the Opposition that this is going to add cost to bureaucracy. I want to actually tackle that head-on. What we know is that when information is not presented to the public in a clear way, it adds an enormous transactional cost to that agency and to the members of the public struggling to understand those documents. The United States has legislation in place, and this legislation is based off that legislation—or they’ve been amended now, but it was based off the United States’ legislation. When that legislation was introduced, the compliance for people to pay things like taxes and fines actually went up as a result, because information was presented in a clearer way for people to understand.

There is evidence from a Toronto-based organisation that actually studied the business impact when members of their organisation had to introduce plain language. They collected the performance data on that organisation. They found that by introducing plain language, it improved employee productivity by 36.9 percent, it decreased employee errors by 77.1 percent, it decreased the frequency of calls to the helpdesk by 17.4 percent, and it decreased the duration of calls to the helpdesk by a forecasted 10 percent. They then forecasted a positive return on investment. What they found was that it had positive financial benefits for their organisation in introducing plain language. It’s that classic case that sometimes you need to invest in order to actually get the results.

So there may be some agencies that do have to make a small investment in a staffer who is able to support that agency through this change, but what the evidence shows and what the research shows is that it will ultimately have positive net benefits for the organisation in terms of transactional costs, compliance costs, and people, for example, paying their fines, people not having to phone MSD to have a document read out to them over the phone because a simple reader application wasn’t added to that document. I really wanted to tackle that head-on because I think that there’s been a lot of comments in the media that have been, in my view, a bit inaccurate around what this will mean for those agencies.

The other thing about plain language officers which I think will be really helpful will be the ability to receive concerns from the public. This is something that happens with privacy officers in agencies where you can find an agency, find out who the privacy officer is, and contact them to say, “We’ve had an issue, and I’d like to refer that.” That’s something that I certainly would find helpful as an electorate MP when a document does come through that is very clearly not clear and being able to send that somewhere for it to actually be looked at.

There was a specific addition we made into this part, which has had some commentary around 10A being added, which is the “[Bill] does not confer or impose legal rights or obligations”. We were very clear, and there was, I guess, some temptation at times to think that maybe it might actually confer some legal obligations, but we’re very clear that the duty from an agency is through to the Public Service Commissioner and then through the reporting mechanisms that exist that way—as opposed to potentially opening up the Crown to legal action. I know that the Minister of Finance will appreciate that the select committee included that clause within the bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I wonder if the member promoting the bill, Rachel Boyack, would be able to tell us whether or not, in the process of compilation of the bill, the research that was done before the bill was put into a form that would make it acceptable for the ballot, if there was any consideration—research, due diligence, whatever term might like to be applied—to just how many documents that relate to Government would need to be altered if this bill were to pass. Further, has there been consideration of who might do that scrutiny, who might be the body that goes through all of the literature that would relate to legislation and its application, scrutinises it, and makes decisions about its rewrite? Would this, in fact, be a new commission that the Government might be required to put together, with the appointment of people who are qualified in this regard—people obviously not too highbrow, but people who understood and could express themselves well in very plain language.

One of the things that immediately would come to mind would be the Standing Orders of this House. It’s not inappropriate in any debate to discuss Standing Orders; it’s one of the rules of the House because they are, in fact, the rules of the House. So I looked earlier at some Standing Orders that I think could do with quite a degree of clarification. I wonder if the member promoting the bill has had a discussion with the Clerk’s Office about how that piece of work might be progressed. I would refer the member so that I can give an example—because we’ve had very few examples given to us in the Chamber today of actual circumstances where some plain language rewrites of various documents might make a difference to the public. So I’m asking her to look at page 15 of the Standing Orders, and Standing Order 55, which talks about the early sitting or postponement of sittings during adjournment.

Now, think about what that means. So adjournment normally means that things have stopped—they are adjourned. But here we have a contradiction where it talks about the early sitting during an adjournment—a sitting where things are stopped, or when things are postponed. So my question is: will this bill reach this far into the operation of the House? It goes on to say, “Whenever the House is adjourned and it appears the Prime Minister”—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! I’m going to invite the member to come back to Part 2 of the bill, and I will direct him in so doing, at his leisure, but if he wishes to keep going, to—

Well, Madam Chair—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, sorry—I hadn’t finished.

