Little Andrew: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 28 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5339. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Just when 4.4 million Kiwis have been asked what they stand for I thought that at least the Deputy Prime Minister might stand up and tell us what he stood for. He stood there for half his speech with his hands in his pockets and he did not tell us a thing. He stood there—dare I say—whingeing and moaning and carrying on because the truth is that New Zealanders do not want this change right now.There are thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who want a banner that reflects and represents the mightiness that is New Zealand but they know a bad thing when they see it and they know bad times when they see them. Many of the delegates who turned up to the National Party conference this weekend the weekend just gone—they know a bad thing when they see it too which was when the Minister of Finance stood up to speak to that conference. They knew it was all bad too. They were not convinced by a Minister of Finance who stands up and says: “Don’t worry. The electoral cycle will take care of itall. We’re just OK for 2017.” The same applies to the flag. This is not a question of the electoral cycle. This is a question about our national identity but it is a question about the time when New Zealanders are comfortable with change.Right now this economy because of this Government’s appalling economic mismanagement is facing some of the most serious headwinds we have seen in a generation. There is massive loss in the dairy price massive loss of economic confidence. You walk up the main street of Whanganui and a quarter of the shopfronts are now empty. People in Whanganui are concerned like in many other regions around New Zealand. People are concerned about the immediate future of New Zealand and they want the Government to be there to help. They want the Government to be there to help with housing to help with social housing to provide insulation for housing to look after our kids and to make sure all those kids who are still going hungry in our schools might get a decent feed whether for breakfast or lunch. What they do not want at these difficult times is a Government that has already spent $8 million on a referendum process without a referendum being held yet with another $17 million left to go when there are greater priorities at stake.This Government has just got it wrong. If there is any further evidence required just about the level of enthusiasm that there is amongst the public in New Zealand about this then just look at these figures. They had 25 public meetings. These were the opportunities for mass public engagement. Hundreds of people were expected to turn up—that is at each meeting I mean not across all of them. Across all those meetings 739 people turned up—an average of 29 per meeting. Do you know how many people turned up in New Plymouth?Hon Maggie Barry: How many on the website?ANDREW LITTLE: Maggie Barry has been to New Plymouth recently because I enjoyed sitting alongside her when we opened the iconic Len Lye Centre. But I wonder when she looked out at the vast throng of people who turned up at that most iconic building whether she realised how many had turned up to the flag referendum meeting.Eight. Eight people in New Plymouth. The people of New Plymouth are good people. The people of New Plymouth are good people—they know iconic identity when they see it because they have now got it on their front doorstep—but they do not want a flag change. That is why eight people turning up to a meeting designed for several hundred tells you that people do not want a flag change. They do not want this referendum and as you go up and down the country—15 people in some other place 22 somewhere else; an average of 29 at each meeting.What about the website submissions? The Deputy Prime Minister says: “Well we’ve had thousands of submissions. Over 10000 submitted new designs of the flag.” We know what they look like because Parliament was treated to the spectacle of some of those flags last week: a sheep with a rainbow coming out of its bottom—and that pretty much sums up the National Party. That is the state it is in—a pack of sheep. It wants something flash and fancy. It will not deal with the methane issue in our agriculture sector so it is left up to the flag designers amongst us to try to get a message to the National Party: will you please do something about the real issues? That is what that flag design represents. Then there were others: meat pies Jelly Tips jandals kiwi all the rest of it. There is nothing wrong with those. Unfortunately the Leader of the House has gone because I know that he will have a fascination with some of those designs.But this is where people are at—they do not take it seriously. They do not take it seriously because they have got other priorities. The rest of New Zealand overwhelmingly has other priorities at this difficult time in our history. This is not the time—when people are disengaged when people are concerned and when people are anxious about unemployment about the state of our economy about what is happening to our farming sector and about what is happening in the regions. They do not need a $17 million referendum that asks the wrong questions in the wrong order. If we are going to have a referendum we should have at least turned it round and asked in the right order. But people have spoken loudly and clearly: they do not want the change right now.That is not a poor reflection on New Zealanders many of whom would like something different many of whom would like a change. Many of them want a change to the national anthem too because they are sick of singing a dirge every time you turn up to a festive occasion. Most of them sing along to the Australian national anthem before they sing along to our own. They want something different but they do not want it at a time—and they do not want this Government which parades itself as the great financial managers and the great financial responsibility people of the generation spending $17 million—when this country can ill afford it.We have never been under greater pressure financially. This economy has never been under greater pressure and yet the Minister of Finance the Deputy Prime Minister has the temerity to stand up in this House and sell us a dodgy bill of goods—a dodgy bill of goods: a flag that they do not know and an identity they cannot be clear about. This is the issue that New Zealanders are clear about: if this Government cared about New Zealanders if this Government actually started treating New Zealanders as if they mattered it would see the writing on the wall. It would see the sheep bottoms and the rainbows and it would say: “Now is not the time.” It would be honest with New Zealanders and say it is time for a strategic withdrawal we can come back to this another time we will respect the wishes of New Zealand and we will abandon the referendum and save the $17 million and we will use it for something useful.