English Bill: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 28 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5338. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): I move That the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill be now read a second time.Grant Robertson: That’s all they’ve got.Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is it. That is it.Tēnā koutou katoa ngā mema o tēnei Whare arā te Pāremata o Aotearoa. Tēnā tātou i tēnei Wiki o Te Reo Māori ko tāku īnoi kia kaha tātou ki te kōrero Māori.[Acknowledgments to you all members of this House—in other words the New Zealand Parliament. Greetings to us all in this Māori Language Week. My plea is that we be robust and speak in Māori.]This bill ensures that the debate about the New Zealand flag is resolved through a formal careful and respectful process where New Zealanders can have their say. I want to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its thorough consideration of the bill and I want to thank those members of the public who made submissions. The committee received 259 submissions and one form submission representing almost 16000 individuals.I would like to address the report of the select committee. The committee has not recommended major changes to the bill. The majority of the committee recommended agreement with the structure procedures and requirements for the referendums which are fundamentally sound and appropriate for the process. A number of submissions queried the structure of the referendums and the order of the questions. Many of these submissions supported the inclusion of a yes/no question about changing the flag in the first referendum. The committee considered this but recommended no change. That is because a majority of the committee saw the importance of voters being able to give full consideration to alternative flag designs before deciding whether to keep or change our flag. It is pretty logical. People can make an informed decision about whether to change the flag if they can see what the alternative is.I would like to briefly touch on two amendments the committee has recommended. The committee’s first recommendation is to exempt the second flag referendum from the requirement for a preliminary referendum roll. The purpose of a preliminary roll is to make an updated electoral roll available for public inspection. However this will be done before the first referendum so it is not necessary to require it again before the second one.The committee’s second recommendation is to provide a regulated period for referendum advertising. Members of the House will be familiar with the importance of the regulated period and in parliamentary elections the significant penalties for breaching its rules. The regulated period will ensure there is no parliamentary funding of referendum advertisements advocating that people vote one way or another during the regulated period. These are fairly technical amendments.I would like to take the opportunity to briefly mention the activities of the independent Flag Consideration Panel. The panel’s process was set up and has been separate from the bill. The panel plays a pretty important role in engaging New Zealanders on this issue and will oversee the process of choosing four alternative flag designs that will be put to voters in the first referendum. Online engagement with the public has been very high: more than 850000 visits to the flag website—somewhat more I suspect than to the Labour Party website during the same time. The panel has had a number of public workshops and distributed public information. These opportunities have been important for people who do not find the internet a comfortable environment.Public suggestions for alternative flag designs closed on 16 July. The flag panel has received 10290 flag designs which indicates some level of public interest. It is now considering those designs. The panel will report to me in late August with its four designs Cabinet will then authorise the four designs to be added to the first referendum voting paper by Order in Council and that referendum will be held in November and December. The preferred alternative design chosen will then be put against the current flag in the second binding referendum. The Electoral Commission will conduct these referendums and has robust systems in place as one would expect.I am grateful for the input of members of political parties and members of the public who have participated in the development of this bill. There has been—and certainly in this House—some robust opinion about whether to change the flag and what kind of flag to change it to but I can tell you two of the main reasons I have heard that are the wrong reasons. One is that the Opposition members do not like John Key. That is the main reason they oppose the referendums.The second reason is that they want to change the flag but they wish they had had the courage themselves to put forward the proposition. We know that because putting up a referendum to change the flag is Labour Party policy. The Labour Party has always prided itself on being the owners of New Zealand—its brand its identity its spirit and its principles. That may have been the case when Michael Joseph Savage was the Prime Minister but in this intellectually bankrupt unaspirational modern Labour Party it does not own any aspect of our national identity. The National Party of course believes that the people own it. We are not a Government that regards its job as promoting national identity. What would Governments know that they could add? The people own it and that is why the people should have a say about whether they want a new flag.There is a third reason that is a bad reason for opposing this bill and it is the one that New Zealand First members have picked—that is they are simply against New Zealand being an open forward-looking progressive country. They think that New Zealanders are incapable of making a dangerous decision like whether to change a flag or not. In fact so does the Labour Party now. I mean what is the Labour Party going to say if New Zealand votes to change the flag? It will condemn it to even more irrelevance than the track that it is on.So I look forward to hearing in this debate a debate about the flag and about the process of picking it. I do not look forward to hearing the whingeing backward-looking complaints of the Opposition parties which lack confidence in New Zealand and aspiration for New Zealanders.