Tabuteau Fletcher: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6998. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I want to just take this opportunity to reply to Minister Parata’s statements around democracy and how important democracy is in this process. The Minister needs to realise that she is speaking about democracy under an urgency process which makes a farce of this statement in the first place. She is talking about democracy by Facebook and she is talking about democracy by pandering to lobby groups and focus groups. That is not democracy. If the Minister would dare to stand up in this House and extol the virtues of democracy to New Zealanders—I dare her and her Government to apply the same fine principles of democracy that she would extol to this House to the debate around secret tribunals which would undermine the sovereignty of this New Zealand Government under investor-State dispute settlements for example. But to turn specifically to the bill—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes. We do not want to have to talk about those sorts of things. They are not part of Part 1.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Thank you Mr Chair. I am speaking specifically to the bill to clauses 4(2) and 5 in Part 1. This Government with the support of the Green Party is being—as Minister Joyce would say—tricky. It is being tricky. It is allowing by Order in Council the current four flag options to be removed completely. So what it is doing is not adding Red Peak—Brett Hudson: It was an Order in Council to begin with.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: It is removing all four options and then instead of simply adding Red Peak to this debate Mr Hudson it is adding another option. So actually what we find is that after this Government puts this legislation through the House New Zealanders will not necessarily find that they will be discussing the four options already agreed to and they will not necessarily be discussing Red Peak. What we will discuss and what we must be mindful of is that the Prime Minister—Brett Hudson: Read the commentary Mr Tabuteau.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Oh Mr Hudson says: “Read the commentary.” For goodness’ sake! In all of the legislation presented recently you have wonderful song sheets telling us what this bill is about but then you actually read the legislation and it has nothing whatsoever to do with what you claim it does in the explanatory note. So the reality is despite Mr Hudson’s commentary there are now five blank options. What I was saying before I was rudely interrupted was that what we will find is that those five options are not necessarily reflective of a process that the people of New Zealand had thought was a robust and principled one.Pita Paraone: And would expect.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: And would expect. What we find is five blank sheets where the Prime Minister and Cabinet can fill them in at their own device. New Zealanders need to be very very wary of that.I would just like to finish my contribution by speaking to an amendment presented in the name of Denis O’Rourke. It is to rename the piece of legislation to the “New Zealand Flag Referendums (Future Generations Will Not Forgive You) Amendment Act 2015”. I have visited schools in Rotorua as part of my job to discuss Youth Parliament. In those conversations students asked me what my position was on the flag change. They wanted to know where I stood and I told them the truth. I love our current flag and I do not want it to change and I think this whole process has been a farce. And do you know what they said to me? They completely agreed. These are 16-year-olds—16-year-olds from all of the schools in Rotorua—consistently and unanimously agreeing that this whole process is a farce. They were as upset as anyone else about the waste of New Zealand taxpayers’ money on a referendum that does not even ask in the first place: “Do you want a flag change?”. It is an insult to this House and it is a waste of this House’s time. Thank you.