Wall Louisa: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5492. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Ngā mihi ki a koutou katoa. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this Committee stage debate on the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill. I particularly want to focus on clause 10 and clause 13 in Part 2 and I want to start by commending my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard who managed to get 43000 people to sign a petition to say that they wanted a yes/no vote. It is interesting because the flag consideration process got only 700 people along to the public consultations which represents 1.6 percent of the people who engaged in the Hon Trevor Mallard’s process. So I think that he has done a great service to democracy because he has got New Zealanders to engage in this process.In terms of clause 10 I want to congratulate my colleague Jacinda Ardern because I 100 percent support her Supplementary Order Paper 102 which wants to insert new clause 10A which reads: “the second flag referendum may take place only if more than 50% of electors return a valid voting paper to the Returning Officer in the first flag referendum.” Why do I think that a simple majority actually is sufficient? Because a simple majority represents that the majority of electors in our democracy actually agree with the proposition that in fact our flag should change. Why do I think that is incredibly important? Because I fundamentally believe in democracy and a democratic principle actually is about majority rules. What this Supplementary Order Paper ensures is that the voice of the majority of New Zealanders is more than taken into consideration but actually guarantees the passage of this piece of legislation.In fact if we were to do that we would not be the only country in the world to do that because in places like Armenia they actually require 50 percent of registered voters’ support for any constitutional change. In the Cayman Islands it is the same process—more than 50 percent of registered voters have to vote for any constitutional change. In Hungary they are a little bit different because they say that half of the people who are registered to vote have to vote and then half of those who have voted have to vote in favour of whatever particular constitutional question is at hand. Ireland for example—theirs is not quite a majority but they require 33.3 percent of voters who are registered to vote in favour of a particular proposition. In Sri Lanka you have to have a turnout of more than 66.7 percent and of those a third of all possible voters have to support any constitutional amendments. In Zambia there is a 50 percent turnout requirement and of those 50 percent have to approve of any constitutional change. In Fiji one of our Pacific cousins they require a 75 percent approval. Essentially what I am trying to do is to highlight that what my colleague Jacinda Ardern is doing is actually ingraining the principle of majority rules which is a fundamental principle of democracy in this piece of legislation for any constitutional change to happen.I also want to speak to clause 13 which is about alternative flag designs. It has been really interesting reading some of the media commentary about the participation in this flag referendum bill. We have had over 10293 flags submitted to the process of which the Flag Consideration Panel is now trying to ascertain four flags that will go into this referendum. But the interesting thing I want to highlight is that of those 25 percent are actually from people living overseas so they are not New Zealanders. They have got no vested interest in our country. They actually do not live here and so you kind of have to question what the legitimacy of their entry is in this process. Because 25 percent of people living overseas actually to me just reeks of them participating in an art competition—that New Zealand basically has had this big art competition and people overseas now think that actually they can decide what the identity of our country is. Is that valid? And actually are all those flags going to be considered by this Flag Consideration Panel? Because I would have thought that they should not be because if people have just put in a design and actually it is not about—