Wall Louisa: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5589. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Chairperson. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to the title and commencement debate for the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill. I have been thinking quite seriously about what the title of this bill should be based on how this bill has appeared before us here in Parliament today. Actually I would like to quote from one of the designers a guy called Pax Zwanikken. He is a Kiwi who lives in Sydney. He contributed 25 designs and two of his designs actually got through. So he has been shortlisted in terms of the 40 flags that have been shortlisted. What he said which I find really interesting is that he does not hold much hope for the flag change being supported—it does not matter what kind of flag—because from his perspective this has not come out of a groundswell of public desire for a new flag. So from his perspective the title of the bill should be the “No Public Desire For a New Flag Bill”.The reason I want to highlight that point is that if you actually go back and look over time at the call for change and whether or not the New Zealand public has wanted change we can go back to 1973 when there was a poll. Of New Zealanders in 1973 75 percent of them said no they did not want to change the flag. So I acknowledge that this conversation has been around for a long time. Then again in 1984 86 percent of New Zealanders said no when they were asked whether they wanted to change the flag. In 1999 64 percent said no. In 2008 62 percent said no. In 2011 72 percent said no. Actually the latest poll shows that 70 percent of New Zealanders are saying no they do not want to change the flag. So that particular quote from Pax is actually incredibly relevant.I think the other title that this bill could have had was actually published on 30 January 2014. It was a heading by Isaac Davison actually. It could have been the “Keep It Or Flag It Bill”. That was his report after John Key actually announced this idea about changing New Zealand’s flag—he had this brainstorm: “Let’s change New Zealand’s flag.” So actually the title of this bill could be the “Keep It Or Flag It Bill” because of what the Prime Minister thought on 29 January 2014—“Let’s change the flag.” Actually we could look at the National Party website. We could call this bill the “PM John Key Believes It’s the Right Time to Change the Flag Bill” which is what the National Party promoted and has been promoting. This bill—let us get real—has come about because the Prime Minister had this brainstorm.But a title that I think is really interesting—and this was actually part of the open letter that the flag review panel put out itself—is the “Open Call No Criteria New Zealand Flag Bill”. What I find really interesting is that we got 10292 submissions—new designs where people decided that they would participate in this process some of them from overseas—but what we did not do actually was have a set of criteria for what the flag should represent. So we talk a lot—and this bill has talked a lot—about New Zealand’s identity but the reality is that that has not been part of the conversation at all. It was not in the criteria to make sure that our indigenous people were represented. There were no criteria to make sure that the Southern Cross was going to stay because for us that is part of our national anthem. There was not a call to make sure that the koru was in the flag. In fact there was not even a call to make sure that the silver fern was even though the Prime Minister said when he announced it on 29 January 2014 that we must ensure that the silver fern is in there.Now apparently this is all part of some tourism boost and some economic boost because we are going to be recognised globally as a country because we are going to have this amazing new flag that represents our identity. So I find it really interesting that actually we did not do that. The call went out far and wide and we did not care what people submitted we did not care who they were and we did not care about the context of their design. We just put out this open call. So that is why I think our title could be the “Open Call No Criteria New Zealand Flag Bill”. It now seems that those criteria are actually really important because we have picked flags that have got a koru we have picked flags that have got the Southern Cross and we have picked flags that actually represent New Zealand. So when you think about it—