English Language Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the English Language Bill be now read a third time.

This is a short, straightforward bill. Its purpose is equally straightforward: to recognise in legislation what has long been assumed in New Zealand—namely, that English is an official language of our country. The bill delivers New Zealand First’s commitment to legislate the official status of the English language.

Despite what has been claimed across this House, this bill is important and far from the claimed waste of time. New Zealand First campaigned on delivering this bill and made a commitment to do so. It is not trivial, unnecessary, or a distraction to this House, in a democracy, to deliver for those who elected us to this House. It is important. It is important to the hard-working Kiwi battlers we represent. It is important to those who have been packing the halls around the country in New Zealand First meetings telling us what is important to them. The self-appointed experts who stand in this House that like to think they are the arbitrators of what is important and not are not the voices New Zealand First represents.

This bill provides clarity and certainty in legislation of the status of the English language in New Zealand. As we have heard repeatedly, it was assumed that the official status already existed. What we do today is turn that assumption into reality. The Government’s view is that there is value in providing clarity in law.

The bill is modest in scope. It creates no new regulatory regime, imposes no new obligations, and changes none of the existing legal protections afforded to te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language. Those languages remain official languages of New Zealand and continue to hold their place in our legislative and cultural landscape.

In a mature democracy, we should be capable of acknowledging multiple truths at once. Recognising one fact does not require us to deny another. English is the principal language through which most New Zealanders live their daily lives. Te reo Māori is valued, it’s important, it’s protected, and it’s respected. New Zealand Sign Language provides access and inclusion for a vital community. These facts can comfortably sit alongside one another. What this bill does is recognise reality and provide legislative certainty. English has long been and will continue to be the language used by the vast majority of New Zealanders in everyday life—in business, in education, in finance, in aviation, and in interactions with public institutions. Ultimately, this is a practical measure. It aligns the statute book with long-standing practise and provides a clear statement about the status of English within New Zealand’s official framework.

I want to acknowledge the work and consideration that has gone towards the bill by the Justice Committee, members of this House, officials, and the public. While this bill may be short, it is a sensible and measured piece of legislation. With that, I commend the English Language Bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve got an English quote for you: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” We heard a lot from the Minister Casey Costello about how this wasn’t a waste-of-time bill, how it was not trivial, and how it was sensible. Well, I think the fact that that had to be emphasised so clearly in the Minister’s third reading speech—which I note was of a different ilk to her contributions in committee stage, which were, I believe, more measured—indicates the truth of this bill, which is that it is in fact a total waste of time. That is because English is—according to our officials who advised us on this bill; according to the very, very thoughtful and considered submissions that we got to the Justice Committee; according to common practice; according to the common law—an official language of New Zealand already.

So why bring a bill like this to the House? Well, unfortunately, the only conclusion that one can come to is a challenge to those official languages that are already in place. It is a regretful type of dialogue, and divisive dialogue, that we don’t want in New Zealand. I actually think this bill has failed to stir up the division that was feared around this bill, and I think it’s because New Zealanders know that English is an official language of this country and value te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language as official languages, that, because they are spoken by a much smaller minority of the population, need legislative protection and need the fact of their own bills, that came to this House in 1987 and 2006, and that is something that this House should be proud of. They realise that there is a difference between these three languages that we have in this country, and this attempt to politicise what is a self-evident truth, I believe, has failed.

So it is self-evident, and during the previous readings on the bill I was thinking about, just as I was standing on my feet, some things which are also true in New Zealand. I thought of a few examples like, you know, the sun rising and that kind of thing, but I thought I could probably do better than that. So I thought of a few other self-evident truths that the Government may like to think about legislating for, because it would make just as much difference as this English Language Bill in practicality. I wondered if they might want to legislate for the changing of the seasons, or for the fact that there are sometimes four seasons in one day in Auckland, or whether they should legislate for the southerly winds to blow through Wellington—that might be an option that they might like to think of—or whether they should perhaps pass a bill to ensure that the sun will shine on Waitangi in the Far North, or that there’ll be surf and seals in the seas of Dunedin, or that the gardens in Christchurch will flourish, or that marae will welcome manuhiri.

