No. Way.
Bid to change NZ flag to cost millions
The cost of holding two referendums and consulting on a change of flag has been estimated to be just under $26 million.
Look. We all appreciate that the sleepy hobbits need to be distracted from high levels of child poverty, ideological experiments in education, the manufacturing crisis, the ballooning debt problems in health, global warming, water pollution, ridiculous housing affordability, privatising 30% of state houses, the draconian over reach against investigative journalism, the u-turn on going to war and the unanswered questions to do with dirty politics and mass surveillance but sweet Christ on a unicycle – WHY does it have to cost $26 million fucking dollars!
Surely muddle NZ can be distracted for far less than $26million! Why doesn’t the Government just make up some bullshit terrorist threat against the All Blacks that requires Key to give Dan Carter a cuddle or something? Why blow $26million on a flag redesign that is purely a manufactured political distraction? Can’t National invent a far cheaper distraction?
Why blow $26 million when the flag redesign is between this…
…or this…
…or this…
Q: Is it still right when the right decision is made for wrong reasons?
A: Yes.
What the point in spending money on any referendums when the government just ignores the results they don’t like?
Remember Margaret Robertson’s referendum to reduce the number of MPs back in 1999…
“Should the size of Parliament be reduced from 120 members of Parliament to 99 members of Parliament by reducing the number elected from party lists?” “Petition successful—presented to House on 17 February 1999; referendum held on 27 November 1999. (84.8% turnout – 81.5% yes; 18.5% no)”
More recently Roy Reid’s on selling SOE…”Do you support the Government selling up to 49% of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Power, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand?” Petition successful—referendum held by postal ballot between 22 November 2013 and 13 December 2013. (45.07% turnout – 67.3% no; 32.4% yes)
After the successful referendum to keep the MMP system, the Electoral Commission’s recommended changes were never implemented. Who knows, we may have had a different election result if they had been.
You skipped (presumably deliberately, given how well-known and recent (2009) it was) the anti-smacking referendum.
56.1% turnout – 87.40% no, 11.98% yes.
And this is the problem right there, you can’t have it both ways and only uphold the decisions YOU want.
NITRIUM,
I believe the 1999 referendum I mentioned was ignored by Helen Clark’s incoming Labour government, although you’re quite correct to accuse me of bias at how this current government has ignored the Electrial Commission’s recommendations following the MMP referendum.
The main point I should have been making was not that referendum results should be passed into law but that they are a waste of our money. I strongly suspect that if there was a referendum for the return of capital punishment it would succeed, like the anti-smacking referendum, people would be likely to vote based on their emotions. For this reason I was skeptical of the Conservative Party election pledge to make referendums binding, and didn’t include the highly emotive anti-smacking referendum in my post.
I like the herring.
However, a flounder might be better.
Goes with the old saying, “Lying like a flat fish.”
I’d say for the little boy who wanted to be the prime minister, brought back honorific titles and only seems to have a genuine smile while in the company of the royal family (or someone equal like Barak Obama) a new flag pinned to his prime ministership is just something he wants – and if it means pulling funds away from the young, the old and the vunerable so be it, he’s comfortable with that.
This is an abhorrent way that John Key is trying to obtain some sort of lasting legacy from his career in politics. $26M would by 6.5M $4 lunches for school-children who are living in poverty. I think that would be the kind of legacy any moral person would want to leave. This only makes it clearer that John Key is immoral and only cares about John.
No insult intended but the maths stinks. 26 mill is the starting figure – the end cost will be more than four times that amount. $100 million to facilitate John Key’s egotistical yearnings. Key is a ‘luxury’ NZ cannot not afford. His mother induced narcissism allowing him to believe he is the answer to all things (hence the multiple hats) is out of control. This will not stop with the flag. The flag is merely a test, the beginning, to see just how much he can get away with. Be warned NZ – allow this megalomaniac to continue and everything we value about New Zealand be broke beyond repair.
The money intended to be spent on two flag referendums is outrageous, considering there are far more pressing issues which need serious addressing. Poverty being one.
The $26 million involved could provide a lot of good nourishing meals to feed our hungry children living below the poverty line in this supposedly first world nation!
Healthy Kiwi children for a prosperous future, or a new flag? At least if nothing else, this issue says a lot about where Key places his priorities!
So the PM doesn’t like the existing NZ flag because of it’s links to the old British Colonial empire. Fair enough. However, I do expect his way of thinking to continue all the way through to disposing also with the archaic British honours system at the same time! Couldn’t get any more closer to British colonialism than that.
But only after having been bestowed with a knighthood himself, eh what old boy!
Hypocritical piece of excrement he is!
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