Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Bills like this should not get as far as it has in Parliament. If we were to look at Part 2 Plain language requirements" clause 6 says "Relevant documents to use plain language" "A reporting agency must take reasonable steps to ensure that all relevant documents for which it is responsible use plain language." Well that's a simple enough statement. That should be an expectation on every Government agency that they will use plain language in whatever language they publish their material in so that people can understand it. But then in this part it goes on to explain how all this is going to work and it essentially calls for the appointment of these plain language officers. Well I can imagine that inside Government agencies there will be this absolute terror running through the place that the plain language officer is about to come along and start looking over the shoulder as various emails and other bits of correspondence are prepared and sent out to the public. Imagine the sort of things that will happen. Someone will write in their particular document—it might be a question it might be something like "Can I drive your car?" This plain language officer out the back sitting over your shoulder will say "Well is that the right question? Because can they?" And of course the answer will be "Yes they can" but the response will be "Yes but aren't they asking 'May I drive your car?'" In which case the answer may well be "No." So there we have plain language confusion immediately. Then of course once we go through all this we've got these plain language officers going around picking up all sorts of other bits and pieces. All those little adverb words will be the ones that really get whacked about in this process. It will actually take more words to describe what the one word was planning to do in the first place. So it's going to be one of those very very time-consuming exercises. As my colleague Mr Brown pointed out numerous bureaucrats are going to be added to the growing increase of people working in the Public Service. Except these people are not going to be in that heroic role that so many of our public servants have been in over the past number of years; they're going to be there to police the internal organisation. That is just no way to get the best out of any workplace. I think what's really a kicker here is when we get to clause 10A. So here we've got a law prescribing that plain language has to be used; a law that prescribes that agencies have to appoint plain language officers who can go around and scrutinise the documentation coming out of that agency. But here we have in the same law clause 10A that says the "Act does not confer or impose legal rights or obligations". It goes on to say "This Act does not confer a legal right or impose a legal obligation on any person that is"—well here's a good place; it says "is enforceable in a court of law." I would say it should be "could be enforceable in a court of law". So immediately we've got a plain language discrepancy inside the bill if you accept that it's a reasonable bill.But why would we have an Act of Parliament that has no consequence? No answer coming from the member Rachel Boyack who is promoting the bill. Why do we have an Act that says a person that "is" enforceable when it should say it "could be" enforceable? It's because it's a nonsense bill that's why. It goes on to give all sorts of other bits and pieces of guidance on how the plain language should be operated and how those plain language officers should be going. It has to be for example an annual report from the Public Service Commissioner. You would presume this to be another one of those doorstop documents that litter this place or clog up computer networks and that document then is presented by the commissioner to the Minister. So we're now going to have a Minister for plain language I presume or a Minister responsible for plain language. I pity that poor fellow or woman—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Willie Jackson would love that role. Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —coming into the House having to make any speech any day. Don't give it to Willie Jackson that's for sure because there's the last place that anyone will find plain language. So what we've got here is a bill that is an utter—utter—and complete nonsense and even goes on to represent itself that way in the text."