Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Well I was doing my best not to laugh during that contribution. Look I feel sorry for the member who's sponsoring this bill Rachel Boyack because she's a diligent and conscientious and hard-working member who has been landed with one of the stupidest bills that will come before the Parliament this term—I mean it really is. You just have to read the bill that she's proposed to realise some of the stupidity that the Parliament is now going to have to waste its time dealing with at the Governance and Administration Committee as I'm sure the bill is going to end up there.Now I remember when this bill was drafted because I was working in the Hon Gerry Brownlee's office at the time and one of my jobs was to monitor the legislation that backbench members of the Opposition were putting forward. And suddenly one day the Plain Language Bill appeared in the members' ballot in the name of the now Hon Chris Hipkins. And I remember thinking What on earth is this? The Plain Language Bill?" I remember reading it and this was about 11 years ago now and I remember thinking "This is crazy." I kid you not the bill proposes that reporting agencies—so Public Service agencies; the entirety of the civil service—and Crown agents so that's NZQA the Tertiary Education Commission—there's a whole list of them; you can look them up in the Crown Entities Act. We're talking about thousands of people working at different agencies. The bill literary proposes that every reporting agency has to appoint a plain language officer—a plain language officer; "1 or more individuals". Their job is to educate agency employees regarding the requirements of the Act—and it's worth noting that the Act is literally 11 clauses; so that won't take very long—deal with complaints or requests from the public regarding their compliance and ensure the agency complies with the provisions of the Act.So all of the Public Service is going to have to spend time finding plain language officers inside the civil service jobs-worthy schemes—it's like a make-work scheme for civil servants and public servants inside the Public Service. I mean it's ridiculous enough that every corridor of every department in every building in Wellington has to have a fire warden and all the rest of it and then endless meetings to discuss all that stuff but no no now we're going to have to have literally plain language officers who no doubt will have sort of monthly meetings to sit around and talk about how they can make one acronym into elongated words or something like that. I mean it's just actually comical. So Rachel Boyack has had this bill landed on her and I don't believe her when she says "I'm really excited the bill's been drawn. I'm really excited about it."Look I know how this works right? To the Labour backbenchers I know how this works. Here's how it works: you're in Government you're not allowed to do anything controversial from the backbench because if it was controversial and it was a good thing to do the Government would be doing it. If it's a good bill and it should be advanced by the Government a Minister will do it right? I know that's how it works; it's totally understandable. So Government backbenchers have to come up with bills that are discreet small make no difference whatsoever but are just controversial enough that they might indulge the support of the House and make their way to select committee. And basically in Government we used to call them "ballot stuffers". They're bills to stuff the ballot that won't get in the way of Government Ministers actually doing their work. I know that's how it works because that's how we ended up the left luggage bill that caused a lot of mirth and derision in the last Parliament. So I know that's how it works right?And this bill is a classic ballot stuffer. It's a bill that Chris Hipkins has dreamt up in Opposition 10 years ago—and then by the way he took out of the ballot for quite a long time probably because he one day picked it up and looked at it and went "Well actually I'm a serious political figure and I want to be a frontbench Minister in the next Labour Government. Is it really a good idea to put to my name a bill that requires the appointment of plain language officers and without any enforcement mechanism whatsoever says that a whole swath of the Public Service have to issue six-monthly reports to the Public Service Commissioner on whether or not they're using plain language or not and requires training to staff on plain language and all sorts of other stupid waste of time jobs-worthy ideas?" So Chris Hipkins said "Actually I think I'll just take a rain check on this one. I'll put this one in the bottom drawer and when we get into Government and I'm on the front bench some poor sap backbencher is going to end up with this bill."And now here we are; Labour's won Government—and by the way this wasn't in the ballot as far as I can recall in the last term of Parliament.Hon Member: Yes it was.