Smith NickPart 3 Referendum advertisingHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The questions I have of the Minister on Part 3 of this bill are actually quite crucial in the sense that not only is the Government trying to manipulate the system by shifting the power over who gets to decide what referendum goes off to Cabinet and determining the wording and taking the power away from Parliament and a select committee and the public from having a say on the question; it is also wanting to control the discussion.My first question to the Minister is this: when we had the flag referendum Labour members of Parliament argued very strongly that—Michael Wood: Glory moment for the National Government.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well I'd just be interested in a principled approach from members opposite. When we had the flag referendum Mr Wood the Labour Party argued that the publicity campaign had to be run independently. It could not be run by a Government department because if a Government department ran the referendum on the flag the concern was that that'd be biased. Now I think the member would accept as New Zealanders accept that the referendum on the flag was played with an absolutely straight bat. [Interruption] Well members opposite—I'd love them to get to their feet and to argue the deficiencies of the flag referendum that National conducted.National also had a referendum on MMP. Labour promised it broke their word; National delivered and it was a very fair referendum that we had on MMP. Then we look at the referendum that was held on the issue back in time on alcohol. In every case the advertising has been done by a neutral department and my concern is that the Minister has his own justice ministry providing an information campaign on the recreational cannabis referendum. The problem I have with that is as we've seen on multiple electoral rules when the Minister wanted to have the legislation to be able to give party leaders the power to sack MPs something that is unheard of—I spoke with the Australian Minister of electoral law yesterday. He was gobsmacked that the Parliament of New Zealand would pass such a law. On that the justice ministry said Our job is simply to follow Government policy." So my concern is: why has the Labour Party changed its position on the advertising and information campaigns on the information that New Zealanders will get to make a decision on sensitive issues like recreational cannabis or for that matter any other issue that they may decide through this bill that they want to have a referendum on. Why was it that Labour on MMP on the flag and other issues have said "Oh the Government can't run the information campaign; it needs to be independent." In the case of the flag referendum the information campaign was run by a completely independent body of the Government of the day. So why when Labour argued that is it changing its tune? Why is it that they want to control the information that goes out to New Zealanders on the recreational cannabis?That brings me back to my point again. This is all about pretending that New Zealanders are going to be able to have a say while the Minister is gerrymandering the system in the back room and making sure they get the outcome they want—that outcome being the legalisation of recreational cannabis. They don't have the courage to simply come before the Parliament and advance legislation of that sort—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I think the member knows that that's out of order. He'll withdraw and apologise for that comment.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I withdraw and apologise. The Government is not being upfront and saying that it wants to legalise recreational cannabis. What it instead is doing is creating an unfair process by which the referendum is generated against the advice of officials against what is good practice around referendum and we see that equally in the information campaign that the Government is wanting to conduct. So my question again: why has Labour changed its tune? Why on the flag referendum on the MMP referendum did Labour argue very passionately that the information campaign should be run at arm's length of the Government whereas in respect of the recreational cannabis referendum the Government wants to be in control of the agenda and the information that will have a major influence on the outcome of the referendum that has been proposed? They're the issues we should focus on in Part 3."