O'Rourke Denis: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7015. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I first wanted to acknowledge Mr Seymour’s contribution to this debate today and in fact I am glad to see him here because he adds so much value to New Zealand First’s case in this debate—that is the case to keep the current flag. Anyone listening to Mr Seymour would have been convinced by that speech that this is indeed a political process that Mr Seymour has taken a principal part in and yet he criticised everybody else for wasting Parliament’s time and for actually making political speeches. Well hello this is the New Zealand Parliament. This is in fact the place where political speeches get made. Mr Seymour has not grasped that quite yet but I am sure that eventually he will in fact catch up. So I do want to thank him for his contribution. He has certainly helped New Zealand First’s case rather a lot.I want to particularly talk though about clause 8 of the bill because that is the one about process. I want to totally agree with what Mr Robertson said about that because the truth is that this bill is quite simply totally unnecessary whether you wanted an additional flag as part of the options in the first flag referendum or not. We look here at the Order in Council process and it could have been done using that process. But really that is not what it is about. What we should be thinking about with clause 8 is the entire process of this method of changing New Zealand’s flag if we were to change it at all—and of course New Zealand First does not want to do so.This process—which this bill and this part and this clause make only worse not better—is totally undemocratic. It has heaped farce upon farce and bad process upon bad process. It is an undemocratic way of going about it and after all it amends a principal Act that is only a few weeks old. Really what the Government and its supporting parties are saying is that they got it all wrong. In actual fact that has already been acknowledged. Mr Key himself has said that he has got it wrong. He said that on TV—I heard him. That is true. The Government has got it wrong from the beginning and this bill is not going to put it right. All it shows really is that this is a Government in total disarray over this bill as it is in so many other things. It is a slap in the face for the New Zealand voters because in fact to change the process this bill is being introduced even while the process under the principal Act is actually already under way. Nothing could be more inappropriate nothing could be worse in terms of good governance and nothing could be more disruptive.This Government and its supporting lapdog parties are showing just how bad its standards are in terms of governance for New Zealand with this particular piece of legislation. As part of all this you really have to ask why John Key and his Government have allowed this bill to proceed. It is one that ostensibly is being put forward by the Greens—well actually I suppose it is actually being put forward by the Greens—but is really for the purposes of supporting the Government and not really for any genuine motive in terms of an improvement to the flag referendums process.Why have Mr Key and his Government done that? The answer to that is perfectly obvious: the Government knows that it is in deep deep trouble over its attempts to change the New Zealand flag. It has admitted it. I can see Nick Smith sitting there smiling because he knows that that is true. The Government could not be in worse trouble over this process. It is a failed process by a failed Government. This particular clause demonstrates that even more. A failed process and—