Ardern Jacinda: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6962. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I have to concede that I find it utterly bizarre that we find ourselves in this situation today. I just want to traverse what has happened over the past couple of weeks because I would not want any member of the public to be left in any confusion that it was always within the power of the Prime Minister John Key to bring about the resolution that we are debating now. In fact we are debating it only because the Government has finally put it forward as a bill something that it could have done 2 weeks ago if it had chosen to do so.Here is my first question: why did the Government not introduce this bill immediately after the post-Cabinet press conference at which the Prime Minister said that it was something they could support? Why did the Government not introduce this bill then? That is a genuine question we would like to ask. Why then did John Key say that he wanted cross-party agreement in order to introduce a fifth option? A cross-party agreement but minus New Zealand First I have to say. Apparently it was OK if one party did not agree but it was not OK if anyone else did. And what was Labour’s response? What was Labour’s response? We said: “Fine.” We said: “Fine give New Zealanders that extra option. There’s a groundswell pushing for it; let’s do it. But while we’re there why don’t we also give that huge number of New Zealanders who want to be asked first if they want change that chance too?”. In order to be constructive we drafted a bill that would do that—both things: it would add a fifth option and it would put in a yes/no question. We tabled it in Parliament.At that point it would have been very easy for the Government to say: “Oh I see there is agreement from Labour on the fifth option. We don’t agree on the yes/no question so we won’t vote for that but we’ll vote for the Red Peak option.” It could have done that. What did it do? It denied leave for that bill to be debated. It said no. We said: “Fine. Well why don’t we have a meeting and sit down and constructively discuss whether we can make progress on this?”. No preconditions—we wrote it down in a letter to John Key. Let us talk about this—no preconditions. What did the Prime Minister say? No. We were so exasperated at that point by the games that the Prime Minister seemed to be playing that we wrote to him and said: “Fine if you don’t want to change the law as we’ve suggested and as you suggested then why don’t you send it back to the flag consideration panel to trade an option? We’ll support you to do that.” What did he say? No. So do not tell me that Labour has not tried to be constructive in this debate. We have tried multiple times to engage the National Party and the Prime Minister on this issue and we have been denied at every opportunity. That has been enormously frustrating. No preconditions—I want to restate that there were none whatsoever.So let us be absolutely clear about the debate that we are having today in this House: the Prime Minister could have instigated it a week ago but he chose not to. He never ever needed permission from any party to put this bill before the House. What better proof is there of that than the fact that the entire New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill which set out this whole process was passed without Labour’s support? He passed the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill in the beginning without Labour’s support and yet suddenly to make an amendment to it he then claimed that he needed us. I am not sure if John Key has suddenly forgotten but sadly he does still hold a majority in this House. He could have done anything he wanted. Oddly we actually supported him to make this change and he still said that he was not going to do it. If anyone else out there is as confused as I am it is for good reason because ultimately you cannot explain political game-playing. Yet that is what we have seen. This has been a game.The reason that Labour has been so disappointed in this is that ultimately we have been driven by one factor: to give New Zealanders a say—a proper say. Let me be absolutely clear: from the very beginning I supported having a debate about the flag. I wanted to hear what New Zealanders thought about one of our national symbols. I wanted a debate about who we are as New Zealanders how we wanted to display ourselves to the world and where we were going. I would not have minded that debate being part of a much wider constitutional debate; that seemed to be a more appropriate order of things for me. The Prime Minister did not want to do it that way—so be it—but that is what I hoped for. I also hoped that we would have a debate that was done in such a way that was fiscally prudent and that we kept in mind that in amongst this conversation we have some very demanding challenges to address and that includes child poverty. So let us not be silly about the way we conduct this. Yes I had a problem with $26 million being spent on it—a big problem.The other thing that I wanted to see in this debate was for it to be genuinely open. Now I have a view and my view was coloured by the idea of having change. But am I scared to ask New Zealanders the question first of whether they want change? No because I genuinely believe that people should have a voice and have a say regardless of what I think. Does the Prime Minister think that? Clearly not. If he genuinely believed that he could convince people that change was the right thing to do he would not have been afraid to ask the question: “Do you want change?”. He put up the argument that you could not ask that question without putting the options forward. We agreed—in fact we always argued that. At the first meeting of parliamentarians that he brought together on this question we always argued that the first ballot should be laid out like this: “Do you want change: yes or no? If there were to be change which flag options would you prefer?”. That is ballot No. 1. You get to decide whether you want change within the context of the options. Then we counted it up. If 50 percent say “No. Regardless I don’t care what it looks like; I do not want change.” then you do not run round 2. If enough people say yes then round 2 runs and it includes the top polling alternative run off against the status quo.If for instance you liked one option but you were not happy with any of the others then you would get a second say in round 2—that was what Labour advocated. It is also an option that the Ministry of Justice put forward. The Prime Minister keeps saying that he listened to the experts. The experts said that this was a valid option. In fact almost every party in this House argued for that layout of the referendum but it was National that said no—it was National that did not want to ask yes or no. As someone who likes the design of Red Peak I say that I still want to ask people yes or no first. Yes I want choice but I want all New Zealanders to have choice. That has always been the position of the Labour Party. So when the Prime Minister said “OK let’s open up the potential of a fifth option.” was it unfair of us to say “Yes let’s do it but let’s add something else.”? I do not think so. If the Prime Minister disagreed he could have done that. We still would have voted in favour of Red Peak being an option which is exactly what we are doing today. What we saw instead was a game.I am disappointed that this happened because ultimately if we want a genuine debate that carries all New Zealanders surely we should be inclusive of all of their views. The fact that we have come to this point today demonstrates to me that we have a Prime Minister who did not think about choice but instead sat back in his office a week ago and faced the genuine reality that he might have no change in flag. He sat there and decided that at least Red Peak represented change. So he is hedging his bets. I wish it was not so cynical but I think that is exactly what has happened. I am disappointed that it has happened this way. Yes I supported Red Peak. Labour has supported choice from the very very beginning. We have done it I think in the right way by New Zealanders. We wanted everyone to have choice and that continues to be our position today. Thank you.