SpeechJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and take a short call at this stage of the debate on the Plain Language Bill in the member Rachel Boyack's name. Again I want to acknowledge her for the introduction and progress of this bill. It's been a rather feisty debate so far. I do have to admit to some confusion with the position of the National Party on this after having listened to the contributions across the House on the petition from the Citizens Advice Bureau around digital exclusion which was not about the digital divide but was about essentially how do we create a Public Service that actually works for people with all of their different needs in our communities and plain language is not going to fix all of that. But it's absolutely—as we heard from the submissions mentioned from the previous speaker Jamie Strange particularly from groups representing disabled people—a component of getting our Public Service to be accessible to all New Zealanders whether it's language differences or accessibility needs. There is particular provision that has been added to this through the Governance and Administration Committee explicitly around accessibility so it feels deeply inconsistent to be very much in support of that petition and that goal and yet come out and oppose this measure that is a specific solution to an aspect of that problem.I also—Simon O'Connor: So what's plain language?JAN LOGIE: —do just want to mention—Simon O'Connor: I don't understand a word that member just said.JAN LOGIE: I'm just having trouble focusing with that heckling which is I guess the point of the heckling. So well done you Mr O'Connor. I also just want to say just the point that's made by National about this increasing bureaucrats and the fact of this kind of being a policing thing— Hon Member: It is.JAN LOGIE: —actually my point would be that I have a memory in the previous National Government—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! With apologies to the member. Could the members on my left—can I just remind them that interjections are to be rare and reasonable. I think a barrage is a bit unhelpful.JAN LOGIE: Thank you Madam Speaker. It was the point around policing and I think the phrase was used by Simeon Brown of police enforcing language of the day suggesting that this might be a mechanism for political indoctrination of our Public Service. I would argue the exact opposite of that. There are examples in my political memory which is not the best of National Ministers having banned words from the vocabulary of the public servants reporting to them and their work. There were particular words; I think I remember sustainability" being a banned word to a National Minister. And I don't think that's good. I'm going to be upfront about that; I do not think that's good. What I see is this bill creating transparency around guidelines around plain language. There will be reporting to the Minister and reporting to Parliament around progress that makes this far more transparent and inclusive and protects I would argue a measure against some of the previous practices that have been less than ideal. But there is much more to discuss on this bill and there have been some good changes made. One last point I wanted to make at this stage was just some of the softening of this in select committee that I'm not quite sure about. The fact that this is not enforceable—and I recognise it would have been problematic to make this enforceable when we have accessibility legislation in front of this House that has no enforceability mechanism so that would have been a jarring difference. But if we talk about the rights of citizens to understand and access services as the member who introduced the bill spoke of then rights should in my view be enforceable. It is not a right if you only ever get to provide feedback on the performance and delivery of that right if it's not working for you. And the problem of the feedback model as opposed to even being able to make complaints is that it's even a step further away from that enforceability and recognition of it as a right and a core part of our Public Service. Again it all sits in the complaints model on the person who's being locked out of access to be able to provide and make the difference. But the good thing in this bill is having these officers puts it back on the Public Service in recognising their duty to our citizens to be able to up their game.So with those points and more discussion to come—again to say congratulations to the member; while this is not a Government piece of legislation this is a good initiative that the Greens believe will help improve access to our public services."