If the past few years have taught us nothing else, it’s that communication can make or break a government strategy.
With ever-changing pandemic restrictions omnipresent in the lives of New Zealanders, public compliance has required decision-makers to condense a complex set of rules and their reasons into a simple message.
It’s an area the Government of communications-trained Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has received mixed marks on.
Ardern was hailed in the early days of Covid for spelling out the global situation and what New Zealand was going to do about it in plain language, while government agencies churned out clear lockdown instructions within the first few weeks.
But as the months and months of MIQ and masks dragged on, the rules stacked up and explaining what people needed to do if they got the sniffles became more and more complicated.
By the beginning of this year, traffic lights had replaced alert levels and who was eligible for the Covid-19 leave support scheme took a bit of careful reading to figure out.
The latter was the assessment of the employer who submitted the Ministry of Social Development’s online explainer for the scheme as the People’s Choice Worst Brainstrain Communication to the year’s Plain Language Awards.
“At first glance it doesn’t look too bad, until you try to work through it. In particular, I had to reread one key part several times and remained unclear about the criteria,” they said. “In times of difficulty, things need to be crystal clear. This was not.”
The web page was given the award, with judges from the Plain Language Awards saying one terrible paragraph had to be read eight times before it could be understood.
It was the first Plain Language Awards since the Plain Language Bill came into law last month. The bill, put forward by Labour MP Rachel Boyack, requires the public service to communicate clearly, concisely and understandably.
But although the Ministry of Social Development were rapped over the knuckles for their explanation of the Covid leave scheme, it also received the award for best plain language website for its It’s Not OK site.
Judges said the site succeeded in being “real but not scary”, and commended the team behind it for seeking user feedback and improving where needed.
Alice Moloney, family violence senior advisor at the ministry, said the site was created with victims and survivors’ voices at the heart of the process in order to make sure the language, tone and content of the site was right.
“Our research shows that site users find it easy to navigate, with relevant information and a welcoming tone,” she said.
The awards were created to fight against gobbledygook, jargon and gibberish in important public documents – a fight now bolstered by the existence of the new law, which sets out requirements for plain language and appoints plain language officers.
The legislation has been floated as a way to reduce the gulf between the public’s understanding and the Government’s intention. That could be seen as greasing the squeaky wheels of democracy, or a Government scrabbling to get back onto solid ground as polls dip month on month. Cutting out the bureaucratese in public messages could be seen as a way to win some of the voter base back.
Opposition parties have been vocal in their opposition to the bill, with the National Party calling it “the very legislative essence of a solution looking for a problem” and saying the idea of plain language officers was “particularly galling”.
National said it supported the aim of improving the effectiveness and accountability of the public service’s communication with the public, but didn’t believe it should be a legal requirement.
Speaking in Parliament, National Party MP Simeon Brown spoke with concern of what he called the “plain language police, who will be having their clipboards and their little white coats, running around, looking over the shoulders of all the public servants”.
Labour MP for New Plymouth Glen Bennett said the bill allowed for clarity and accessibility in public documents, and questioned why the opposition would be resistant to that.
“Be not afraid of plain language, because it doesn’t mean that for all of you beautifully educated people, with eloquent spoons in your mouths, under your tongues, you can still speak with that spoon in your mouth, under your tongue,” he said. “You can still speak your big, wonderful, wonderful, huge words that I don’t have, and I’m okay with that, because this is around accessibility.”
Lynda Harris is the CEO of Write Limited, New Zealand’s leading plain language consultancy and the largest of its type in the world.
Around two-thirds of Write Limited’s work is with public sector clients, which Harris said gave a unique window into the challenges of writing for the New Zealand Government.
Harris is also a founding sponsor of the Plain Language Awards. While Write Limited administers and promotes the awards, around 30 independent judges decide on the winners.
She said there was plenty of evidence of the need for the act, in direct response to Brown’s comments.
She said plain language was essential to many of the foundations of a healthy and happy society – namely, transparency, trust and access to justice.
She recalled a number of people who nominated documents that made their lives harder for the Brainstrain award.
These covered a wide section of society.
There’s the frazzled traveller who found themselves going round and round in circles on an airline’s website.
There’s the person who felt ill trying to read an impenetrable letter from their local council.
Then a student, stuck trying to navigate a byzantine form necessary for their student loan, and an elderly woman, unable to make heads or tails of a letter from her hospital.
Harris said she hadn’t seen much change yet from the act, as government departments have around six months to get organised.
She expects the plain language requirement for the public sector to bleed over into the private sector: “I think it will have a flow-on to the commercial world because businesses mostly want to do what is seen to be best practice in government, and once the public get clearer communication from Government, they have less tolerance for the opposite.”
She pointed out how commonly people find themselves struggling with difficult and impenetrable communications from big organisations.
“Often people think this is for somebody else,” Harris said. “Maybe for somebody with a second language or a lower level of literacy, but while those people are even more affected, almost all New Zealanders at some point have needed this.”
And while the days of lockdowns and alert levels may be behind us, the Government is still embroiled in the process of trying to communicate complex policy and usher people through the bureaucratic labyrinth of modern life.
Understanding the ins and outs of Three Waters or the slow unfurling of New Zealand’s climate actions may require laws around plain language in their own right.
Harris said it was a timely moment for the new legislation, with the Government’s communication performance through the pandemic providing a prescient example of its necessity.
“In the first year of the pandemic our Government did exceedingly well in the messaging of the pandemic,” she said. “It was once we had the lockdowns and our own vaccine requirements and more that it became difficult and people got terribly confused.”
She said it was a “beautiful example” of where confusion can reduce compliance and bring about a sense of uncertainty.
“But there was so much good government communication. Many if not most agencies have people within those agencies … who really care and get it – but at best, it’s inconsistent.
“I see the beauty of the act is bringing it up front and centre for everyone – you can’t leave good communication to chance.”
