Curran Clare: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7013. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): In Part 2 of this bill we move to clause 9 the revoking of clause 5 which is about the time period. Clause 5 amending section 13(1) replaces “60 days before the commencement of the voting period …” where the alternative flag designs are determined—there were four alternative flag designs—and it now becomes “40 days before the commencement of the voting period for the first flag referendum prescribe 5 alternative flag designs”.I have a couple of points to make about this part of the bill. No. 1 is that it does not actually say in the actual body of the legislation what the fifth flag alternative should be. So that leaves it up in the air. Last night in the House we had Gareth Hughes telling us that there were constitutional reasons for that which were a bit hard to fathom really. If he is going to take another call it might be good if he could expand on that.Really if we are unable to determine what the actual point of this legislation is in the actual body of the legislation then it hardly seems to be of much point. It feels to me that this is the part of the legislation that you could drive a truck through which is why my colleague Trevor Mallard last night described it as being badly written. That is because we now have an extra period of I am not sure how many days. Maybe somebody could illuminate us on how many days it is until the referendum occurs—when everything is fixed in place. But we now have this period of time when everything is in flux and there are five designs and we are not actually sure what they are going to be.David Seymour: It’s 40 days from November 20. It’s quite simple.CLARE CURRAN: Yes. The commentary on the bill talks about Red Peak but the actual body of the legislation does not specify what the fifth alternative should be and we are asking why we are wasting Parliament’s time by debating this in the House and why everybody is getting so worked up about it if we are actually not saying in the legislation what that fifth design should be.This law could have been made much fairer and much more reasonable by including a provision for a yes/no question. Sadly that has been voted down in the previous vote. That is how the process could have been made more honest and been given more integrity and could have matched what the people of New Zealand have been asking for. But unfortunately the deal that was done between the National Government and the Greens precluded that agreement and precluded that process occurring.Labour has been accused of being hung up on process and we make absolutely no apologies for that because the process that we have argued for consistently from the beginning which is the same process that was used in the MMP referendum—which actually managed to make substantial change to New Zealand’s parliamentary system—was undertaken in an honest way and with integrity. Our problem with this whole bill and this whole process with the flag referendum is that it is back to front and it is not giving people the opportunity to say whether they agree or not with changing the flag before they actually get to choose which alternative flag they want if they do want an alternative flag. So it is back to front. It is wrong. It is treating New Zealanders with disrespect. It is treating New Zealanders like muppets as I said in my previous contribution. Clause 9—the revocation clause—revokes clause 5 which is the clause that talks about the 60 days before the commencement of the voting period just leaves open a whole lot of questions and leaves open the possibility of there being other alternatives put in. So we might not end up with two ferns a koru and Red Peak—or is it three ferns?Iain Lees-Galloway: Three ferns.CLARE CURRAN: Three ferns a koru and a Red Peak—Grant Robertson: And a partridge in a pear tree.CLARE CURRAN: —and a partridge in a pear tree. We might end up with a partridge in a pear tree. That is what we might end up with and that is why this whole thing is a farce and everybody out there thinks so too. Seventy percent of New Zealanders have said they do not want to change the flag and 80 percent of New Zealanders said in a poll that was done earlier that they wanted the opportunity to answer a yes/no question first. That was the process that was used in the MMP referendum. That is the good process and by saying as some commentators have said that Labour is hung up on process—well goodness me. Somebody has actually got to care about the process. Somebody has to think that the process should have integrity and should be trusted.