Nash Stuart: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5482. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Thank you very much Mr Robertson. In the Committee stage of the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill I am quite keen to talk to Subpart 1 of Part 2 “Referendums on New Zealand flag”. I agree with one of the earlier speakers when we talked about schedule 1 the voting paper for the first flag referendum and the question asked: “If the New Zealand flag changes which would you prefer?”. I actually think this is quite counter-intuitive. Even the regulatory impact statement says when it talks about this option: “Voters are unable to express a preference for the current flag in the first referendum. This is potentially confusing for voters and may also risk engagement.” So what we have got here is a question that risks voters’ disengagement with the process where the purpose of the bill talks about engaging voters. It is quite counterintuitive.Hon Nanaia Mahuta: That doesn’t make sense.STUART NASH: It does not. It is like asking the question: “If you don’t want the All Blacks to win the Rugby World Cup who would you prefer to win?”. I mean we all want the All Blacks to win the Rugby World Cup so the question is quite redundant.This brings me to Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper 102. I will distil this down to Part 2 clause 14(1)(a)—this is “Voting paper in second flag referendum” where it talks about the alternative flag design that is successful in the first referendum. What defines “success”? What Jacinda has put forward is a definition of “success” that would allow at least 50 percent of New Zealanders to have a say in what is happening. But what we have got here means that we could potentially end up with a definition of “success” where around 15 percent of eligible voters make a decision that goes on to the second referendum. I do not know how many people are going to vote in this referendum; we never know these things. But what we do know is that the turnout in a postal vote is usually a lot lower than it is when you have to go to a polling station. In fact the regulatory impact statement also highlighted this. The regulatory impact statement actually said that the best time to have this referendum is when you are having a general election because you turn up you tick it and away you go. But obviously the Government and the Prime Minister decided against that option.We could end up in quite a weird way with a flag chosen by four people. We have got a flag panel at the moment and with all due respect to Clayton Mitchell the last speaker he actually got this a little wrong. The people who determine the final four designs are those people on the flag committee. They include people like Rod Drury. Rod is an exceptionally good businessman; I do not know about his design skills. You have got Julie Christie who made The GC heaven help us. Again she is very successful but I am not too sure what her credentials are around flag design or any sort of design for that matter. So what we could end up with is four people making a final decision on the flag that goes through. How we come to this is that they have got to choose four flags that go into the first referendum and with 12 people on the panel—if it goes for preferential voting like a majority—you could end up with only four people choosing the flag that ends up going through to the choice between the current New Zealand flag and the final flag.But again let us take it back to how many people here may end up voting and therefore the definition of “success”. At the last general election there were around about 2.4 million voters who voted which is not high but it is about standard and it is what we have come to expect in this day and age. In local body elections where it is a postal vote you are really lucky if you get 50 percent of people voting. In fact that is quite high. In Napier for example where there was a very very strong local issue we got about 50 percent voting and that was considered by all and sundry as a high percentage for a postal vote. So let us assume that we get 50 percent of people voting in this first referendum. It is preferential voting as outlined in clause 20 which talks about the electoral systems for the referendums. Clause 20(1) states that it is the preferential voting electoral system for the first referendum. We could end up with let us say 700000 people voting and because it is preferential voting we may end up with in fact about 30 percent of those who voted voting for the successful flag as their first preference. Again we end up with about 350000 Kiwis determining the final vote that goes through so one-tenth of those who are eligible to vote may end up making that decision. I know and I understand that there is going to be a whole lot of advertising on this and as Jacinda Ardern pointed out there is no spending cap so someone like Gareth Morgan or perhaps—and I do not mean to cast aspersions on anyone’s character in way shape or form—those on the voting panel for example and there are some who are incredibly wealthy may want their first preference to be the flag that goes through to the final referendum.