Mallard Trevor: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7026. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): The Labour Party will be supporting the third reading of this bill. Right through the process since Red Peak came up we have indicated that we would work with Parliament in order to find a process whereby Red Peak could be included as one of the choices. I want to indicate that unlike my leader who seems to think that Red Peak has some merit I think that it has no merit whatsoever but that is something that will be put before the people of New Zealand. I am prepared to lay some money on the fact that it will not be amongst the final two on the preferential system because all of the polling on this which many of us have seen shows that when this flag is considered by the public in an unbiased way—sitting somewhere between the two Lockwood designs; the awful thing that apparently is a koru; and the very very poorly drawn fern that was selected by the panel—it will not be in the final two.I want to say and place on the record—it is a point that I made during the Committee stage—that there are a number of people on the panel whom I have a lot of time for. There are a number of them whom I was involved with recommending. John Burrows is clearly an eminent New Zealander and people like Rod Drury and Sir Brian Lochore are people whom I have an enormous amount of time for but I think that the Government made an error in making the decision to take the design people who were part of the recommendations from the cross-party group off and to not include them. I think that there was a problem with the balance of the panel as a result of that. There was an extra problem as a result of politicisation of the panel by the people who were put on it and I think that as a result of this we ended up with what colleagues might describe politely as suboptimal options coming through the process.Although we can have a debate about Red Peak and whether it should be included or not I think that it is fair to say that the designs that have come through the process are ones that are either pretty unappealing or excessively complicated. I know Kyle Lockwood. He is a good New Zealander—with awful political views—living offshore but he is doing what he thinks is important for the country around passports and around this issue. I admire him for doing that but I must say that if we are to make a change—and long term I think that we will make a change—we have to change to something that kids can draw and that is easily recognisable. I think it is fair to say that Red Peak meets the “kids can draw” criterion but I think it fails for a number of reasons.Generally this debate has been in pretty good humour. I think it is fair to say that I have had to spend a little bit of time correcting the Greens on the way the constitution works. I want to place on record that if Parliament had wanted Red Peak in here we could have had legislation to add Red Peak to the current decisions. We did not do that. Gareth Hughes seemed to indicate that it would be rude for Parliament to indicate to the Governor-General what it thought. Well that is just nonsense. Every week the Governor-General signs off legislation that indicates what Parliament thinks and the Government-General assents to it. If Parliament had really wanted the Red Peak flag here we should have been straightforward and just added it. But as has been indicated to me during the Committee stage although this bill has Mr English’s name on it some of the earlier drafting might not have had the professional support that was necessary to get it into a form that does what is logical and as a result of that there has been a pretty bad mismatch between the explanatory note and the actual legislation. That is not a massive crime; it is just sloppy. I think it is pretty bad that the Government has picked up a bill that was drafted in such a sloppy way and has put a Minister’s name on it.I want to acknowledge as I have done on one or two other occasions the superior judgment of the Rt Hon Winston Peters and his New Zealand First teamin this general process. He recognised right from the beginning of this process that it was not one of good faith. It was one of predetermination and he and his team declined to be part of the cross-party group. Now I am probably more innocent in these matters—more trusting in these matters. I trusted the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister when they indicated that there was an attempt to make this process a genuinely multipartisan process that we could work through as a team and as a Parliament.As has been placed on the record of Parliament before despite the honourable efforts of Jonathan Young—and I do not want to impugn his integrityin any way—he was steamrollered to a certain extent in his chairing of that group. There were some things that the group put up and there were some names that the group put up that were rejected by Cabinet. I think it is fair to say that just as Gareth Hughes was naive as far as some of the processes in the House are concerned I was naive in terms of accepting the possibility of the National Party working on a genuine multiparty basis and accepting the decisions of the group. Right from the beginning of the process there hasbeen I think a degree of misleading and we are seeing it now—to the point that we are being misled by the explanatory note and the comparison with the bill.The Labour Party put up a couple of amendments during the process. It is a well-rehearsed issue the yes/no vote at the beginning of the process. It is the process that was used when MMP was brought in. The Prime Minister says that it is too complicated and to be absolutely fair to John Key I do not think that he was in the country at the time we switched to MMP. So he maybe does not understand that New Zealanders are bright enough to understand the difference between yes and no. But they were—85 percent of New Zealanders indicated that they wanted to change the parliamentary system when faced with a—Brett Hudson: 76 percent of voters said no to Labour.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: That member over there was roundly rejected—did he come third or fourth in the Ōhariu electorate? Did that member come third or fourth? He is only here as a result of MMP. He is only here as a result of MMP and I think his chipping in and saying that New Zealanders are too thick to understand a yes/no vote is an—[Interruption] Maybe he is right! Maybe he is right!Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Come back to the bill.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well Mr Deputy Speaker I was only reacting. The point that I want to make is that New Zealanders are bright enough to understand yes/no. They are bright enough to save $7 million but this Parliament has repeatedly refused to give them that right. What I really regret is that the principled position of the Greens right back in the multiparty group has been abandoned because John Key said: “If you don’t go along with this for the whole deal then we won’t support your bill and won’t give you kudos.”I have seen the front page of the Dominion Post and if Gareth Hughes really thinks that getting his photo on the front page with John Key is good for the Greens in the longer term then let him believe that. I do not and it is my view that the Greens will regret thisat some stage. But actually this whole debate is irrelevant because I think the number of New Zealanders who do not want to change the flag is now up to 74 percent and that being the case we are actually wasting time.