We know all of these things happen in New Zealand, because this is who New Zealand is. We know that English is a language spoken here. It’s the official language of our courts. It’s the language that we have spoken to the majority of extent in the House. There is no need for this bill, and it is regretful, when there are so many challenging issues facing New Zealand, that this is the issue that the Government has chosen to focus on.

There are pieces of legislation that would actually make a difference to New Zealanders that could be brought to the House. One of them—and I know there are fans of this bill in the House—is a bill to change the law of consent. That is something which is overdue and something that there is widespread, if not almost universal, support for in this House, but, unfortunately, we are spending time debating something which is a self-evident truth.

There are issues on the cost of living. We have some of the highest unemployment levels we’ve seen in decades, we’ve got high fuel prices, food prices are at the highest levels seen. New Zealanders are struggling, and instead of addressing these important issues facing our country, the Government—and this is a Government bill—is bringing to this House a bill which sought to provoke division—I think it has failed on that front—but also seeks to legislate for something that is already true. It is a shame to see Parliament’s time wasted like this, and I will not waste another minute or second of my time debating it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Unlike, the previous speaker, Camilla Belich, I will be taking my full time regarding this bill, because—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Surprise!

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: —surprise, surprise!—there is actually a lot to say about this bill. What there isn’t a lot to say on is our, I guess, in some ways anti-climatic committee stage. One of the things, as we go into the third reading of any bill, is we reflect on what happened during the committee stage, but one of the challenges is that the Minister Casey Costello couldn’t give us any more information, other than sound bytes, regarding the exact purpose and intentions and effect of this particular bill. Repetition doesn’t make it true. Just because you say it is important and necessary, does not make it so.

One of the things that we did ask—and these are the things that we didn’t actually get a response on during the committee stage—was: “What is the effect of recognition?” Now, the Minister, during the committee stage, stated that, you know, when we are looking at official languages—and the previous speaker has already stated—in overseas jurisdictions, and indeed here when we’re looking at te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, is for the protection of a particular language and also for provisions and effect of that language and what it means for Aotearoa New Zealand. But when we ask what we are protecting the English language from, what is an example where English has not been otherwise provided for? There is no response to that, because there is no instance that the Minister could think of that would make this bill fulfil any requirement of why we need to legislate or give a legislative recognition of an official language status to English.

We do that for te reo Māori because of the historical trauma that has faced tangata whenua here in Aotearoa, having their language ripped away from them. We give that to New Zealand Sign Language because of, again, the lack of recognition to our Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities and other affected communities. But it is not necessary here.

In the second reading, I already mentioned that English already has de facto status here in New Zealand; it does not need de jure status, but with this bill, without being attached to any other possible legislation—and we gave the Minister a number of examples, it could have been packaged together in a constitution Act because, then, all three languages could have equally significant and constitutional mandates, that could be something that was fitting, and we heard that from submitters; we could have specified the explicit use of New Zealand English, noting that there are a variety of different English dialects, and if we are able to use New Zealand Sign Language, we can also do that with New Zealand English. The response we got from the Minister on why that couldn’t be done is logistical, as in there is too much legislation that already has the word “English” in it, which, again, begs the question of: what, then, is this bill for if it’s already provided for in other legislation? Even so, any Government—any one—could have made the requirement for us to update other legislation to ensure that New Zealand English is explicitly stated.

During the committee stage, I did give a little bit of a background, I guess, of the various spellings and dialects when it comes to the English language, and why we should uphold the spelling of New Zealand English, unlike what we see across the Ditch with Australian English, which has morphed into American spelling, as opposed to British spelling. I think if the Government really cares about English as a language, these are the things that they should have considered more seriously, as opposed to this bill.

