Goff Phil: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5464. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I want to speak to the purpose clause clause 3 of this bill which talks about the holding of two referendums in order to determine whether we should have a change to our flag. What I want to say first of all is that I think that the purpose clause has got the sequencing right because the purpose clause says that the referendums are held “to decide whether New Zealand should have a new flag” and then to decide for a process of change. I think the drafting of the bill is absolutely logical because the first decision we as New Zealanders need to make is whether there is a desire to change the flag at all and if there is yes we go on to find whether there is a consensus around an alternative flag. When we had the vote on MMP we did not ask people to decide—in the latest vote in the referendum last year we did not decide first of all what system we wanted to choose; we decided whether we wanted to change from MMP. It was logical and it was rational and it would be logical and rational for the Government to have approached this in exactly the same way.Next what do New Zealanders think about this issue? All of us have had feedback from our constituents and I want to pass on in the Committee of the whole House the feedback that I have had. The first thing is that the flag is not a burning issue for our constituents. We do not get people turning up at our constituency offices saying: “The most important issue facing New Zealand is whether we have a new symbol for our nation.” They come to us to talk about the risk of recession or the $7 billion that has been taken out of the economy because of the collapse of dairy. They talk about their housing problems and they talk about the disarray of the prisons. They do not talk about the flag. So the first point I want to make here is it is not a burning issue for New Zealanders. I have also got to relay to the Committee what my constituents are saying. They are approaching it quite cynically because of the way in which this has been handled. They are saying: “We think this might be a deliberate and cynical attempt to distract us from the issues that are actually out there.” That is what I am being told.The next thing that I am hearing from constituents is that they think the process that this Government has adopted is extravagantly expensive. New Zealanders have internalised the fact that times have been tough and there are a whole lot of pressing issues that the Government has not addressed supposedly because the money is not there. Then they ask me: “Why are we spending $26 million on this process when what a logical thing to do would be to hold a referendum?”—because everybody agrees that any decision on the flag ought to be made by the people not by 121 parliamentarians. They say: “Why not hold the referendum at the time of the next election?”. This is not so pressing that it must be decided in 2015 rather than 2017. They say: “Why not hold it at the time of the next election?” And I want to pose that question to the Minister in the chair Nikki Kaye because I want to put to the Minister that firstly you could have the public have its say for a fraction of the $26 million. At the time of the election you are not setting up a separate electoral process which is incredibly expensive.Secondly for this referendum to have real weight we want high participation. We want high participation in the decision and we know that if there is a postal referendum maybe a third of New Zealanders will go out—well they will not go out. Well they will go out to post the ballot that comes through the mail to them. And if it is 30 percent of the population that say whether they want this design or that design we are not getting the majority opinion of New Zealanders; we are spending $26 million and we are getting a minority view back from New Zealanders. So if you hold this referendum at the time of the next election you get full participation by New Zealanders you get 80 percent of people having their say and you have no cost. And what I have not heard and what I want the Minister to address at this stage of the bill is why the decision was made to do it in this way instead of the logical way of coinciding it with an election and getting a better turn out.