Sorry, you were interrupted over here—I will just take a point of order.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order!

I’ll sit down. Now can I stand?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! No. I would direct him to have regard to the fact that the “reporting agency means a Crown agent or a public service agency.” So if the member wishes to continue his contribution.

Well, that is exactly my point, Madam Chair—exactly my point. I started my contribution here, before I was interrupted by people who clearly weren’t listening to what I had to say, asking the question: how’s it going to work? Who is going to be the agency that makes these decisions?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Well, I’d advise the member to get on with it—

And there’s no advice in what you’ve just given me to say that that’s answered.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean):—not defending his position.

Further, the Chair should not be answering for the member who’s in the chair.

So I ask again: how are these things going to be sorted out? And I’m asking for quite a practical example of how it might be dealt with, because this is very confusing. There is nothing plain about the language used on this particular Standing Order, where it talks about, firstly, it being adjourned, then it says the Prime Minister could say, “Well, maybe it shouldn’t now be adjourned.” But, then, that’s the Speaker who decides whether or not it is adjourned. And if it’s agreed with the Prime Minister that it shouldn’t be adjourned, then the Speaker is the one who decides when the adjournment shall cease and the House shall sit again. This document is full of this very, sort of, convoluted type of language. It’s there in that fashion to make it, believe it or not, easy for those who administer the place to do so. And that will be the case for thousands of documents that relate to legislation throughout the country. So I ask again: what will the structure be that allows this type of consideration to be done? I do hope the member answers in the context of the Standing Orders, of the part we’re looking at, at the moment.

I thank the member for the fascinating question, but I’ll talk through the bill in terms of how the reporting on the bill works. It’s quite clearly spelled out in the bill.

So clause 9, “Reporting agency must report to Commissioner”, says that the “reporting agency must report annually to the Commissioner on how the agency complies with this Act.” Clause 10, “Commissioner must report to Minister”, says that “(1) The Commissioner must report annually to the Minister on how reporting agencies have been complying with this Act. (2) The Minister must present a copy of the report to the House of Representatives within 20 working days after receiving it.” What that does is it brings some transparency into the reporting from the agencies through to the commissioner and through to the Minister. And we will receive annual reports from the Minister via the commissioner to this House on how agencies are complying with this Act, which will be very helpful in terms of transparency, to actually show us which agencies are doing a good job of including plain language and which ones have some more work to do. So it’s a very simple, very straightforward process.

We also amended the commencement date to time this approximately around the time of the annual review time frame. And it’s quite possibly the type of topic that could form annual reviews into agencies that report through to select committees. This is something we also discussed at the select committee process. A very simple process, and I thank the member for his question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to inquire of the member about both the resource that’s going to be required for plain language officers and also add my voice to the question that Mr Brownlee asked, and that was: how many documents are going to be subject to this bill?

But before I do, I want to point out how confused this bill is and how confused the member sponsoring the bill is. In her first intervention on Part 2, she gave us this very interesting story about a constituent that had come to her with an email that contained a PDF that was sent by a Crown agency and how she wanted it to be read to her, and the Government agency had, basically, said, “Well, look, there’s a PDF reader that can do that for you, so off you go and we’re not going to help.” Here’s the problem with that: if it was contained in an email, is it subject to the Plain Language Bill? Because, as we found out in Part 1, if it’s a public document it’s subject to plain language requirements, if it’s in an email it’s not. So what if a public document is in an email? Is it subject to the law or not? Would there be a complaint? Is it validly laid? Would there be a sanction in any event? As we know, there isn’t any consequences for noncompliance, so we are completely wasting our time here.

