Clark David: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6999. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I do want to speak a little bit about Andrew Little’s amendment which presents the option of having a yes/no vote in the initial referendum. Of course that is an incredibly sensible idea that could save millions of dollars for the country and if the public polling that has been consistent right through is right it would likely see a vote to keep the existing flag and save that money for the country.It seems a sensible amendment and I want to speak a little bit about that. But before I do I have got a couple of other points that I want to make. The first is I want to query Gareth Hughes’ earlier comment about not putting specifics in the bill. It seems a somewhat bizarre thing to say that you should not tell the Governor-General what to do. All of the bills we put through Parliament invite the Governor-General to do what the Parliament has decided is the right thing to happen for New Zealanders. In fact that is what we do with every bill that goes through the Parliament. So it is a very strange thing for him to say and I wonder whether when he takes his next call he might explain quite how he came to the view that we should not in the Parliament any more suggest specific changes in law. It is very hard to understand.The option presented in this bill is that we have five fresh flag designs. The Hon Trevor Mallard has eloquently articulated—Hon Trevor Mallard: I wouldn’t say that.Dr DAVID CLARK: —how that comes to be the case. I am being generous. We are being in the spirit of generosity this evening. John Key’s vanity project here is given a whole new lease of life because it leaves the Prime Minister open to choosing five flag designs that fit his particular criteria. We have already seen that he has a preference for not having designers on the panel. He has expressed great confidence in this panel which has no people with previous flag design experience and we have ended up with something that looks a lot more like commercial monikers I would say than proper international flags amongst many of the designs that we are faced with.I was asked earlier this evening on Back Benches in the pre-record—and I do not want to spoil the show for those who are hanging out at home—whether I supported the Red Peak flag design. I said: “Look I honestly have not”—have not—“given it much thought yet. It’s a new thing today.” Who knows what we may have tomorrow? I mean we are in a position where this changes day by day.It is a mockery of a process. It is an absolute mockery of a process that really belittles New Zealanders’ engagement in wanting to change our national symbol. We are spending millions and millions of dollars on a process that seems to change day to day according to the Prime Minister’s polling or political whims and that cannot be a good process for New Zealanders.In my view the right time to have this conversation is when we are debating whether we should become a republic or not. That is the logical time. I think we should be pushing out this debate. In Part 1 there is a way of doing that. We could increase the number of days mentioned in the amended section 13 which talks about 40 days before the commencement of the voting period to change the designs. We could change that to many many more days I think with other tweaks in the amendment.There will be people who know the subtleties of this process better than me who would know whether we can push it out there. I am interested to hear from the Minister in the chair Jo Goodhew whether she thinks it is technically possible to push it out through that mechanism. Certainly it would make the law a little bit more difficult to interpret at the other end. We could ask the Governor-General what he thinks of that.We have come to this point where we are having a debate that changes day by day on what are the options that should represent New Zealanders. That is not the way to unite the country. If we think right back to the start this was presented to New Zealanders as a way of uniting the country under one flag option. It has done nothing but divide New Zealanders. This process has done nothing but divide New Zealanders. There are way more opinions than flag options. But what is clear is that New Zealanders are not clear on which option they want—in fact of the new options even. We are leading towards a situation where the vast majority think it is such a shemozzle that they would rather keep the existing flag than vote for any of the options. That is what the polls tell us. Instead of uniting a society in this process we are paying millions and millions of dollars as a country to divide society. That cannot be the way this should have played out—that cannot be the way. But the Prime Minister has had it as his vanity project and that has been why we have ended up this way.I want to speak out about Mr Little’s amendment—a very sensible amendment. [Interruption] Yes the member is right. The member in the chair obviously made the right call in choosing the Leader of the Opposition when I stood up to compete for a call. This amendment does put the choice back in New Zealanders’ hands. It tries to restore some dignity to a process that has ravaged out of control and has become more about the Prime Minister’s ego. We have seen some very erratic behaviour from the Prime Minister. We have seen him at cancer fund-raisers asking for people to put their hands up if they are opposed to it and then berating them personally. That cannot be the kind of uniting process that people had in mind when they bought into this process—those who did—at the beginning.I understand—the Prime Minister now has the flag process hanging around his neck like an albatross. He is now in many polls less popular that Prime Minister Helen Clark was when she was thrown out of the Parliament and he still has a long way to go in his third term. His decline in popularity has been very steep and he seems to have attached his personal fortunes to a vanity project about choosing the flag. That must be a worrying place. It is a worrying place for the members opposite. They have been very quiet during this debate. We have not had very many calls at all from the National Party members. They seem reluctant to defend it. Of course the ones we can see are wearing the Union Jack—they are the ones who want to keep the flag process. It is a complete shemozzle on that side of the House.So this process which was supposed to unite New Zealand seems to be dividing us. I would ask the Government to really quickly adopt this sensible suggestion from Andrew Little that puts the choice back into New Zealanders’ hands immediately about whether they want to change the flag or not. I ask the Government to save the country millions of dollars and spend that money on early childhood education or on building a new hospital in Dunedin where it is sorely needed. I ask the Government to spend that money on anything that would help our society get ahead and unite us rather than undertake this process as prescribed in Part 1 which is dividing our country.I implore the members opposite to please consider voting for the Leader of the Opposition’s amendment which does give New Zealanders some dignity in the process gives the Prime Minister perhaps a way out and allows that money to be spent more wisely than on this process which has become such an albatross around the Prime Minister’s neck.We need to have this debate at another time further down the track when New Zealanders can be united in the final choice rather than divided. That is the kind of debate that a Labour Government would lead if we were ever to look at changing the flag because that is the kind of inclusive process that the Labour Party believes in. Going down a track that is about popularity and commercial designs and is rushed and changed every day because of an erratic Prime Minister whose personal fate is tied to the outcome is not the way to go.