Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm not sure if the member Rachel Boyack was intending to take a call but I'm very interested in the answer to the question posed by the Hon Michael Woodhouse which I think is a very good question around whether this bill has been through the actual processes or whether that was just something the member—or maybe Chris Hipkins actually put that in there years ago. It probably happened years ago when they were in Opposition and they just didn't think about whether they had to do anything about it. But you know this is a real omnishambles of a piece of legislation and an omnishambles of a Government. Hon Member: What does that mean?SIMEON BROWN: Basically omnishambles can be—if you open the thesaurus KiwiBuild comes next to it as the definition. Simon Watts: That's not plain language; you said Kiwi" and "build". There's no building.SIMEON BROWN: That's right; there's not much building happening by this KiwiBuild Government.Simon Watts: Kiwis can't fly.SIMEON BROWN: That's right; under this Government the red tape is holding Kiwis back. But the question I've got is—back to the interpretation section which talks about the definition of "public". Now I'm not sure if people have given much thought to the definition of "public" before but this bill includes a definition of "public" and it says here that "public includes a section of the public". Now I'm not sure about that but that's a bit of a circular type of argument in terms of that particular definition. But "public" includes a section of the public. In my view the public is the public—everyone we're all part of the public. But a "public" in this bill could include a section of the public. So the basic failure in the interpretation section is it actually doesn't define the word "public" because the definition of "public" or the interpretation of "public" includes the word "public".Simon Watts: You can't do that.SIMEON BROWN: Well I would have thought you can't do it. Now for the people listening at home this is the ultimate solution looking for a problem. This is a bill which could have just been a Minister writing a letter to the Public Service Commission saying "We expect public documents to be using plain language. Regards Minister." But instead we've got a multi-page report with a multi-page bill which is going to make 80 different departments employ people to do X Y and Z and it can't even define the word "public". Now I just think that's absolutely ridiculous. I would like the member to please clarify what is the definition of "public" due to the fact that the definition of "public" includes the word "public" and whether there's a plain language interpretation to that. Of course putting it in Hansard may help down the road when a plain language officer is having to interpret whether they are actually complying with the legislation and they'll be able to open up Hansard and look at Rachel Boyack's comments during the committee of the whole House and be able to take from the wisdom of this House the real intent that was meant by Rachel Boyack and I'm sure they will find great inspiration and help in those statements. So I look forward to the member please clarifying the definition of "public". But I'd like to now just conclude my comments looking at clause 4B. Clause 4B(5) again provides another I think not very plain language interpretation of what I think it's trying to convey. But it says here that "If a document contains a part that meets the requirements in subsection (1) and a part that does not section 6 applies only to the part that meets those requirements". Now I find that quite interesting. So section 6 of course requires plain language to be used in the relevant document. Section 4B talks about what documents are plain language. So what it says here—my understanding of what it says here—is that a document may be considered a relevant document for part of that document but another part of that document might not be considered a relevant document. So we could have a document produced by a Government department but only part of it needs to be in plain language and part of it doesn't. I'd just like the member to clarify to the committee is she saying here that some documents only need to be partially in plain language and if so where do you draw the line? Is it the first half or the last half? I look forward to the answer to those questions."