But here’s my question to the member in charge of the bill—and it’s designed to flesh out the extent to which the public sector is going to have to engage plain language officers, as it set out in Part 2—how many organisations are going to be caught by this? Now, the bill talks about a Crown agent, as set out in Part 1, Schedule 1 of the Crown Entities Act. I don’t know what the entities listed in Part 2 of Schedule 1 or Part 3 of Schedule 1 did to deserve being left out of the scope, but lucky them! And also Public Service agencies, set out under the Public Service Act section 10A. And section 10A talks about, basically, all Government departments, all departmental agencies, all interdepartmental executive boards, and interdepartmental ventures—whatever they are—and includes Crown agencies for the purposes of Subpart 4. The Crown Entities Act goes through a long list of organisations: ACC, Callaghan Innovation, and so on. So I would like to know whether the member has actually counted the number of organisations that are captured by this bill. It’s fundamental to the question of how many plain language officers we’re going to have and how much resource—taxpayer resource—is going to be diverted into having these plain language police running around, vetting every single document that appears on every single website of every single Crown agency covered by the bill.

We didn’t have a departmental disclosure document, we didn’t have a regulatory impact statement, and we didn’t have a cost-benefit analysis, but I think this committee—it behoves us to work out for the member and the Government, who obviously support this, what on earth we are going to be committing to if this bill is passed: how many organisations, how many documents, how many plain language officers?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to continue with the line of questioning that my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse is asking around plain language officers, because this is one of the key clauses of Part 2 of this legislation—plain language officers. Clause 8 requires: “A reporting agency must appoint as plain language officers for the agency 1 or more individuals (within or outside the agency) whose responsibilities include”—not just making sure that they’re plain language documents—“(a) educating agency employees regarding the requirements of this Act: (b) dealing with feedback from the public about the agency’s compliance with this Act: [and] (c) ensuring that the agency complies with this Act.” And there are three parts to that.

The core question I have, and I think the public would like to know, is: how many more bureaucrats are going to have to be hired because of this piece of legislation being passed by the Labour Party? How many more bureaucrats? Does the member in the chair, Rachel Boyack, know how many more bureaucrats will have to be hired by this piece of legislation being passed into law?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Will they get a uniform?

Will they get a uniform? That’s a good question, Mr Brownlee.

💬 Hon Member: A high-vis vest?

Or a vest? That’s a very good question, because, if you read the three things, these are the plain language police, who will be walking around Government agencies, educating agencies regarding the requirements of the Act.

I find this quite amusing: they took out the word “complaint”. So you can’t complain anymore. The public can’t complain. They’ll still come to your office, Rachel Boyack—they’ll still come to your office—because they can’t complain to the department; they can only provide feedback. How soft and cool is that! How kind! They can provide feedback to the Government. Feedback? It sounds so soft and cuddly, doesn’t it? But you can’t make a complaint. You can’t turn up and say, “I can’t read that document.”, because that’s a complaint, but what you can say is, “May I suggest that you do this document differently, because I fail to be able to comprehend it?” You know, that’s the soft kind of nonsense in this.

How many people will have to be employed to be able to make sure that this piece of legislation can actually be enforced? And it’s in the context of an additional 14,000 public servants in the core Public Service. We know that’s only for the core Public Service. There are all the agencies and everything outside of that, but the core Public Service has increased by 14,000 more staff under this Government—14,000, at a cost of almost $2 billion per year. So the public are looking at that and going, “We’re facing a cost of living crisis and this priority from this member is to, basically, mean that more public servants will have to be hired at an unknown cost and an unknown number.” That really worries me. It really worries me that we’re going through the committee of the whole House and we don’t actually know that number. It’s not in the reports. It’s not covered by any of the advice. The member, if she knows it, I’d love for her to get up and answer that question and give me some surety. If it’s 10 or 15 people, that’s one thing, but we know it’s more than that, because every single agency—so if there are 88 agencies, as Mr Woodhouse was saying—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, that’s my best guess.

That’s his best guess. How many is it? Good question. If it’s 88, that’s 88 employees minimum in addition to what is currently in existence. That is absolutely enormous. And it says “at least”. I can’t imagine any public department saying they’re only going to employ one, because they need one to do the education, one to deal with the feedback, and one to make sure that they comply—at least. So I can see it being three times the number of agencies at least. It’ll be 250 people easily. It’ll be 250 people within absolutely no time under this Government. We see the largesse. This is just another picture of the largesse of Government. It’s absolutely extraordinary, isn’t it? Just the absolutely extraordinary growth in bureaucracy, and this is just another layer and more people under this Government.

