28 August 2004
PETER LUKE: POINTS OF ORDER
As political issues go, this one is neither novel nor of life-and-death importance.
But the recent renewed questioning of New Zealand's flag does raise the intriguing question of why the Government is shying away from debate over a new national emblem.
After axing appeals to the colonial anachronism of the Privy Council, after all, one would have though the Government would also favour a flag that did not bear the Union Jack in one corner.
Even former National Party prime minister Jenny Shipley spoke in 1998 of the need for a flag that better represented New Zealand's identity in the new millennium.
The latest bout of flag frenzy has been sparked by the Olympic Games.
First, some New Zealand team members, including chef de mission Dave Currie, said they would be happier with a silver-fern flag.
Then the similarities between the New Zealand and Australian flags were driven home at cyclist Sarah Ulmer's medal ceremony, where both emblems were hoisted.
Before this, at the start of this year, a website campaign was launched by a Wellington man pushing the case for a change to the present 102-year-old flag.
It is an issue that has been raised before.
Shipley's 1998 comments followed a suggestion from advertising boss Kevin Roberts that a new flag was needed to promote New Zealand's international brand.
Mind you, he also suggested that the North and South Islands needed more exciting names.
Former Labour leader Mike Moore saw some humour in the source of these suggestions. "It is not without irony that we are following the lead of an overseas advertising agency and then say we are not a colony."
The issues then got rather lost in the furore of "who said what to whom" at the Shipley-Roberts dinner in New York.
Three years earlier, strong anti-republican Graeme Lee, the National MP who switched to the Christian Democrats, clearly foresaw a time when changing the flag would be mooted at Parliament.
He proposed entrenching the present flag in law, with 65 per cent of MPs, rather than a simple majority, having to support change. For good measure he wanted legislative protection for the national anthem.
On its second reading, Lee's bill was defeated by 37 votes to 26. Thats less than two-thirds of the 99 MPs of that time bothered to vote at all suggests that flag protection was not a burning issue. (Flag burning, of course, is banned by law, but only if this is done with the intention of dishonouring the flag.)
It is a fair bet that many members of the present Government would personally favour a more distinctly New Zealand flag.
Yet Prime Minster Helen Clark was not interested when the Greens this week suggested a referendum on the national flag.
In Parliament, Clark did say that having a flag with a Union Jack related to New Zealand's past and that "at some point" this might need to be addressed.
But she also made it clear that she had no enthusiasm for Green co-leader Rod Donald's proposal for a referendum at next year's general election.
Unfortunately, Clark then proceeded to help make the case for change. She commented that although the two trans-Tasman flags were similar the colour configuration of ours was distinctively New Zealand.
Whoops. At her post-Cabinet press conference on Monday she had commented that the stars with the red trim were quite nice. Actually, they have a white trim and a red centre.
Overseas experience has shown how difficult it can be to change a flag and how emotive a process this can be.
Canada began trying to find an alternative to its Red Ensign, which also featured the Union Jack, as early as 1924, but it was not until 40 years later that the now-familiar maple leaf flag was introduced.
This still puts Canada decades ahead of New Zealand but adding the urgency there was Francophile Quebec's distaste for the British colonial symbolism of the old flag.
Or take Mississippians, whose state, emblem still carries the Confederate Battle Flag long after other southern states have removed any symbols of the Civil War and its slavery connotations.
In 2001, a referendum found two-to-one support for making no change to the Mississippi flag, which suggests that the state's "good ol' boys" turned out in force.
Clearly, the New Zealand government would rather not buy into the flag debate - and National also has been reticent.
No matter how many times it argued that the creation of the Supreme Court was not a harbinger of republicanism, some New Zealanders were still suspicious of the Privy Council move on this ground.
For anti-republicans this followed the cutting of another link with the "Old Country" - the removal of the British-based honours system.
Logically, of course, there is no necessary link between a new flag and republicanism - as shown by Canada adopting the maple leaf but not opting for a new head of state.
But it is an especially inopportune time right now to be talking flags. One reason for Labour's slump in the polls earlier this year was the suspicion that the party was being driven by a politically correct ideology out of kilter with the views of ordinary New Zealanders.
There was prostitution reform, the Care of Children Bill's initial reference to lesbian dads, a seeming fixation with gratuitously inserting Treaty of Waitangi references into legislation and the money spent on such curiosities as hip-hop tours.
A new flag might be perceived as similar political correctness.
The Government also believes it has a fine story to tell about the economy and the New Zealanders who will benefit from the recent Budget's family support boosts.
An emotional debate about flag and country would detract from the single-mindedness of that message.
Little wonder, therefore, that the Government is flagging debate about the
national flag.
The Press
© Fairfax New Zealand Limited 2004