Hughes Gareth: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6959. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Today I introduced and tried to seek leave for a bill that would include the flag design known as Red Peak in the official referendum happening in about 6 weeks’ time. One party blocked it and did not let New Zealanders have that choice. I respect its opinion and the thousands of New Zealanders who also share its opinion but I genuinely believe that Kiwis simply want more of a choice. So I would like to thank the Government. I welcome its decision to adopt my bill as a Government bill the New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill. I would like to thank all parties for their support. It is good that we can work together.Watching politicians over the last couple of weeks despite the massive groundswell of public support what we saw during the official consultation process was a handful of people engaged and joke flags uploaded. [Interruption] Yet what we saw over the course of a single week—a single week Mr O’Rourke—were 50000 people engaged with a single flag. The fact is that we have seen those people. They have voted with their feet online on the petition and in emails to parliamentarians and it is good that those people get a choice. If those members think those people should not get a choice they can stand up and say it in their speeches. I am standing up today so that Kiwis get more of a choice. No matter what that party says and no matter what the pundits the columnists the people on Twitter have said it is pretty clear that Red Peak has not peaked yet. My bill which has been adopted by the Government is about giving Kiwis a choice in the referendum. What we saw was a phenomenal public reaction.I would like to explain my personal relationship with Red Peak. I will admit that I was incredibly lukewarm on this particular flag at first—incredibly lukewarm. I do not think I would have picked it out of that 10000. I think my favourite pick was probably the “Laser Kiwi” which had garnered so much international attention and was such a symbol of the entire process and the seriousness with which the Kiwi public was taking it. But what I saw in respect of the background explanation of this particular flag design Red Peak were the words of the designer—the different symbolic interpretations such as the meeting house over the mountain. What we saw was that it actually built a connection. What many New Zealanders told me is that it actually looked like a flag unlike maybe some of the marketing-type associations people felt with the four official flag choices. What we saw was an incredible 50000 people in a single week engaged. What we have seen is the public print their own flags and run them up mountains. Garage Project one of my favourite microbreweries in the entire country a Wellington-based company has even made its own Red Peak brew which I am looking forward to trying if this bill passes and I am hopeful and optimistic that it will.My message to the people who may not support Red Peak is that regardless of where you stand whether you support keeping the existing flag whether you support having a silver fern or whether you support Red Peak or something else this is simply about choice. It is about this House listening to the public and listening to the groundswell of support. What we do know is that a huge percentage of the population do not want to change the flag. We saw that TV3 poll with 70 percent against and I respect that opinion. A flag is simply a bit of cloth up a pole but it is also something a bit more than that. It is a symbolic representation on behalf of all of us and in multicultural modern New Zealand in 2015 we need to make sure we get this right because our existing flag is more than 100 years old.What we know is that this referendum process is going ahead. Despite my misgivings—and I do not think that this is the most appropriate use of the Government’s time or the most appropriate use of $26 million—the fact is that this referendum process is going ahead. That law was passed. My party voted against it; we thought that there were more important priorities. But the referendum process is going ahead and what I wanted to make sure of was that it was not the farce that it looked like it was turning into that it was not ignoring those tens of thousands of Kiwis who wanted a say. So regardless of where you stand Kiwis will get a say and as this law passes they will get more of a choice which is a good thing.When it comes to the $26 million being expended I think that there are more important things to be spending it on. We should be spending it on feeding every kid a healthy lunch in our schools. There are so many more things that are so much more important. The process was incredibly flawed. We saw 10000 entries but many of them were jokes and a handful of people turned up to the meetings. What we saw was a process that did not truly engage or capture the interest of New Zealanders. An interesting juxtaposition I think is Massey University’s Design and Democracy Project Flagpost. For the cost of tens of thousands of dollars a website was built that genuinely engaged New Zealanders. It gave New Zealanders the ability to actually comment on the flag entries. It gave New Zealanders the ability to vote on the flag entries. In 2015 in modern digital New Zealand I am astounded that the flag process did not allow New Zealanders to take advantage of some of these digital technologies and the ability to instantaneously provide feedback which ultimately would have delivered a better decision than what we saw in the 4 hours of consideration from the group without a designer.I would also like to point out that Parliament did not have to take this step of going into urgency to pass this today. I am not talking about New Zealand First blocking leave; I am talking about the Government through Order in Council amending some of the options which was always a live option. What we know is that Kiwis care about the flag. They are engaging with it. Many people do not think that it is right to change it and I am looking forward to hearing their opinions loud and clear through the referenda process. But why the Green Party acted today is because we wanted to break that political deadlock. We wanted to offer a constructive positive solution because we did not want to just be sitting around watching a political deadlock emerge when we know we could work together. This is what people at home on Twitter reading the newspapers watching the telly wanted to see: they wanted to see parties working together in the common interest. What Parliament is doing tonight is simply about working together to give Kiwis more choice.In purely practical terms the bill essentially does three things. We drafted it incredibly simply. I wanted a simple bill that dealt only with this single issue. I know that other parties feel incredibly strongly about other issues; I respect that. I think that there is great merit in their opinions and I am disappointed that there is not an ability to include them in this bill—because ultimately I was looking for a pragmatic solution so that we were not just sitting around playing politics so that we were not just sitting around talking about it but were actually getting on and giving Kiwis choice. So this bill does three things. It adds a fifth option in clause 4. It is not prejudicing the Governor-General’s ultimate decision-making so in clause 5 it makes this clear but the bill has reference to Red Peak in the explanatory statement so that no one can be confused in thinking that the Governor-General could pick the “Laser Kiwi” flag if he chose. Lastly in amending schedule 4 as set out in clause 7 the bill amends some of the mathematical formulas for the fifth option’s inclusion.In summary I would like to say how it is important that this Parliament can work together that our parties can come together across party lines—and this is something that the Green Party has had as its mission ever since we entered Parliament in 1996. We have worked successfully with Labour when it was in Government. We worked successfully with the current Government through the home insulation legislation and the national cycleway. We have worked with the ACT Party. We are proud of some of the wins we have had with New Zealand First. Our place in this Parliament literally right in the middle of this debating chamber is to work with parties. I am proud that my party’s bill was picked up by the Government. I am proud that we could act constructively positively—that we could maybe put politics aside for a little while so that Kiwis could have the choice that they so clearly desired. Thank you.