New Zealanders are getting sick and tired of it, and they will be speaking up against this. They won’t just be giving feedback; they’ll be complaining, and they’ll be voting at the next election on issues like this, where they see the priority of this Labour Government is totally out of whack. So I’d like to know the answer to that question. There is more to get into, because it talks about “(within or outside the agency)”, and I’ll take the opportunity to take another call on that point shortly. But I look forward to the member answering my question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I did cover a lot of the detail around public sector agencies and plain language officers in the earlier part of Part 2 when I took a call. I will just make a note again, just for the member Simeon Brown, that there are a number of agencies who already have people in place undertaking this work. That is the conversation that I’ve had with a lot of the experts who work alongside these agencies. There will be some agencies that may need to either task someone who is already inside the agency to do this work or who may need to employ somebody to do this work. That may happen. But what I can also tell the member is that we know from research that this will improve productivity, improve compliance, it will make our Public Service far more efficient, and it will ensure that people are able to engage and comply with what the Government is asking them to do.

I’ll just make a short comment on the note of increasing the number of public servants. Our public servants who worked throughout COVID, who worked to keep New Zealand safe, they are heroes of this country. I will always stand up, as part of a Labour Government, for public servants that have worked to keep people safe. I will always stand up for the extra police that we’ve pulled in to keep our country safe.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! I’m just going to pull Rachel Boyack back to Part 2 of this bill.

I think that this particular line of questioning is one that has come up in previous debates, has come up in the media. I’ve been very, very clear, that, yes, there may be some agencies that need to employ someone in order to do this work, but many of our agencies are already doing this. Earlier today, I had an email with all of the nominees for the Plain Language Awards that happen every year. Many of our public sector agencies have been nominated for awards, which I’m really pleased to see, but there are many that have work to do. I know that improving plain language—and I note that the Opposition have stated on a few occasions that they do support plain language. It’s kind of starting to sound a little bit at the moment like maybe they don’t, but I know that those agencies that have work to do, this bill will ensure that they comply with this, and so it will give some teeth to the need for those agencies to improve their communications. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I move, That the question be now put.

No, there are a number of Supplementary Order Papers as part of Part 2 of this bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair, because that’s exactly what I want to speak to. I’d first note, though, that Rachel Boyack refers—quite rightly, in my view—to the heroes of our Public Service. I’d tend to agree with that. But if they’re heroes, why does she not trust them to do their jobs well, because, essentially, what this bill is saying is that she does not trust them to do plain language in plain language. She quite plainly does not trust them.

But she also said that despite the fact that we still don’t know except to the extent that—I now know, Mr Brown, where the 88 number came from. It was actually in the initial briefing to the select committee that it’s 88, and probably about that many thousand public sector employees would be responsible for complying with the Plain Language Act. It’s probably closer to the population of Dunedin—over 100,000—that are actually going to be infected by this, or covered by this, in which case the heroic part about this is not so much the work that they do but the assumption from the bill’s sponsor that there won’t be any extra resource deployed to give effect to it.

So my challenge to the member is that if she is that confident that there won’t be a need to deploy resources—taxpayers’ funds—to comply with the Plain Language Act, she must support my Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) 242 and 243, because I have a disdain for this bill. I think this is a waste of Parliament’s time and it’s going to be a waste of public sector organisations’ time, and, frankly, it’s an insult to them.

But if she believes, as she has said, that the research shows that this saves money—it doesn’t cost money—then the very least she can do is support SOP 243 in my name, which amends clause 8 to include subclauses requiring reporting agencies to meet the cost of employing a plain language officer from within the agency’s existing funding and it must not receive any additional funding for the purposes of employing a plain language officer, and that subclause applies despite any provision or appropriation contained in any appropriation Act or imprest supply Act. That’s the bit of the side door closing, so even if there is a little bit more money, it cannot be used for plain language officers.

