McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) have been operating for 52 years they have 80 branches around the motu and they see around 482000 clients every single year. They're asking for our help. They started asking for our help three years ago but they're not being heard. So they started a petition and they're calling for no one to be left behind in the digital spectrum that we're moving into. And they've received nearly 8000 signatures possibly more since I last looked.But they're asking for three things. One is to exclude no one from accessing digital services—actually exclude no one from accessing services full stop especially the Government services because they are not digitally literate for some people. The second thing is to make sure that there's paper-based form filling available without cost or expense either to the person trying to fill in the form or to the CAB themselves. And the third thing is to fund the CAB to meet demand for the help that they are experiencing.While many of us upskill and upgrade as technology changes a good many of us are unable to can't afford to or simply just don't want to. That's their choice and we should respect it not shove it down their throats as the only possible available option to people. The CAB are pointing out that in many cases especially with Government departments digital is the only option that is offered to people in many cases. And by excluding people who do not access digital services we end up excluding some of our most vulnerable in our society: the disabled the elderly and the poor.Research shows that there is a range of barriers including people who can't afford devices those who only have a phone and not a computer. They don't know how to scan documents or even how to send them back. They don't have an email account or perhaps they don't even have a credit card to make payments. They can't afford an internet plan. They can't afford a data top-up on their phones. The form is online but they can't possibly fill it out or fill it out and save it somewhere before they can send it in an email and they don't have anywhere to save it to let alone have an email. And this is really concerning.The 2018 Census told us that 14 percent of Kiwis do not have access to the internet. And a 2022 survey found that 249000 people do not use the internet. BNZ has produced a digital skills report in 2021 which told us 20 percent of Kiwis lack the digital skills deemed essential for modern life citing income education and disabilities as main factors for who and why.Our Government departments are some of the worst perpetrators of this move to digital. I recently helped a person who could not download an IR4 for their end of year tax reporting—they just couldn't find it. And that was after we figured out how to stop the pop-up blockers from working. And it's not just IRD. It's the Tenancy Tribunal employment mediation social housing and even New Zealand Police—they put their firearms licensing into a digital format and publicly told people that if they don't comply digitally they may have to wait longer for their licences to be processed. Maybe they're in the category of those already waiting two years.People are severely and actively being punished for not being computer literate. In a written parliamentary question replied to this month we asked the Minister for Digital Economy and Communications whether the Public Service and non - Public Service agencies met the New Zealand Government Web Accessibility Standard 1.1; and if not why not? The answer from the Hon Dr David Clark was that performance of compliance with the standard implementation and monitoring is the responsibility of each service whether public or not. So the Minister doesn't know if his own agencies are conforming or not. It looks like they're not Minister.The CAB have also told us that a lot of their inquiries are from immigrants trying to navigate our Government departments. English is not their first language. And I was dismayed to hear that in December 2018 New Zealand Immigration discontinued their funding for the dedicated multilingual services called Language Connect. That service was seeing 14000 inquiries every year. Luckily for these immigrants they have CAB to help but where's the help for CAB? These decisions have hugely impacted their ability to work. And I have a lot more here to say but I only have 15 more seconds. So I'm just going to cut to the chase: if you're going to change the ways of a lifetime to have good policy on any change we need to make sure we can take the people with us. Because when you don't you exclude them. CAB are asking for our help. The Government needs to not exclude them too. Thank you Mr Speaker.