O'Rourke Denis: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5476. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to speak on clauses 10 13 and 27 in Part 2. As we know clause 10 is actually the crux of the whole bill because that is the clause that provides for the question in the first flag referendum. That question—which appears in schedule 1—is: “If the New Zealand flag changes which flag would you prefer?”. It is a simple question but it is problematic and it is poorly drafted. It suggests in the first few words that the flag will change and of course that is not necessarily the case. So the question should never have been drafted in that way and it should never have referred to any suggestion that the flag will change. The last few words are the only ones that are relevant: “which flag would you prefer?”. The first few words are superfluous and should be deleted but the real point is that this constitutes in my mind undue influence and bad practice if not gerrymandering. I say that quite seriously; I am not just trying to make a political point. It is actually a badly drafted question and it should not proceed in that way.New Zealand First of course says that the question should be: “Do you want a flag change?”—period. But we know that that is going to be rejected. Nevertheless even as it is there is a glaring defect in the currently provided for question and that is that the current flag is not there at all amongst those that people can select. It should be there. It should be there for comparison purposes so that people can see four options plus the New Zealand flag. Why not do that? It should do that. And it should be there as a choicealso because without the New Zealand flag being there at all there is no genuine referendum in the first referendum process. It would be easy to simply delete the words “If the New Zealand flag changes” and add the current flag as an option. If you do that of course you do not have to have the second referendum at all. People can look at the four options and the New Zealand flag and say “Well actually I just want the New Zealand flag.” and vote for that. Or if they wish to of course they can vote for one of the others. So I do not understand why we have to go through this convoluted difficult complicated and extremely expensive process of having two referendums when we could do it all under clause 10 in one hit. We could do it fairly. We could do it without any undue influence without any bad practice and in a way that everyone could participate in.The reason why this is such a glaring defect is thataccording to the polls there will be probably more than 70 percent of the population actually who do not want to take part in the first referendum because they do not want any of the four options. So how on earth can they participate in the first flag referendum when it does not offer them any acceptable flag—not one? I believe that the vast majority of people are in that category. The result of this is going to be a very very poor turnout and in addition a huge number of spoiled votes. Is that an efficient and proper way for a country like this to proceed on something as important as choosing a new flag—if indeed that is what we want to do at all? I think that this is a very very badly drafted clause and a badly conceived referendum process.I talk about clause 14 and I particularly refer to subclause (3) which is the subclause that says: “The Governor-General must by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister at least 28 days before the commencement of the voting period for the second flag referendum prescribe an official description of the current New Zealand Flag to be used …”. It says: “prescribe an official description of the current New Zealand Flag”—like we do not know what it is already. I mean for goodness’ sake. We know what the current flag is. Nevertheless there does need to be some description but the description should not be: “This is what it looks like. It’s got the Union Jack there it’s got stars there and so on.” That is not what we want. What we do need in this clause is some information about the history and the heritage of the current flag because contrary to what Nikki Kaye says this flag actually does represent the culture.