Parker David: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5582. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Timing is everything and I suspect that if the Prime Minister had brought forward this idea at the start of his time as Prime Minister he might have carried the country with it. He could have used some of his popularity at the time to turn this into a positive experience and he could have used his influence to get the outcome that he wanted. But of course he was not willing to do that. He delayed 8 years and of course people see the somewhat cynical timing of the flag by then as being a flag of diversion—a flag of convenience to take the eye of the public off more serious issues. Of course that coincides with a downturn in the New Zealand economy and so perhaps people are more willing to think ill of this move to change the flag than they would have had the Prime Minister used his political skill to bring this forward at an earlier time.I want to say why I agree at one level with the last speaker Denis O’Rourke in terms of the name of this bill. It is called the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill but in the first referendum there is nothing in it about the New Zealand flag. There is no option presented in the first referendum to answer the question as to whether you want the New Zealand flag to change or not and that has been one of the main complaints that has been made by Opposition parties. It is not too complex. Most people can get their head around whether they want a change to the flag or not and if that had been included in the first question then the second referendum would have been stayed. If the majority did say that they wanted a change to the flag you could proceed but if the majority said that they did not then you would not waste any more money on it.Tim Macindoe: Did this member support the policy he campaigned on last year?Hon DAVID PARKER: I did. I did but I also see this for what it is. It is something pulled out of the bottom drawer. You know Paula Bennett’s excuses or another bit of benefit-bashing or another attempt to blame criminals for every ill that we have in society—those sorts of excuses were running thin so the Government said: “Oh we’ve got to pull another one out of the bottom drawer. How about we resurrect this old flag idea and bring it in.”Of course circumstances change. You know Fonterra has responded to the circumstances changing in the dairy sector by making 500 people or so redundant and trying to cut its cloth. That is going to have flow-on effects for the Government’s books. It is now unlikely it is going to make surplus or its surplus will be smaller and it is time that the Government responded to the effect that that will have upon its books as well. So that is why responding to the interjection from the whip for the National Party I say that it is appropriate that you cut your cloth and when things are not going as well you should not waste $26 million on a process that obviously is unpopular now anyway and is not going to succeed. Secondly even if you are going to proceed you should do it in the most cost-effective method possible rather than have two referenda when one would have sufficed.The next point I would make is to ask why we are doing this through a special postal referendum. The cost of that will be higher than if it was just tacked on to another election. It does not seem to me to be an appropriate thing—to go the more costly route. As my colleague the Hon Phil Goff has already said because postal referenda have a lower turnout than a general election you do not get the same mandate if you like either for change or for retention of the status quo if that is the way people want to go.You have heard that the Government members at the Justice and Electoral Committee blocked an amendment proposed by the Hon Trevor Mallard to try to fix this problem with the referendum which has no question about the current flag in the first referendum. There is a rather barren question: if we were to change which of these flags would you like? It would have been very simple to make that better by including the option of retaining the flag in the first referendum. That is described in the minority view of the Labour Party in the select committee report which said that there is a balance to be struck in questioning—