Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I'd like to congratulate the member in charge of this bill Rachel Boyack for promoting a bill that makes good sense. As members of Parliament we know the importance of having things communicated clearly and that's even more important for people we're dealing with in our constituency. I can say that having a bill that promotes plain language is a good thing to do. Look while it might sound—I want to give an example of where bureau-speak" or Government-speak can cause real confusion and difficulty for the average person in New Zealand to be able to understand what the Government or what agencies are communicating. Here's a great one here's one from the New Zealand Transport Agency's 2017 report and it says that they are going to "'Transform the Transport Agency' establishes a deliberate change management approach to successfully transition the Transport Agency to the refreshed strategy and the new ways of working. It drives improved organisational effectiveness through tenacious alignment of strategy to business planning resource allocation and performance measurement. It embeds our new DNA and the shift required to ensure we are customer focused collaborative curious and seeking innovation and value for money in all we do." So in other words they want to improve the customer service and spend the money more carefully which would be easier to say it that way.So while in Government documents it's important it's also just as important if communicating to people—and as I say in my role is as an MP quite often people will front up with a letter they've received and it might be even from the local city council it might be from a Government department and a big part of that is reading line by line and helping to translate what the intent of the communication is. So it can be a barrier for people to access Government services and also to access justice if they're wanting to understand.I had someone who came to my office probably just about a month ago and it was in relation to accessing legal aid and look I had to ring up the number myself. I read through it three times and it was still not clear about what the entitlements of the person were. So having it in clear everyday language is an important way of making sure that people know their rights know what they are entitled to and be able to access those services.It's interesting to note that in the explanatory note of the bill the member has noted that "The US Congress passed the Plain Writing Act of 2010 [and] This requires the US Federal Government to write all … publications forms and publicly distributed documents in a 'clear concise well-organized' manner that [they must follow] the best practices of plain language writing." So the point of that bill back in 2010 in the US is to improve the effectiveness and also to improve accountability of federal agencies by promoting clear Government communication that the public can understand. This bill does exactly the same: it promotes the use of plain language in official documents and also online in official websites."Comprehensible information from government organisations is a basic democratic right."—it's important that people know what they're entitled to and that that is made clear in plain English. To make that "a standard for all official public and private communications in New Zealand." will make that clearer to people who want to know what they're accessing. And that's even important because more and more people are going online to access their information and to make sure that that is communicated clearly.So look I would like to commend Rachel Boyack the member in charge for picking up this bill. New Zealand is at its best when we can understand and easily participate in our democracy and this bill aims to further that by making sure that everybody is on the same page. I commend this bill to the House."