Lees-Galloway Iain: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7009. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Some of the debate around the New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill has got a little bit silly. It has got a little bit out of control.David Seymour: I agree.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: David Seymour is nodding his head and he would know. I want to focus on what I think is the one thing that we can salvage out of this debacle which is Andrew Little’s proposed amendment to add the question—Hon Members: Ha ha!IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Calm down boys. I think from talking with people overnight that actually what people want to see is a little bit of dignity and decorum in this debate. When we actually try to address some substantive issues and we get laughter and barracking from the other side of the Chamber it does nothing to actually add to the decorum of this debate.I want to address this question of whether or not we should be asking people: “Do you want to change the flag?”. I have heard an odd argument against why we should do this which is that people need to see the options before they decide whether they want to change the flag or not. But actually people are going to be presented now with five options. People are going to know exactly what they are going to be voting on if they decide to go to a second referendum. People know exactly what they are going to be doing.We did this when we went to MMP. This is exactly the process—the Minister in the chair Dr Nick Smith is shaking his head but he obviously has as bad a memory as John Key does—we used with MMP. We asked people: “Do you want to change the voting system?”. And then the second question at the first referendum was: “Regardless of how you voted in that first question if we were to change what would you change it to?”. That worked perfectly well. There was no question back then that people needed to know which electoral system we would be changing to if we decided to change after that first question and it gave us the opportunity to ask people whether that was something we should actually be doing.I think it is even more important that we include that in the first referendum because so many people have come forward and said “We don’t agree with change.” or “This is not the right time. We ought to get the books back into surplus. We ought to deal with the $105 billion worth of debt that the Government has amassed before we deal with this issue. We want to have an opportunity to say: ‘No we don’t want to proceed and spend money unnecessarily.’ ” There are a lot of people out there—and I know that New Zealand First is sort of representing this part of the electorate—who just do not want to change. So we should simply ask that question: is this something that we want to do?I think it disrespects the intelligence of the voting public to say that they cannot make that choice before they have voted on which of the options they want to change to. So I again implore members to support this amendment proposed by Andrew Little. We know it works. We have got previous history of using exactly this process and of it working well and it is something that people want.Fifty thousand people signed a petition asking to include Red Peak. We could have included Red Peak without this legislation—let us make that clear. We do not need this legislation to include Red Peak so this is a sham and even more of a sideshow—but anyway never mind. People spoke up and said they wanted Red Peak. Well actually tens of thousands of people also signed a petition saying they wanted to have the opportunity to say yes or no at the first referendum and 80 percent of the submissions to the select committee—Clare Curran: 80 percent said they wanted the opportunity.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —80 percent said they wanted the opportunity for the yes/no question. So if we are responding to what the public wants and if we are going to indulge in the poll-driven behaviour that we have seen from the Prime Minister then let us include this question—yes or no—before we even go to having the expense of a second referendum.