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.”
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