Moroney Sue: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7020. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the title clause which is actually the one that I would like to focus on for the purpose of this debate because the title is the New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill. I just want to put on record how disappointed I am that the amendment that we should have been making to the referendum but are not making is having the yes/no question about whether people want to change the flag at all. That question should be in the first referendum. We know that 43000 people signed an online petition calling for exactly that—for a yes/no question about whether we wanted to change the flag or not to be the subject of the first referendum. That is what this amendment bill the New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill ought to have been doing if the Government was truly listening to the New Zealand public. Government members have shown that they will change their minds based on social media campaigns. I think that is going to be very interesting for the Government to contemplate in the future because that is what it has done in this bill. It has said that it is actually amenable if there are social media campaigns run where there are some numbers of people who express a view—that it will bend to the desire for people to have the Red Peak flag added to the referendum. But why has the Government not listened to the 43000 people who said they wanted the first referendum to ask the question about whether the flag should be changed at all?There is still an opportunity for all of those things to happen under this bill after it is passed as I have pointed out in my previous contribution. I really would like to hear from the Minister on whether the Government would entertain this or not because this would truly be a solution that I think could be supported by all parties around this Chamber—and I am particularly looking to New Zealand First. If one of the five flags that are now going to be in this referendum was the New Zealand flag—the current New Zealand flag—would that address the issues that are causing New Zealand First to vote against this legislation?Clayton Mitchell: Certainly might.SUE MORONEY: It looks like it may well do. Would that not be a nice neat tidy solution because then everyone would actually get what they wanted in one referendum? If we did it in one referendum—if we got the view of the country expressed in that one referendum—we would save in the order of about $13 million to $15 million. It is not a small amount of money. We could save that money and truly find out what the will of the New Zealand public is. We could save even more money—it would cost an awful lot less—and just look at the poll results. We know that if one of those five flags was the current New Zealand flag almost certainly 70 percent of people who participated in that referendum would tick the current New Zealand flag—done and dusted. It would probably cost us in the realm of about $10 million or $12 million for that one referendum. We could put the—[Interruption] Well the members opposite scoff. They do not seem to have the New Zealand taxpayers’ interests in mind at all when they are considering this issue about the New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill. It is a really simple and elegant solution. If one of those five flags in the first referendum was to be the current New Zealand flag we would get all of this shambles sorted in one swift easy referendum. Would that not be honouring what all New Zealanders want—an appropriate say in whether the flag is changed or not—with the minimum amount of cost to the New Zealand taxpayer? I believe it meets the needs of everyone around Parliament.Therefore if we are reflective of the wishes of the New Zealand public as we ought to be that would satisfy the needs of the New Zealand public to have what they quite rightly should insist on—that is a proper say in how this flag referendum happens; not a manipulation by the Government. Actually I think if it did that it might stop people being humiliated by the process of going along to events where they are going along for all the right reasons to fund-raise for cancer research or things like that and they would not have to have the Prime Minister lecture them about trying to get his pet project through and trying to have his vanity project mandated. People could go along to those events for the right reasons and not have to suffer being berated by the Prime Minister if they dare to disagree with his view about changing the flag.