14 February 2004
Jane Clifton
Jane Clifton talks to Lloyd Morrison about whether the dangers of leading public debate mean he should flag it. No sooner has he launched the change-the-flag debate, elbowing headline, talkback and smoko-room time out of the Winston's dinner debate, and the Don Brash speech debate, than Lloyd Morrison wants to hand it over.
The Wellington businessman is on the lookout for a game individual - preferably with a high public profile - to make a serious ongoing project of fostering more debate. There's already a website and funding, and the speaking invitations are rolling in.
Morrison doesn't shrink from the suggestion that a latter-day Peter Shirtcliffe is what's needed. On the contrary, he admires what Shirtcliffe did in marshalling the forces opposing MMP, and he wants someone with as much guts and rigour to be the flag flagship. "I think we should be very happy that we have MMP, and we should be even happier because of what Peter did to ensure it was debated thoroughly."
But having propelled, from a standing start and an extremely limited public profile, the long-simmering debate about the flag to the front pages all by himself, is he mad? Why not continue to run it himself, and build on his budding reputation as a patriot? He has already garnered pleasing labels like "the capitalist with the social conscience". After his passionate recent advocacy against the Air New Zealand-Qantas merger proposal, and the merger of the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges, the Flag Man label would sit nicely.
Morrison is visibly untempted, saying there's too big a danger of the debate being tainted if someone like him - meaning a very rich businessman - stays at its helm. "It doesn't take very long before people who have difficulty grappling with the issue will start to shoot the messenger. I found that very much with the Qantas-Air New Zealand issue, where people said, 'The guy raising these issues has got an agenda' - as if that was a sufficient response to the issues being raised."
To those who might insist there must be an overarching personal or professional agenda here - for that's three distinctly nationalistic salvoes in a row - Morrison smiles a weak-tea sort of smile.
"That's what we are as New Zealanders - we're very cynical. We don't like anything that involves profile, so naturally we tend to attack whoever's involved. That's why, to be effective in this case, it's necessary to ensure that [my] profile is only sufficient till the debate is running in its own right. All I'm doing is being a catalyst, because I'm in the fortunate position of being able to be somewhat catalytic. I don't regard it as a personal crusade. It's more a matter of being able to stimulate debate."
Morrison certainly doesn't fit the template of flamboyant, opinion-ready business person to which New Zealanders have become accustomed. He is earnest and undemonstrative in his public manner, and till his transtasman intercessions last year, it's fair to say no one outside business and the in-the-know arts crowd had ever heard of him. He says he waded into the airline and stock exchange issues because he believed he had experience and knowledge to offer, not because he had decided to forge a public profile. He doesn't particularly want one, except in so much as it serves the fostering of debate. His energies, along with upwards of $20,000, are now going toward finding an upstanding New Zealander to take the debate on.
Inevitably, Morrison's flaggery has set some eyes rolling over what could look like just another rich man with an expensive public hobby - like Alan Gibbs with his sea-going car, Michael Fay with the America's Cup, or Robert Jones with his satirical novels. Morrison says he knows the riff, but can only repeat that he's genuine, despite also being rich. He says he hopes New Zealanders will one day overcome their innate suspicion of the wealthy.
"If people look at it closely, they'll recognise that skills are very portable these days, and as a business person you are making a little bit of a sacrifice to stay in New Zealand. It's incorrect to think that it's all lifestyle [why we stay], because people who have travelled widely know that the idea that New Zealand has a lifestyle that can't be replicated is incorrect. That might have been the case 30 years ago, but it's not today. Wealthy people these days can transfer their earning power [overseas], earn more and create a better lifestyle, potentially, than in New Zealand. I think it's incorrect to think New Zealanders who have made money and stay here have a different view about the country or [weaker] allegiances than any other New Zealander. I think we're maturing about these issues more. Internationalisation exposes us to different sources of information and inspiration. We can't help but have a broader-based understanding of opportunities."
Wellington-based Morrison is an extremely successful merchant banker and patron of the arts, executive director of Morrison and Co Infrastructure Management, whose Infratil vehicle is active in big-ticket projects such as airports, and is promoting a second airport for Auckland. But that's another story.
Morrison's vision for a new flag has been on his mind for years. He had thought of trying to get a public debate going, and had Cameron Sanders of Cato Design make up a kick-starter version a while ago - a stylised, scimitar-like silver fern on a black background. Then, in a media interview about something else, the issue came up. And the rest, although not history yet, has scarcely been out of the media since.
This, Morrison reckons, proves his point. "This isn't being debated just because I said it should be. There's already a body of opinion about it out there, which seems to be in favour at least of debating the issue. It's been raised before, but it's more pertinent now than ever. It's about the way we feel about ourselves as a country, in an international relations sense; that we're more export-focused; the way we feel about ourselves in terms of cultural expression. There's a whole confluence of influences coming together."
Why the flag is an issue on its own is pretty self-explanatory. Our Union Jack and stars are woefully easily confused with Australia's Union Jack and stars. Only antipodeans have it firmly fixed that Australia has five stars and we have four. To the rest of the world, those flags signify only some vague Commonwealth thing. It's not rocket science that if, say, the kangaroo and the kiwi went up the Olympic flagpole, the world would know at a glance who'd won the medals. Morrison likes the obvious comparison with the Canadians, who cleared their flag's corner of the Union Jack in 1965 in favour of the easily identified maple leaf.
It's what traditionally comes with the flag - questions of nationalism, colonial history, faithfulness to the battlefield - that Morrison fears will bog down the debate. He believes the flag issue is easily quarantined from related issues - the monarchy, Maori nationalism, the anthem and the debts of history - and that we should take care to debate it separately.
To that end, he won't say whether he favours keeping the monarchy. "If that was the debate now, I would be happy to give an opinion, but it's not, and anything I could say would be used in the flag debate, and it's not relevant to it."
He is unmoved by the argument that people are entitled to know his view on the wider constitutional picture, in case he is hoping to use the flag change as a Trojan horse for republicanism. He says people who suspect such an agenda are being unduly defensive. "Those are not the people whose minds you're going to engage anyway. I can see the connection [between the flag and other constitutional issues], but I don't think we need to confront all the issues at once. It's not helpful."
The Morrison line is that New Zealand is already a free, independent country, proud of its multiculturalism and its international achievements. A flag more reflective of that status would help build national identity. There is also the obvious benefit of global branding. Other countries - he cites Canada, Japan, Britain and Switzerland - have instantly identifiable flags. Why not us?
Although we've been over this flag thing numerous times - not least in a long campaign run by this magazine - the debate is still, at the very least, fun. Talkback and newspaper correspondents are still fizzing with it weeks after Morrison's first salvo. A fern, a koro, a kiwi? The kiwi is surely the most recognisable New Zealand silhouette, but do we want to be emblemised by a shy, flightless endangered species? In terms of what keeps us afloat, some have suggested we stick a plump sheep on the flag. Or a hobbit. One of the debate's attractive, though less noble facets is the opportunity to steal a march on Australia, with its more swaggering international personality. The idea of an elegant silver fern fluttering alongside the anonymous Australian flag is irresistible. Even if they did the bleedin' obvious and adopted a kangaroo, our flag would have more gravitas. Marsupials are still as much of a curiosity as an emblem internationally. There's nothing weird, cuddly or cartoonish about a fern.
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