Even though we heard from the Minister that this bill is significant or important—but as we’ve heard from the previous speaker, Camilla Belich, as well, this bill is nothing more than a distraction. It is a waste of this House’s time. If the House really wanted to improve people’s lives, really wanted to give effect to something like this, there are other ways to do it, as opposed to what is, essentially, a sound bite, nothing more; nothing less. There is no additional effect to this. There’s no effect in addressing other challenges that are facing our communities right now.

I think a good example of that is what my colleague Camilla Belich mentioned before with regards to the consent legislation. There is also other legislation that’s been on this House’s books, a number of regulatory systems amendment bills that have been sitting there for months and years because it’s not on, I guess, the Government’s priority lists to go through that legislation, even though those administrative bills have significant impact on people’s lives. Instead, we’re seeing the immediate third reading of this bill when we’ve just concluded the committee stage last night.

I want to also address the broader question of—and it’s, again, a question I posed to the Minister, and, I guess, in some ways, it is philosophical, it is from a linguistic standpoint, it’s from an etymological standpoint—what is “English”, and what do we expect out of this? If the Government is genuine about the importance of English—and I think, personally, as a linguist, that all languages are beautiful and are worth learning—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Ha, ha!

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Indeed, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, I do believe that. Hand on heart, I’m saying that I am one of the few people in this House with a doctoral degree in the arts and humanities, where I’ve spent more than a decade of my life analysing and using linguistics, narratological, and etymological methodologies to analyse ancient texts, as well as modern texts. I spent years at the University of Auckland, lecturing students on grammar.

If we really are serious about language, or language learning in general, this alone is not what we want to see; what we want to see is the fact that we are putting in more resources towards arts and humanities at university, but instead we’re seeing arts and humanities consistently underfunded, even defunded, in our university system. If you really care about English, I don’t see any additional funding towards the humanities departments, whether it is English, history, ancient history, classical studies. In fact, art history is being removed from our school curriculum, because this Government doesn’t think it is important enough, despite the fact that a lot of these subjects are the very foundation of the history of English.

So what is this bill for, then? In Aotearoa New Zealand, we are already seeing that we’re actually one of the worst countries in the world at learning a second language. By learning a second language, you have much better appreciation for your mother tongue or for your main language. The idea that we’re seeing more people learning te reo Māori, learning New Zealand Sign Language, learning Mandarin Chinese, learning Cantonese, learning Hindi, learning Punjabi, learning all sorts of different languages, should be something that we celebrate as country, rather than using this as a way of saying, “You know what? Actually, we are a little bit concerned because we think that English might be diminishing.” Look at this House. Looking at what we’re doing right now. We are using English.

I do agree with the Minister that two things can be true, but what I’m not seeing is that side of the House actually championing language learning and arts and humanities as a result of this bill. That’s not “Both things can be right at the same time”; that is simply hypocrisy. If this Government really cares about this, put your money where your mouth is and actually put in some general funding. The Greens will not be supporting this bill, because this bill does nothing.

ACT supports this bill. It’s very clear that many New Zealanders have been asking for English to be recognised as the important language that it is—the language where we all get vital information, and when we go to the hospital, for example, we want to find our way to the ward, find our way to an appointment; of course the English language is important. Same if you’re an air traffic controller, better make sure you’re using English so the pilots understand where to land the plane. ACT supports this bill. I commend it to the House.

This bill legislates English as an official language. It makes no other changes to the legal status of te reo Māori or to New Zealand Sign Language. It’s straightforward and it ensures clarity and consistency in what the official languages are here in New Zealand. I commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call—Oriini Kaipara.

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I’ll leave it on this: Dr Dean Knight raises an important question, if Parliament genuinely believes English deserves formal, legal recognition, why are we doing this for a stand-alone bill that simply declares English as an official language; why not have the bigger constitutional conversation?

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We’re sitting here debating making English an official language when it’s clear that not one person on that side of the House actually picked up a translator during that previous kōrero. How can the House say that they want to elevate a language, that they care so much about a language, when there is no respect for one of our official languages as it stands? I did not see one person picking up their earpiece because there is no respect, because this is just a waste of time.

