Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a real pleasure to rise and take a call on behalf of the Green Party in support of the Plain Language Bill. While she may not have written the bill I would like to congratulate the member Rachel Boyack for getting it drawn and for this opportunity to marshal it through the Parliament because that is a really special experience.This is a piece of legislation that the Greens believe will make a real difference. I understand that the National Party member Chris Bishop talked about this as a dog of a bill". Well I would see it as a golden retriever of a bill: a really cute fluffy bill that actually is going to be committed to supporting New Zealanders in being able to find their way around our systems. That is something to celebrate being a bit of a dog fan as I am. I do just feel like Mr Bishop's speech was just a little bit mean to be honest. It was pretty kind of blunt and it did feel to me like as an ex - university debater he was throwing his privilege around like a giant red flag—even to the point of saying it's bad enough we have fire wardens. Personally I can't quite imagine feeling safe in a place where there are not fire wardens; I thought that was pretty much a basic. And saying that "Ministers can do this; this is not required by legislation": I can't quite imagine what Chris Finlayson's direction for plain language would look like because I've got to say his speeches in the House were not my understanding of plain language.The point of this bill is to get the consistency and to recognise that plain language writing is a skill. Anybody who has managed to get through our university system has been trained in writing in a particular way that is actually inaccessible for most New Zealanders and most of the people in our Public Service come out of our university system. I remember that translation of going into the community and standing aside and sitting beside people and young people in particular and trying to talk with them and explain things after I came out of university. It was a massive education for me. To think that a Minister can provide feedback and suddenly the entire Public Service is going to have the skills to be able to write simply in a way that is understandable for people with English as a second language or whatever their literacy skill is is magical thinking. It requires active support to learn that skill and that is what this bill is recognising. It really is quite seriously true.I will say as well that this bill—we are very supportive of it because it's critically important that New Zealanders understand their rights and their obligations and our Public Service is the conduit and the communicator of those things. We need the interactions between people and the State to be really as easy to interact with as possible. A lot of marginalisation comes from a sense of disenfranchisement through not understanding what on earth the Government is doing or is expecting of them. We hear from a huge number of beneficiaries who have been sanctioned—that they've been sanctioned and they didn't even know that they weren't allowed to do whatever it was that they were sanctioned for. We are not—the evidence is very clear—communicating to people in a way that they understand what people's rights are and what we expect of them in return and we need to step up to do that better.I do think this bill possibly could go wider. And I really feel for particularly you know friends who are deaf who are really struggling with the lack of access to New Zealand Sign Language the fact that we don't have enough interpreters that at Parliament hardly ever do we get that interpretation happening let alone our Public Service organisations providing easy-read material. Most of our political parties are not doing that either. We need to step up for everybody in this country because it's core to feeling like we are part of this team of 5 million. We have to be able to understand each other. This is a good start and the Greens are happy to support it."