Boyack Rachel; O'Connor GregSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much Mr Chair. Although this has been treated as a jolly jape in the House this evening I actually think that this bill brings something that's extremely serious to the House. I am expressing some concerns about whether or not it goes far enough. I don't mean to sound remotely critical Ms Boyack but the words member's bill" seem to be too complicated for members of the Opposition to understand when they are asking questions about whether the member herself should have sought Cabinet approval.Be that as it may one of the people who made a fantastic contribution in support of this bill did raise the extremely serious question around democracy. This is something that I'd really appreciate your view on Ms Boyack especially with regard to this piece of legislation because the submitter actually raises the extremely important point that this is a really important bill for democracy. I would like to hear your views on how this does actually bring forward greater access to democracy in this House.RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): I thank the member Sarah Pallett for the question. It's an excellent question. It actually goes to the heart of the bill and the purpose of the bill is to ensure that people can understand what Government is asking of them. Actually one of the things that we interestingly in the Governance and Administration Committee have also been looking at is matters related to public governance to trust and transparency in Government and one of the factors is people actually feeling that they are connected to Government. When people have documents placed in front of them that are gobbledygook that they don't understand—they don't understand what's being asked of them; they don't understand what their entitlements are—we see these people come into our electorate offices. As an electorate MP people will come in with letters that they don't understand. It's often for example letters from organisations like Immigration New Zealand like the Ministry of Social Development and they require support from agencies like Community Law like Citizens Advice Bureau like our offices to assist them to understand what's in their document.I recently had one which is a good example—it wasn't actually a public sector document but it was a good example—from Chorus writing to an 86-year-old woman in my electorate about her fibre being replaced. She was concerned that her phone line was going to be cut off. She'd taken it to the local Age Concern who raised it with me. These are the kinds of things that come across our desks as MPs a lot. There have been examples I've seen in my office where situations have actually been life and death and related to people attempting to escape warzones out of New Zealand and back into New Zealand and weren't able to understand the documentation provided to them. I mean it's not actually a laughing matter. It wasn't a laughing matter at the time when we were trying to communicate with that constituent who was in a different part of the world and was trying to escape a warzone.Hon Michael Woodhouse: It wouldn't be covered by the Act.RACHEL BOYACK: Well I would say actually that it would because the communication went to a section of the public. It wasn't a one-off document; it went to a group of people. It went to an intended audience.Simon Watts: Are you going to answer the question?RACHEL BOYACK: So to answer that question a group of the public—Simeon Brown: What does "public" mean?RACHEL BOYACK: The hint Mr Brown is in the clause that talks about intended audience. One of the items raised in the discussions was that there will be times when we are actually looking to communicate with a group of people quite specifically and the bill will cover that. So that was actually a very good example of a group of people who received the same communication and my office was contacted around those concerned and there was a representation made to the agency by my office.So thank you very much for the question on accessibility in particular and I look forward to discussing that further in Part 2.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Now members I am anticipating a closure motion on my right; however we've now been going for 55 minutes. I'll be looking very much for new material.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Absolutely!CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): And since we have a new member here I'll call the Hon Gerry Brownlee."