When I looked at the House programme this week, do you know what we were supposed to be debating right now? We were supposed to be debating a bill that will mean that we can consent more houses quickly and actually slow down the delay that is happening within our consenting systems for tradesmen, who, by the way, are having the hardest time of all of the industries with tens of thousands of construction workers leaving the industry. We were supposed to be debating that bill, but guess what got railed in between the house deliberating on that bill and what we’re doing right now? This complete waste of time.

When I went home last night, my taxi driver asked me, “What were you guys just debating in the House just now?” I said, “Whether the English language should be an official language or not.” And he said, “Man, is that really what you guys are talking about in there? We are struggling to pay our bills. We can’t afford food. We can’t pay our power. People are losing their jobs by the thousands in the city; the inner city is derelict and we’re sitting here wondering whether English should be an official language? That is such a pathetic waste of the responsibility of this House to pass legislation that matters.”

This does not matter and, actually, I’ll say it a lot more frankly, put it in plain language English for you: English is a bastard language. This is what you’re fighting to protect as a language that’s not even its own. It’s a bastardisation of Greek, Old Norse, Latin—it’s a complete bastardisation, and this is what we’re wasting the House this time fighting for?

Sorry, I know no one wants to say it straight up, but these snowflakes over here—bunch of snowflakes—that hear the word “Aotearoa” and cry themselves to sleep over that.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No personal attacks, thank you.

TAMATHA PAUL: They cry when they hear the word “Aotearoa”; they stand up on points of order in this House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, I—

TAMATHA PAUL: That’s how weak they are. They see te reo Māori and they shiver in their boots. Oh, my gosh!

The Parliament delegation just went to Wales and look at them—they’ve got their beautiful indigenous language, Cymraeg, everywhere before English. Guess what! The world didn’t fall over and the world didn’t end. People still knew where they were going, in fact, people saw it and thought, “Wow, we’re in a country that values their indigenous language and identity.”; unlike our snowflake Government that cannot handle te reo Māori—which is why one of the first orders of business for them was rearranging Aotearoa and New Zealand on the passport, and making sure that we could take te reo Māori out of Government department names. Oh, come on! How divorced from reality can you be that you think switching out te reo Māori is a priority for any New Zealander?

Let me tell you why te reo Māori has a protected language status: because it was beaten out of Māori systematically. We had to March our asses to Parliament, demanding that the indigenous first language of this country be recognised and not beaten out of the mouths of its native speakers.

Just to put it in there, since you didn’t want to put the earpieces in and listen to what Oriini put far too eloquently for this House, is that this is a complete and utter waste of time. Do you know what the ironic thing is, too? English isn’t even an official language in England—even they know that that’s just stupid. It’s stupid, and when we were over there in the House of Commons, they definitely weren’t wasting their time legislating for that.

This is just a copy-paste of Donald Trump’s executive orders, because we know that New Zealand First loves trying to be a wannabe Trump. But it’s just a complete and total waste of this House’s time, and it is utterly divorced from the harsh realities that people are dealing with, not knowing whether they can survive until next week—but “Oh, at least when we turn Parliament TV on, we can see that our Government and our country’s leaders are dealing with the real issues!” So, anyway, I’m glad that we’re bringing this complete waste of a bill to an end today so that we never have to speak about it again.

As I rise in support of the English Language Bill, I do just want to point out to the previous member Tamatha Paul that, actually, we have screens up here so that we can see the translation. I would also point out that a number of members on this side can actually speak te reo fluently.

The other side hasn’t really offered any reasons why English shouldn’t be an official language. They claim that this bill is a waste of time, and so if they believe that, actions speak louder than words and they wouldn’t take any full calls, which they already have—which has totally wasted the House’s time.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a silly day it is—what a silly bill. Tamatha Paul probably needs to speak to Lawrence Xu-Nan, because she called the English language illegitimate and he called it beautiful, but that’s just the kind of debate that you get on a meaningless bill like this.

