Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): 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.RACHEL BOYACK: 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."