Belich Camilla; O'Connor GregCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this Plain Language Bill brought by my friend and colleague Rachel Boyack. I'd like to join others around the House in commending Rachel Boyack for being successful in getting a member's bill drawn from the ballot and seeing this bill through to its third reading today where it will undoubtedly I think pass and be a great credit to our legislative scheme.So there are a few things I wanted to mention about the Plain Language Bill some of which have been touched on by other members of the House and some of which are observations that I've made looking at this bill. I haven't had an opportunity to speak on this bill yet and I wasn't part of the Governance and Administration Committee that examined it. But I did read their commentary and I can agree with other members around the House who have praised the work of the Governance and Administration Committee and their extensive examination of this bill and in the myriad of sensible changes that they have put forward to make this a functioning and useful piece of legislation which will I believe improve equity and accessibility for people using documents produced by Crown agencies and other Public Service agencies.So what else do we want to say about this Plain Language Bill? Well the thing that I most wanted to emphasise is how I think that this is important and a good thing and a thing that we should be very proud of introducing in this House today. And that is because we know—as MPs who have to deal with a lot of paperwork we know as people who have to read a lot of emails coming in from constituents around the country we know as people who work with legislation on a daily basis we know as people who read annual reports—that there is a very very clear difference between something that is clearly written in plain language and something which is written in a complicated manner. Yes there are issues to do with literacy in this country. We do have goals to improve our literacy rates. But I don't think we need to delve that deep into the reasons for this particular bill to say that the need for it is literacy. I think if we looked at for example Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales written in English and some of the documentation clearly written during the COVID response in order to make sure that people could receive and understand information very clearly we will see that we have two languages that look very different despite the fact that they are both English. Those are extreme examples but there are so many other examples within our Public Service within our legislation that could be improved upon if there's a real focus. And that is why I think that this is really important. Just to go back to the goal of this bill it's really simple and I find it difficult to understand why someone would disagree with this: improve the effectiveness and accountability of the Public Service by requiring communications to be clear and accessible to the public. Surely this is something we can all agree is vitally important and will help people understand the very important information that our Public Service organisations want to convey to them.Another point that I wanted to raise is the issue of enforcement. Some other members of the House have criticised this bill by saying it lacks teeth or it lacks strength because there isn't legal enforcement. I want to reflect on how we work as a society and look at some other things that perhaps we don't necessarily do because we think that we're going to get caught and we're going to face a penalty or there's going to be legal repercussions; we do them because they're the right thing to do. For example most of us would try and keep to the speed limit. That's not necessarily because we think that we're going to get pulled over or we're going to get a fine or we're going to get taken to court because of it; it's because it's the right thing to do and it's the safe thing to do. It's a sensible thing to do as a member of—Simon Court: No it's not.CAMILLA BELICH: It's not? I hear members on the other side saying keeping to the speed limit is not a sensible thing to do. I beg to differ. On this side of the House we like to keep to the speed limit. Another example: we don't defame people just because there is legal repercussion for that. We do it because generally we don't like to make up untrue things about other people and say them publicly because that's not the right thing to do. So there are lots of things within our society that we do that are outlined in law that won't necessarily always in every situation—in fact the vast majority of situations—result in legal repercussions. However we follow them. This bill clearly states—I think it's clause 10A—that there isn't the ability to take legal action. I actually think if we tease that out that most members of the House would agree with that because we don't necessarily want cases going to court about failure to write in plain English. We don't necessarily want that. It would be preferable for people to write in plain English; however we don't necessarily want legal action taken about it. So it's a sensible measure and I understand from talking to Rachel Boyack the member in charge of this bill that the reason that was determined was on the basis of advice that there could be for example legal cases taken if that particular section was not inserted in the bill. So it's a sensible pragmatic change that actually means that there's clear guidance and a responsibility to follow the law because we must follow the law even when there isn't adverse outcomes for us if we don't. So we follow the law and we don't necessarily have the legal repercussions if we don't. I think that this is the right balance for this type of legislation. I think it's a really good balance; I commend the member and the committee for reaching that conclusion. Another thing I just wanted to add finally was the inclusion of te reo Māori. This bill specifically applies to English; however I think the committee has recommended a very good balance with saying that whilst it applies to English there is still no direction or there should be no indication for anyone looking at this Hansard in the future to say that you should not use te reo Māori if you wish when you are creating documents that should be read by the public. I think that is also correct. I think it's admirable that we've had an increased use of te reo Māori within a lot of the publications that we've seen produced by our Public Service agencies. So I think this is something we all want to see continue and I think this is the right balance met by this bill. So in conclusion this is a very sensible bill which will result in actual pragmatic changes to increase accessibility and equity for New Zealanders and I commend it to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon Todd McClay—this is a split call five minutes each.