END EMBARRASSING FLAG CHANGE FARCE

Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leaders
Member of Parliament for Northland

12 December 2015

With 1,791,706 voters ignoring or lodging an informal vote in the first flag referendum, New Zealand First is calling on the government to end the flag farce.

“A clear majority of New Zealanders, some 62%, have sent the clearest possible message to Prime Minister John Key on his $26.4 million vanity project,” says the New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“The referendum proved there’s no mood for engagement in this costly circus nor for changing the flag.

“Some 1.64 million voters abstained on a constitutional referendum while the informal vote was third. This provides empirical evidence that most New Zealanders want the whole thing scrapped.

“The number of informal votes, at 148,022, is unprecedented in our democracy given there were only about 38,000 cast in the 2014 General Election.

“There are still many supporting the claim that we must have a silver fern, yet none of these white symbols on the flag choices represents anything like our special fern – in simple English, it’s silver underside is its uniqueness hence the name.”

ENDS

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