(National Party media release)
Labour’s plan to hire ‘language police’ to scrutinise how bureaucrats communicate with the public is utterly ridiculous, National’s Public Service spokesperson Simeon Brown says.
“The Labour Government’s capacity to create wholly unnecessary and costly bureaucrats out of nowhere is astounding.
“Even after hiring an extra 14,000 bureaucrats since 2017 at the cost of an additional $1.8 billion in wages every year, Labour is returning to the well of taxpayer money to establish language police in every government department.
“The Plain Language Bill will mean that ‘plain language officers’ are running around in every government department making sure other bureaucrats are using plain language in public documents.
“Let’s not forget – this is a Government that has already overseen a 46 per cent increase in communications staff to cover the cracks in its failure to deliver improved outcomes. Aren’t all these additional spin doctors already able to ensure that departments are speaking ‘plainly’?
“Our public service should be laser-focused on delivering better outcomes for Kiwis, not spending millions of dollars on language police who will just be arguing about commas and grammar.
“Labour is completely addicted to spending taxpayers’ money, but this example of waste is one of the most egregious yet.”
“arguing about commas and grammar” at this stage is REALLY like shutting the stable door well after the horses have bolted. The subject of “commas and grammar” should have been dealt with in SCHOOL not the OFFICE. That’s where I learned such basics as “different FROM not different TO,” and the difference between “principAL” and “princiPLE” etc etc Another classic these days, especially in the fake news media, is the difference between MISinformation and DISinformation.
Wouldn’t need language police if kids had a real education.
The National Party supports the aim of improving the effectiveness and accountability of the public service in using clear, concise, easily understood language in public documents. What they object to is that it is a legal requirement. Given that we’ve had decades of public documents without this legal requirement to be easily understood, what makes Simeon think that public service guidance rather than primary legislation will improve public documents? His visage does have an optimistic countenance.