If she believes her own rhetoric—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: How have they checked that out?

—if she believes the research—goodness only knows, Mr Brownlee, but we’ve got to try, on behalf of the taxpayers—then she must support SOP 243. She’s just told this committee that there won’t be any extra cost but that, in fact, we might save money. Fine—put the amendment where her mouth is and support my SOP.

SOP 242 is pretty much along those lines as well, because it ensures that any appointed plain language officer comes from within each department to ensure that the bill doesn’t increase the size of the Public Service, because, goodness only knows—yes, they’re heroes. There are a lot more of them than there were five years ago—14,000 to 15,000, I think, Mr Brown?

💬 Simeon Brown: That’s right.

That is a lot of public servants, and that’s a lot of extra people that could be designated our plain language police. Give them the high-vis vests and the clipboards, and set off what is, effectively, a make-work scheme for people who, hopefully, are already there, but not for people to be employed for this ridiculous purpose. I can’t support this bill, but the least we can do is to control the profligate spending on stupid projects.

Bills like this should not get as far as it has in Parliament. If we were to look at Part 2, “Plain language requirements”, clause 6 says, “Relevant documents to use plain language”, “A reporting agency must take reasonable steps to ensure that all relevant documents for which it is responsible use plain language.” Well, that’s a simple enough statement. That should be an expectation on every Government agency that they will use plain language in whatever language they publish their material in, so that people can understand it.

But, then, in this part, it goes on to explain how all this is going to work, and it, essentially, calls for the appointment of these plain language officers. Well, I can imagine that, inside Government agencies, there will be this absolute terror running through the place that the plain language officer is about to come along and start looking over the shoulder as various emails and other bits of correspondence are prepared and sent out to the public. Imagine the sort of things that will happen. Someone will write in their particular document—it might be a question, it might be something like, “Can I drive your car?” This plain language officer out the back, sitting over your shoulder, will say, “Well, is that the right question? Because can they?” And, of course, the answer will be “Yes, they can”, but the response will be “Yes, but aren’t they asking ‘May I drive your car?’” In which case, the answer may well be “No.” So there we have plain language confusion immediately.

Then, of course, once we go through all this, we’ve got these plain language officers going around picking up all sorts of other bits and pieces. All those little adverb words will be the ones that really get whacked about in this process. It will actually take more words to describe what the one word was planning to do in the first place. So it’s going to be one of those very, very time-consuming exercises. As my colleague Mr Brown pointed out, numerous bureaucrats are going to be added to the growing increase of people working in the Public Service. Except these people are not going to be in that heroic role that so many of our public servants have been in over the past number of years; they’re going to be there to police the internal organisation. That is just no way to get the best out of any workplace.

I think what’s really a kicker here is when we get to clause 10A. So, here, we’ve got a law prescribing that plain language has to be used; a law that prescribes that agencies have to appoint plain language officers who can go around and scrutinise the documentation coming out of that agency. But, here, we have, in the same law, clause 10A that says the “Act does not confer or impose legal rights or obligations”. It goes on to say, “This Act does not confer a legal right or impose a legal obligation on any person that is”—well, here’s a good place; it says, “is enforceable in a court of law.” I would say it should be “could be enforceable in a court of law”. So, immediately, we’ve got a plain language discrepancy inside the bill, if you accept that it’s a reasonable bill.

But why would we have an Act of Parliament that has no consequence? No answer coming from the member Rachel Boyack, who is promoting the bill. Why do we have an Act that says a person that “is” enforceable, when it should say it “could be” enforceable? It’s because it’s a nonsense bill, that’s why. It goes on to give all sorts of other bits and pieces of guidance on how the plain language should be operated and how those plain language officers should be going. It has to be, for example, an annual report from the Public Service Commissioner. You would presume this to be another one of those doorstop documents that litter this place or clog up computer networks, and that document then is presented by the commissioner to the Minister. So we’re now going to have a Minister for plain language, I presume, or a Minister responsible for plain language. I pity that poor fellow or woman—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Willie Jackson would love that role.

