Shortly we are going to have a referendum to potentially change our New Zealand flag. Many people have been involved in the process of coming up with four flags for us to consider via a thoroughly democratic process. With several million individual opinions, there are a lot of people annoyed their preferred design from the long list of flag options didn’t make the cut.
I think someone should have made the call on the colours for the fern option (flags 2 and 4) to allow room for another design – those two are the same design with different colour ways so effectively there are only 3 choices.
Right now I’m leaning towards the flag on the far right, the design is sympathetic to our history and seems like a natural progression from our current flag. The black seems to work well given that NZ sports uniforms are invariably grey, black or teal these days, but I suspect the red cornered version will resonate with Maori.
No matter what your political views, John Key’s video about the whole flag concept really gave great perspective, especially regarding the use of the silver fern overseas, particularly on war graves.
Will we embrace this opportunity to change, or will this be a political issue for most? The people will decide, but hopefully with the right sentiment.
