Robertson Grant: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 13 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5817. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): It is not often that I disagree with my good friend the member for Hutt South Trevor Mallard.Alastair Scott: Oh yes it is.GRANT ROBERTSON: No no. You would be surprised actually on the other side of the House.Hon Trevor Mallard: I get on with the right-wingers OK.GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh yes we can take that up later Mr Mallard. His depiction of his thought process around the flag—he was a person who wanted to see it change and then he has come to believe over time that it should stay the same—is not a position I agree with. I am one of the members of the Labour Party who thinks that there is a place for a new flag for New Zealand but I am equally a member of the New Zealand public who is angry with John Key for turning a process—Jacqui Dean: You’re always angry with John Key—doesn’t count.GRANT ROBERTSON: No no. Jacqui Dean contributes meaningfully yet again from the back row there. I along with a lot of other New Zealanders am angry with John Key that a discussion about this and a discussion about our national identity has become a vanity project for him. There is absolutely no doubt that that is what has happened.Ironically as Mr Mallard says the vanity does not extend to coming to Parliament to actually talk about the flag change. But in terms of the way this entire discussion has now played out in the New Zealand public it has played out as being about John Key and his desperate desire for a legacy and his desperate desire to leave something here in a flawed process that actually does not as Alfred Ngaro would have it give New Zealanders a say in the way that it should on this. A flawed process is the actual legacy that John Key has left New Zealanders on this matter.I have a feeling that two things are going to happen with this referendum. The first of those—Ron Mark: Oh yeah you’ve got your crystal ball.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right I have. I will see if Mr Mark agrees with these. I have a feeling there are two things that are going to happen with this referendum. The first of those is that the turnout in this referendum will be disappointing. The turnout in this referendum will not reflect what the National Party says to us is such a significant thing and a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think we will find the turnout will be low in part because of matters that were discussed during the Committee stages of the debate around the way that the referendum has been held the technology that has been used and all of those things. So I think that is the first thing that I would say.The second is that I suspect that the ridiculous order in which this referendum is taking place will come home to haunt National because by not asking New Zealanders the question of whether or not they wanted to keep the flag first it put in place a process that will undermine National’s own argument in my view. Government members are not being straight up with New Zealanders. They are not going into this conversation with New Zealanders saying: “Do you want this change?”. It has been raised in this House several times before.If you were to spend thousands and thousands of dollars driving all around the countryside looking at different houses to try to decide whether or not you wanted to buy a house and you had not even worked out whether you had enough money to do it how ridiculous would that be?Ron Mark: It’s going to cost more than $25 million.GRANT ROBERTSON: Exactly. How ridiculous would that be? And that is the problem with this process. The complete failure to treat New Zealanders with respect and actually look at this in a way that is a sensible and logical order is ridiculous.The Labour Party in the Committee stages of the debate proposed two amendments. The first of those was to defer the referendum for 5 years. I think that was a sensible suggestion. I agree with other Labour speakers that at this time in New Zealand’s economic situation and in this time in New Zealand’s social situation the time is right to push that back. To my mind I would like to see New Zealand have a conversation about our identity and about our nationhood that encompasses not only a symbol like the flag which is important but also the future of our constitutional arrangements.To me that is the thing that John Key wants to avoid. He wants to avoid the discussion about our overall constitutional arrangements which should be happening at the same time. I am deeply disappointed that it is the vanity of John Key rather than the substantive issue of what kind of arrangements we should have in New Zealand. How can we be having a conversation like this about our flag without the deeper conversation about whether we are a republic whether we are a constitutional monarchy—Hon Nanaia Mahuta: What does sovereignty mean?GRANT ROBERTSON: Yeah exactly. As my colleague Nanaia Mahuta says what sovereignty means today in New Zealand in the 21st century. But we are not having that conversation because the Prime Minister wants to diminish it and reduce it down to his vanity project and his attempt at a legacy because real leadership would be taking on that bigger challenge. Real leadership would be saying: “Let’s engage all New Zealanders in a conversation about how our country should be run and what values are important to us and what arrangements reflect those values in our constitutional arrangements.” But that is not what we have got. What we have got is an ill-thought-out two-stage referendum process that is round the wrong way.The first of our considerations was to defer for 5 years to be able to take on some of those ideas. The second proposal that we put forward was to cancel the second referendum if 50 percent of eligible voters do not vote in the first. And this really is a serious question: if the National Party really believe that the flag is this significant and this important why not adopt that? Why not adopt the idea that actually it is important enough that at least half of New Zealanders have a say? But that was not picked up and we know from the debate in the Committee stages that that is because National MPs are just not confident. They are not confident that people will participate to that level.It is time for the National Party to front up to New Zealanders and to stop being so out of touch with what they must hearing in their electorates and around the country about this flawed referendum process. That is actually in my view why John Key has not participated in the debate because he is worried about it. He is worried that it is going to go down and that it is going to tarnish “Brand Key”. Well he should front up to New Zealanders and he should accept that at least 50 percent of them should participate in the first referendum in order for the second one to occur. Unfortunately both of those proposals by the Labour Party were rejected in the Committee stages.I want to refer just before I come towards the end of my contribution to the select committee process because I think it does sum up what has gone wrong here. For committee members—and Alfred Ngaro did this when he stood up before—to say to 747 people who were as Trevor Mallard says largely returned service people who got together and decided that they want to put forward their views and National members of the committee outright rejected—Hon Trevor Mallard: 15000 did it.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yeah but 747 on that page. But 747 wanted to be heard and were rejected on that side of the House. And again I ask: if they truly believe this is significant and if they truly believe this is the big change that they want to do in terms of national identity how dare they not give those people the right to be heard? How dare they deny those people who have got so much history with the flag the right to be heard? So I am deeply disappointed that we have reached this point.As I said at the start of my contribution I still believe that there is a place for a change in the flag but it comes as part of a wider process and anything other than that wider process of consideration of our future constitutional arrangements makes this tokenism. It makes this process a vanity project. It is a huge lost opportunity for New Zealand to truly reflect on who we are in the 21st century. Instead we are subjected to a political process for John Key to be able to give his so-called legacy to New Zealand. I think that is wrong and that is why I oppose this bill.