The Pros And Cons Of Non-Binding Policies In New Zealand

In recent history there has been multiple attempts to alter or completely swap the New Zealand flag, starting in 1973(John Moody, N.D) and recently when John Key proposed the idea in 2014 before the elections(Isaac Davison, 2014). It has been decided that two binding referendums will be used to decide the future of the New Zealand flag(Paul Goldsmith, 2015) one to pick out the best six flags and another referendum at a later date to decide what one the six should be used. A referendum is a vote by the electorate and as a result parliament now becomes aware of the public consensus on a problem. The type of referendums that should be used to decide the New Zealand flag are binding referendums seeing as it allows the voters to have full say and creates a lesser waste of resources due to the decision that the …show more content…
Another disadvantage of non-binding referendums is that it might be a waste of resources having a referendum if the Politicians have already decided that they are not advancing towards changing the law even though the citizens have the signatures for the referendum to proceed, the house of representatives reduction referendum is an example of this where even though there transpired to be a 81.5% vote for yes the size of the house of representatives did not decrease(Simon Collins, 2009). A final disadvantage of a non-binding referendum is that voters may not vote if they are of the opinion that their vote may not count for anything, an example of this is the Asset Sales referendum where there which was non-binding and only resulted in a 45.1% turnout (Electoral Commision,