Robertson Grant: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6976. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I think if anyone watching wanted an illustration of just who it is who is playing political games with this process they would have learnt that from the nasty patronising graceless speech that the Deputy Prime Minister has just given. The Green Party might choose to reflect on the tone of the speech that Mr English just gave in this House and just what it is that it has created through this position today—the bill being here today. I do not think I have heard in this House from someone in the position of being the Deputy Prime Minister a more graceless speech than the one that I have just heard. It was disgraceful.As other speakers have noted Labour is supporting the New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill. We are doing that because it does give more choice to people in the referendum process. The public want more choice in this process. As members of the House know Labour attempted to introduce a piece of legislation to do exactly this—to add Red Peak into the referendum process. Along with that as we have done consistently through this flag referendum process we have asked for a yes/no vote to be added first. We proposed that piece of legislation; it was rejected. We have played and attempted to play a constructive role in this process from day one. There was a cross-party—Tim Macindoe: Nothing your party has done is constructive.GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Macindoe wants to deny this but there was a cross-party group that with the exception of one political party in this House attempted to make a significant constitutional process one that all parties in Parliament were part of. That group with the exception of the National Party members wanted a yes/no vote but other parties wanted a yes/no vote first. We continue to believe that that is what will give New Zealanders the choice that they are looking for. This piece of legislation contributes to having more choice in this process but the real choice that New Zealanders wanted—the choice that more people signed a petition for than signed for Red Peak—was to have a yes/no question and that has been denied. It is of great disappointment to the Labour Party members that as part of striking a deal to get this legislation introduced other parties in Parliament—and the Green Party in particular—will not support our amendment to have that yes/no vote. We find that extremely disappointing.I want to take us back to how it is we find ourselves in urgency doing this legislation because it has been within the power of the Government to move legislation exactly as it has done tonight at any point in the last few weeks. The Government commands a majority in this House. At any point it could have done that but instead John Key has chosen to play political games. Bear in mind it is less than a week ago that John Key said he could not possibly introduce exactly this legislation unless Labour supported him. He said that. He said there was no way it could be done—that it was impossible. That is complete nonsense and political rhetoric but that is what John Key was saying less than a week ago. He said he could not move unless Labour supported him. There is no history of that in this process. When the original legislation went through it did so without Labour voting for it and without the Green Party voting for it in fact. So some notion that Labour had to be on board with including Red Peak in the referendum is completely ridiculous.This is the track record of the Prime Minister. Here I am watching 3 News tonight and there they go replaying from The Paul Henry Show on 7 September the Prime Minister ruling out Red Peak entering the referendum. He stated: “We’re not going back to Parliament to change the law.” That is what he said. So if anyone is playing politics here tonight it is National. The Government could have used an Order in Council to put in Red Peak—it could have done that. It chose not to do that. The Government could have come to this House with legislation exactly like this to include a fifth flag which apparently will become Red Peak although that is not actually what the law says. But it did not. The Government chose not to because the Prime Minister was playing political games with this issue. That is the truth of it. It has been the truth of it all the way through.Tim Macindoe: It’s the Labour Party playing political games and you know it.GRANT ROBERTSON: Tim Macindoe says that we are playing political games. We have had the consistent position of a yes/no referendum have we not Mr Macindoe? We have had the consistent position of a yes/no referendum—yes we have. We have had a consistent position of a yes/no referendum. The political game is that John Key now needs to rescue his referendum.The truth is that the four flags that were chosen by the Flag Consideration Panel are not going to work. He knows that. There was a TV3 poll and 70 percent of New Zealanders do not want to change the flag. So he has now had to come up with a way of saving his referendum. To do that he is adopting Red Peak. My personal view is that Red Peak is far and away a better flag than any of the others that are in the referendum mix. Trevor Mallard disagrees with me but Red Peak is far and away a better flag. I still think the Prime Minister is going to struggle to get it through a second referendum but at least now there will be a half - decent-looking flag up against the New Zealand flag in the final referendum.I want now to refer to another matter—and it is also in Labour’s amendment—and that is the question of mandate. What mandate—whether or not we will actually have a decent level of participation—is created out of the first referendum? This is a significant and important decision. In my view it is a decision that we are taking in complete isolation from the broader constitutional debate that we should be having as a country. Bill English in his ungracious response earlier on mentioned the fact that John Burrows had also chaired the Constitutional Advisory Panel. Well the Government completely ignored that piece of work—it completely ignored that piece of work. If the Government were genuinely interested in having a conversation about New Zealand’s future identity then we would be talking more broadly than just on the flag but the flag has become the vanity project of John Key which we now have to put up with. Well we are proposing that there does need to be more than 50 percent of electors returning a valid vote in Part A of the first referendum. We think that is a reasonable request because that means that there will be a mandate from the public. We would rather see the yes/no vote as the easy way of dealing with that. We have got that in our amendment as well but the Government could today accept that in order to make a significant change like this there needs to be a decent mandate.I am very very sad that we have ended up in the position that we have ended up in tonight. The use of urgency to do this is totally unnecessary. If the Government had stopped playing political games accepted that it wanted to put Red Peak or a fifth option in and simply gone about the process of doing that it could have been done in the normal course of events in the last few weeks. It chose not to do that. It chose to make this a political game. Tonight to have the Deputy Prime Minister stand up to move the second reading of this and spend 10 minutes deciding that he was going to make this about the Labour Party he was going to make personal insults and he was going to insult the party that has given him the piece of legislation that is now before the House says everything New Zealanders need to know about this National Government its attitude its arrogance and how out of touch it is and it says everything they need to know about this flag referendum process. This should be a process that New Zealanders are proud of and are proud to participate in. It is not. It is a shambles. It has been a shambles—Jacqui Dean: Ha ha! Awesome.GRANT ROBERTSON: Jacqui Dean thinks it is hilarious. It is a shambles because New Zealanders have not been treated with respect. They have not been given the opportunity to actually decide whether they want to change the flag. New Zealanders feel manipulated and it is one of the reasons why 70 percent of New Zealanders are opposing a flag change. They feel like they are being manipulated by the Prime Minister who has got his vanity project under way.At least this piece of legislation will give New Zealanders more choice. They should have real choice. They are not getting that from this Government.