—coming into the House having to make any speech any day. Don’t give it to Willie Jackson, that’s for sure, because there’s the last place that anyone will find plain language. So what we’ve got here is a bill that is an utter—utter—and complete nonsense, and even goes on to represent itself that way in the text.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I take this opportunity to talk about my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 244. This is submitted in great generosity to the member. I’m trying to assist the Government, the Labour Party, by, basically, trying to strip out the bureaucracy. So this particular Supplementary Order Paper deletes clause 8, which is about the plain language officers. I’d like to ask the member, firstly, did I write that SOP in plain language? I’d love to have her assessment of that, just for the laughs.

But the key point is that we’ve talked a lot about the increased bureaucracy. The member doesn’t even know how many additional staff. She got up and she said, “Look, some agencies already have some people who do this, but I don’t really know which ones they are and I don’t know which ones don’t.” And so, therefore, we could have dozens and dozens and dozens of people employed in this role to, effectively, be plain language police; to go along, as Mr Brownlee put it, looking over the shoulders of all of the public servants out there, checking to make sure they’re using the right plain language, and sifting through the documents to ensure that everything is—

💬 Hon David Bennett: They’ll be known as “Sifters”.

They’ll be the “Sifters”, they’ll be the “Readers”, they’ll be the plain language police who go through. But what we know is this will be more people, more cost, and more taxpayers’ money, and, ultimately, that’s what it comes down to: more taxpayers’ money.

And the member talked about the benefit. Well, there’s no cost-benefit analysis done to actually determine what the problem is, what the cost impact of that problem is, if this solution solves it, and, if so, if the benefit is greater than the cost. And that’s a pretty basic type of analysis which should be undertaken by the member to actually identify, because the costs will be able to be accounted for. You’ll be able to work out what the cost is. But if you’re talking about 88 departments with three or four extra staff—250 people at $100,000 each—you’re quickly in the millions of dollars here. We’re not talking about small change now, we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars for the taxpayer to have to cover. And that’s tax money which isn’t in people’s pockets to help pay for bread and petrol and food and milk and all of those things. So, ultimately, this is a real issue. And so the question that needs to be asked is: are there other ways this problem could be solved?

And so I’m suggesting that, actually, bringing in hundreds of more staff—yes, some of them may be already in particular other departments, but hundreds of more staff—at a cost of millions of dollars is not the answer. Therefore, I’m proposing that we delete clause 8, delete reference to “plain language officers”, and therefore the requirements—which, as Mr Brownlee pointed out, aren’t actually requirements; they’re just sort of nice words and—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Suggestions.

—suggestions to maybe do these things if you feel like it. I mean, if I was a chief executive of a Public Service department, I’d be just saying, “Yeah, forget this. Thank you very much, Parliament, for writing that bill. It doesn’t put any requirements upon me to do anything.”, and chuck it in the bin. But, the reality is, we know that the diligent chief executives of our Public Service departments will want to be seen to be doing the work and they’ll be hiring people—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: You can’t say, “Thank you, Parliament.”; you say, “I thank the Parliament.”

—well, that’s right, “I thank the Parliament”—will be writing all of these things down and doing all of this work. So I ask the member to—and I’m asking all members in this Parliament, actually—to support my Supplementary Order Paper to remove the requirements for plain language officers. I hope the ACT Party will support my Supplementary Order Paper, thank you. I hope the Green Party will too. I’m asking Te Paati Māori—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: They’re closed minds over there.

Very closed minds on the other side, but this is genuinely in the interest to improve this piece of legislation to reduce the bureaucracy. Look, I mean, I still wouldn’t support the bill even if this Supplementary Order Paper was passed, but in the interest of trying to reduce the bureaucracy, trying to get it under control—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Oh, OK!

—trying to actually respect taxpayers’ dollars, Mr Willie Jackson—something which the Government is failing to do every single day.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Give me an example.

