Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): 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!WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: 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.