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh it was? Well that's even worse. It was. He actually did. And so here we are: Rachel Boyack wasn't in the last Parliament she's become an MP she's won the marginal seat of Nelson—congratulations. Here she is in Parliament. She hasn't come up with an idea for a member's bill and they're doing the whip-round in the Labour caucus and Rachel Boyack has drawn the short straw and picked up the Plain Language Bill. It's been put into the ballot and I reckon she was secretly sitting there and going "I really hope that bill doesn't get drawn because then I'm going to have to turn up and pretend that I'm excited about it and I'm going to have to put out all these press releases and say it's a great idea. Oh I hope it doesn't get drawn." And then it got drawn. And now here we are on a Wednesday night coming towards the end of the year debating and spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money debating this stupid piece of legislation that's going to go to committee. And now we're going to have the Governance and Administration Committee—I don't know how busy they are but they're going to have to indulge this endless rigmarole of this stupid bill. I'll make a prediction right now: the bill will not pass into law because eventually the Government is going to come to its senses and Ministers are going to realise it's a complete waste of time.Why is it a dumb idea? Firstly—firstly—it is not needed. I mean if Ministers want the civil service to engage in plain language writing in documents that go out to the public I'm not opposed to that obviously; I'm in favour of simple clear and concise writing. You do not need to pass a Plain Language Act to make that the reality; in fact it's likely to have the opposite effect. We do not have to waste Parliament's time passing legislation to say that that is the law. There are endless ways for Ministers to do that. They can write letters of expectation. They can write various statutory documents that go to a variety of the Public Service agencies we're talking about here. They can write letters of expectation to the chairs that are involved or to the Public Service chief executives. They can just actually direct it and I don't know if this story's public or not but it's about to be: when Gerry Brownlee was the Minister of Defence—I think this is on the public record—endless briefing notes with acronym soup and he said "Well this is pointless. You've got 15 different acronyms on one page. You've got to sort this out." And he just made them sort it out. That's what an effective Minister can do. You see this bill is not needed—that's the first point.The second point is there is no enforcement mechanism in here. And Rachel Boyack says "Oh it's going to make a real difference. We're going to enforce plain language." How? There's nothing in there. It's just a series of feel-good statements. It just means that we have to have a plain language officer. Every reporting agency has to have one of them. They have to educate people. They've got to deal with complaints. They have to make reports to the Public Service Commissioner. Oh we've got to issue guidance! The Public Service Commissioner can issue guidance on how reporting language may—not "must" by the way; it's not a "must". It's not a didactic imperative; it's a "may". So they've given a little bit of discretion. How generous of the member to give some discretion to the commissioner! I reckon the commissioner will choose to do so though. The commissioner may issue guidance on how reporting—and that's it. It's literally 11 clauses. The first four are the perambulatory ones—the title the commencement the purpose the interpretation and it binds the Crown. So actually in reality it's six clauses. That's it. It's only like four pages. It's a 3½-page 4 if you're luck bill. There's no enforcement mechanism there's no way of making language more accessible and cleaner and simpler. There's nothing in there. There's literally nothing in there. There's no enforcement mechanism. What is the penalty for the poor Public Service officer who writes a briefing note that the Minister doesn't understand? What's the penalty? What's the Minister going to do? Ring up the Public Service Commissioner and say "Mr Smith I got this briefing note and I did not understand it. You need to punish him or her." I mean is that what's going to happen? No obviously it's not what's going to happen. It's ridiculous. There's no enforcement mechanism.So it's not needed. There's no enforcement mechanism. It's just a make-work scheme inside the Public Service. Frankly the Public Service have better things to do with their time than spend their life coming up with plain language documents or plain language officers and reporting up to the plain language commissar inside the Public Service agency they're talking about. They should have much better things to do with their time than that. This bill is one of the stupidest bills to come before Parliament. We will oppose it because we oppose over-burdensome regulation including for the Public Service. Rachel Boyack is a hard-working and diligent MP but I feel sorry that she has ended up with this dog of a bill."