Well, what about the Public Interest Journalism Fund or your merger of RNZ and TVNZ—hundreds of millions of dollars. I could give you example after example, Mr Jackson. And this is the latest example, and this is a Supplementary Order Paper which helps to solve the problem. But I know, on the other side, there’s no interest when it comes to trying to reduce cost—no interest. “It’s taxpayers’ money, who cares. It’s taxpayers’ money, someone will pay. Oh, we’ll just increase taxes. Go for the KiwiSaver tax. Find some money somewhere else.” That’s what this Government does. And so we say no. And this is something which I suggest the members across the House vote in favour of my Supplementary Order Paper to remove the requirement of plain language officers.

Point of order, Madam Chair. I don’t like to do this, but I need to point out to the committee, in the interests of plain language, that my colleague just made a statement where he said that State service chief executives would be saying, “Thank you, Parliament.” You can’t do that. It would be—

Thank you—thank you. That is not a point of order.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is my first speech on this bill, and I just want to take this opportunity to ask the member in charge of the bill to perhaps revise her desire to have this bill go through the House, for her personal career prospects. This will be what she is always known as having passed, and this is her opportunity to actually take it out now and reverse her decision.

The Labour Party is not supporting this in any way or form to help New Zealanders. This will be known as a bill that that individual member has put forward in her parliamentary career. And it would be a disservice to her parliamentary career to have it, really, coloured by this legislation and to have her whole career based on this bill. So there is an opportunity for that member to withdraw the bill after this speech and to take that opportunity to save her political career, because having plain language officers as the one thing that you’re known to have delivered isn’t really a great parliamentary career, is it? Now, it’s probably more than some of the other Labour members have delivered, I know, but there is an opportunity for that member to remove that now because—as members have said—it is a farce, this bill. Anybody listening to this debate this afternoon will be wondering why Parliament’s actually debating this when there’s much more serious issues that could be debated, even on a member’s day.

But this is just a silly and senseless piece of legislation. As the previous speaker would say, it’s inane as legislation, and that is true. The opportunity now is for the proponent of this bill to withdraw it, to leave with some dignity, and not to have their name associated with legislation like this that will not actually be of any good to anybody and will go down in her political career as—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Oh, sit down.

—and, no, Mr Jackson, I’m helping your colleague very seriously here. This is the kind of thing that you should be doing—helping your colleagues—rather than making them in a position where they have silly and senseless legislation and their names are attached to it. I’m sure that Mr Jackson could have found a much better idea that Rachel could have supported that would have actually then done something good in his portfolio, for example.

But, in effect, we are debating a bill that says you must appoint a plain language officer. It’s just a farce. It’s just crazy. There’s no point in it. There’s no reason for it. Who’s to say that officer’s going to make any difference on the ground to people actually being able to understand things? Then, legally, you’ve still got requirements you have to meet anyway. So it just doesn’t make sense in any way.

The member may smile, and she understands that this is not a serious bill. But there is an opportunity for her to leave with some integrity to the dinner break, if she pulls out of this bill now and just suddenly takes the opportunity to take awareness of what the public would be thinking of this legislation and save herself and the Labour Party from another part of grief. Because the Labour Party will be tainted, as well, by this legislation.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Say that again.

Mr Jackson is saying something over there which can’t be heard because he’s not—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: It’s not in plain language.

Is not in plain language—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: I’m a quiet fellow!

And as he said, he’s a quiet fellow. But, you know, that’s not plain language in the sense of this bill.

The other part of it is the precedent that this legislation will cause for question time when the Prime Minister ducks and dives questions—are we going to get plain language answers now? Is that going to be the precedent that has to be set in this House when Labour Ministers are in trouble and they duck and dive and hide behind adjectives and don’t say anything of any consequence?

Are we going to then pre-require the Prime Minister to actually answer a question on the economics because this bill is being passed? Shouldn’t that precedent actually apply then? Is that the reality?

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s amendment to clause 8 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 242 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s amendment to clause 8 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 243 be agreed to.

The question is that Simeon Brown’s amendment to clause 8 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 244 be agreed to.

The question is that Simeon Brown’s amendment to Schedule 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 244 be agreed to.