This week Parliament took a day to focus on five members' bills; ideas put forward by MPs from any party who are not in the Executive. Five different bills were debated. Two were rejected at their first hurdle, three more progressed including two bills now close to the finishing line.
On the face of it those two bills are reasonably innocuous. One wants arriving international passengers to be given more biosecurity information, the other wants to encourage and assist government agencies to communicate with the public in more comprehensible language.
In short, it desires less obfuscatory, labyrinthine missives replete with less circumlocutious, ambiguous parisology, for crisper elucidation in public communion - obviously.
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Nelson MP Rachel Boyack (Labour) answers MP's questions from the Table during the committee stage of her Plain Language Bill. Photo: Phil Smith
The Labour MP for Nelson Rachel Boyack, who is sponsoring the bill, acknowledged her inspiration.
“The United States has legislation in place, and this legislation is based off that legislation… When that legislation was introduced, the compliance for people to pay things like taxes and fines actually went up as a result, because information was presented in a clearer way for people to understand.”
By that telling it is useful and offers a return. It wasn’t entirely popular inside the debating chamber though. The Plain Language Bill's committee stage this week was a slightly surreal experience. Entertaining, but unusual.
National and ACT MPs are not in favour of the bill. They characterised it as costly, pointless, unnecessary and a step towards an imagined future where ‘woke’ language-police from the liberal clerisy control everything we say. Contrariwise, they also criticised it for being toothless and without enough enforcement. But mostly they spent time making mock.
The MP in charge of the bill was at the table to answer questions from other MPs - not a typical experience for backbench MPs. Nelson's Rachel Boyack could be heard guffawing with mirth at some of the claims and questions offered.
The Art of the Filibuster
National MPs had a go at filibustering the committee stage. That is, slowing it down as much as possible, by drawing out the debate.
Gerry Brownlee spent time critiquing the language of Parliament’s Standing Orders which was charming but definitely a tactic that fell outside those same rules. He then spent time arguing with the chair about that. It all uses time.
Simeon Brown spent time pondering the meaning of individual words in the definition section of the bill.
National Party MP Gerry Brownlee asks his colleagues for help interpreting the meaning of passages in the Standing Orders (Parliament's rule book), during the committee stage of Rachel Boyack's Plain Language Bill. Photo: Phil Smith
Usually MPs have more to work with (and so make more effort to offer serious points of debate), but members' bills are usually short and uncomplicated and so are not that easy to filibuster. There just isn’t much raw material to build an argument on, regardless of the [to speak plainly] omnifarious godwottery or pervicacious, obdurate, idiolect you might toss at the debate.
In short, the opposition argued that demystifying official language was an expensive floccinaucinihilipilification worth combating. They labelled the idea as woke and were standing against it on principle. But it wasn’t always easy to tell if they were being serious or just having fun.
A committee stage can be as short or as long as the presiding officer chairing it thinks necessary. Committee Stages are run by a 'chairperson' rather than a 'speaker'. The Assistants and Deputy Speaker take turns as chairperson.
There are various tricks to making it last longer including offering multiple amendments that would require a debate and vote, and creating novel new arguments. A trick used a lot this week was faux-competition.
National MPs (from left) Michael Woodhouse, Simon Watts, Simeon Brown, and Gerry Brownlee rise together calling for the next speech during the committee stage of Rachel Boyack's Plain Language Bill. Photo: Phil Smith
Whenever one speech ends the opposition MPs leap to their feet competing with each other for the next chance to speak by calling out "mister chair, mister chair, mister chair...". They could just arrange among themselves who will go next but this unified yawp for the chair’s attention aims at demonstrating continued passion. It says ‘please sir, there is so much to say and it is so important, I am bursting to speak’.
Or as the MPs opposing the bill might possibly proffer…
Members in good standing of the august institution, to exemplify an exigency for ceaseless exposulation of a verisimilitudinous threnody, a pulchritudinous filipic (perchance replete with misocainist bloviage but ne’er cant or contumely), make deferential, urgent supplication to the symposiarch incumbent (also recumbent) as presiding officer...
The technique doesn’t work for long though if the content of the actual speeches fails to match the performative keenness. Members' bills are usually simple bills. In a simple bill there isn’t much ammunition to work with and inevitably the debate runs out of steam.
Steam gone, the chair allows a vote in response to closure motion from someone in favour of moving on. A closure motion is just an MP saying the formal equivalent of "can we please vote already?"
And so, despite the entertaining renitence and cunctation, the Plain Language Bill traversed the committee stage and will now get a final (third) reading debate next Members' Day.
When that happens readers may be relieved that there are no longer excuses to use less plain language.
And, no I don’t really think that any MP would argue honestly for official use of this level of ambagious (yes that is a word), or archaic verbiage in public discourse (notwithstanding some of Parliament’s own language); but it’s fun seeing just how 'unplain' language can be. It can get a lot worse than my attempts - try reading the fine print in many legal contracts.
The English lexicon is truly vast, as well as endlessly fun and colourful, but most of us don’t know a fraction of it. Add to that our tortured grammar and our language offers many and varied options for creating obfuscation.
It turns out that writing wordy twaddle isn’t very difficult. Writing plainly always is.