There are bills floating around that deserve real support—I mean, the consent bill that Camilla Belich mentioned, for instance. We’re ready to go with it, we all agree with it, and the Justice Committee would be happy to look at it, but, no, we’re here talking about the English language. Or, of course, there is the social media ban bill that the National Party members say they want to pass, but instead they’re spending parliamentary time on this bill, or there is the deep fakes bill that the ACT Party member wants to put through. That’s another bill that we’d be happy to have a close look at, but, no, we’re here talking about English being an official language.

I actually quite like this bill for one reason, because I got a parking ticket the other day and it’s all in English. With that not being an official language, I’m not going to pay the thing—right? That’s the kind of fatuous argument that we could make when we’ve got a bill that says, “English is [now] an official language”—as if it hasn’t always been. It’s just silly.

I heard Simon Court say that when he was going down Adelaide Road to the hōripera to see the tākuta, he was like “Oh, there’s a big red cross, but I don’t know that it’s a hospital.” Well, the real question is whether he has the pūtea to pay for a doctor, because most people in New Zealand don’t, and that’s what we should be talking about here today.

We should be talking about the cost of health and the cost of living crisis that this Government has thrown us into, and instead we’re spending all of this parliamentary time talking about the English language and whether it’s official or not. Well, I won’t waste any more parliamentary time or Government pūtea on it. This is a silly bill, and it shouldn’t even be here.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

We’ve been consistent throughout this debate. English is already the language used by the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders every day, and it’s the language used in our workplaces and our schools, our courts and our businesses, and in most of our interactions here in government.

I just wanted to pick up something that the Minister said in her opening statement. She said that this bill was the bill for the Kiwi battlers. I can just imagine that, being a Kiwi battler, you’d be struggling to pay your bills, and struggling to pay the kids’ school camp fees that are coming up—what else—and struggling to fill up the car, to do the supermarket shop, and to pay the pay the doctor’s fees. But that’s all right because Parliament has passed the English Language Bill today, and that’s going to make us feel a lot better.

I won’t give this any more time. It’s a solution looking for a problem, and that is that. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Greg Fleming.

Tamatha Paul: Do it in te reo—do it in te reo.

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In about 15 minutes, we will have two official languages: Māori and English.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: Three.

GREG FLEMING: We’ll actually have three, and that will be a wonderful thing. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker, and it is yet again an interesting afternoon. What I hear from the members of the Government and from the Minister and from those who have taken calls is that this is all about clarity and certainty. Wow—clarity and certainty. As we look at all the pieces of paper in front of us on the Table there and look at all of our laws that have been written over the last 150 years, they’re all written in English, and we need to protect that because we need clarity and certainty.

Well, I think that it’s pretty clear that English is a very dominant language, not only here but around the world. It’s the most spoken language in the whole world, by far, and I don’t think it is under threat or needs to be protected in the way we have been doing it here this afternoon.

As has been said, this bill does seem like a waste of time and a waste of money. I think the culture wars are alive and well, and that is really disappointing, because I think we need to actually be thoughtful lawmakers and people who are trying to make a difference for the betterment of our communities, for the betterment of our workplaces, and for the benefit of everybody. I don’t think that this bill does anything towards that or takes us in that direction whatsoever.

Clarity and certainty—I don’t think so. I think that English is here to stay and I don’t think it’s under threat. I just wish that we could solve things like housing and that we could look at jobs and look at fixing the cost of living.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the second reading of this bill, I quoted from The House of God, where the Fat Man teaches that sometimes the very best medical intervention that you could possibly do is as much of nothing as possible. As I’ve watched this bill come now to its final phase, I can only conclude that the Fat Man would regard this piece of legislation as an utter masterpiece. English was the principal language of this House before this bill, it will be our principal language after this bill, and the only thing that has really changed is that we’ve spent several hours speaking in English about it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the English Language Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 101

New Zealand National 48; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 17

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 13; Te Pāti Māori 2; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

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Legislative Statement