The False Flag Dilemma

As a long time activist for changing the flag, my conscience is prodding me to write something of substance on National's flag referendum. Elsewhere, I have accused John Key of going through the motions. Fucking the dog, as the Americans say. The insubstantial final four flag designs which to go to the people by postal referendum in November lends weight to this theory.

From the start, Key has held the thumb on the scales of fair go. He has unashamedly had a silver fern stamped on his forehead from the start. Little wonder then the flag quango served up three ferns and a monochromatic koru. Ignore the dictat at your own peril.

Key has shrewdly bet each way he can't lose. Entrench that lazy blue ensign for another twenty years or more, or he gets his Rugby Butter logo. The people don't come into it. This is Reality Politics. He has me snookered, that's for sure. All sorts of proxy fronts have formed, from the RSA to the Twitterati, threatening to spoil, sabotage or protest vote just to spite him.

This is precisely the opposite of what Lloyd Morrison had in mind when he kicked off the nzflag campaign over ten years ago. Instead of uniting under a common banner, we are a people divided and conquered.

Having grown up in the 1970's, I have always lived under the Common Market (currently re-branded to EU). I bear no allegiance to Old Blighty. Je ne suis pas an effing Brit. The Royal Union must go.

Accordingly, here's how I'll be voting in November's STV referendum, and why.

1. Monochromatic Koru / Hypnoflag. For starters, it's not an effing silver fern. Ferns are green. The silver is the spores under the leaf. Pungas have red spores. Give me pungas over silver ferns any day. Secondly, since the Board wimped out on Hundertwasser, this is the closest the vanilla people will let us get to truth.

2. Lockwood's Black and Blue Fern and Stars. Yes, it induces sportsball and domestic violence. But that's NZ, eh?

3. Lockwood's Red, White and Blue Fern and Stars. Fucking awful, but still better than

4. Inverted NZTA logo. Keep on rooting that corgi.

Black Flag, White Flag

John Key has seized the flag debate from apolitical limbo and made a run once again into Labour's unguarded territory.

He's taking a gamble on it, taking fire from the more conservative elements of National's wide church, such as the RSA curmudgeons. But their numbers are small, and where else can they go? Even Winston Peters has been making positive noises about the subject.

Key has stolen the march on Labour with one of Helen Clark's old electioneering prongs of National Identity. Just like last week's Super Teacher announcement, it's as if National has sifted through Labour's policy remits and nicked what they could live with. The Nats are pre-emptively neutralising all of Labour's potential in-roads. The body politic have their hearts and minds fed with the illusion of incremental progress.

If you didn't know, I'm all in favour of a real NZ flag, as opposed to one hastily patched together by British seamen. For that matter, I reckon every household should have its own flag. United Tribes indeed.

Kiwi Grundnorm

Waitangi Day seems a fitting time to share some conclusions from my summer study of How Things Change in New Zealand.

It is already well understood how things don't change around here. Colin Espiner's welcome return to blogging highlights the Kiwi mantra of "She'll be right". This laconic, laid-back philosophy has a nasty duality which can be summed up thusly: If we ignore a grave injustice for long enough, it will inevitably resolve itself to everyone's general satisfaction.

Your choice whether this is fantastic naivete or helpless optimism. As a philosophy though, it has more plot holes than a Scientology chapter. As a security blanket however, it has provided New Zealanders with a warm glow of smugness from inertia.

So, how do things change in NZ? Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. Everything always changes. Hate it or loathe it, we are glued to the arrow of time. History doesn't repeat, although it may be fractal with self-similar blobs.

Political reform must also be continuous, as that PriceWaterhouseCoopers wonk said last year. Otherwise, as Malcolm Tucker said in the final episode of the Thick of It, "Dark shit builds up." And then you get a Rogernomics enema.

Unfortunately, the law is usually the last thing to change. Take, for example, our alleged national symbols. Our current cobbled together official national flag was officially endorsed after over thirty years of informal use by the public and military. The dreadful dirge that is our current national anthem was written by an Irish Australian in 1876, and recognised officially only in 1977.

Lewis Holden makes a good point along these lines in today's NZ Herald. The Silver Fern is used by an increasing number of NZers to represent them instead of the old defaced ensign. Never mind that the Silver Fern was first hoisted during the Boer War, around the same time the blue ensign was adopted as de facto flag of convenience. The people are deciding to adapt the Silver Fern for themselves, and damn whatever the law says.

Similar cultural adaptation has been replicated in Deaf culture. Official government policy outlawed sign language for 99 years. That didn't stop the underground proliferation of NZSL, which evolved from a BSL, ASL mash-up into its own linguistic space.

Although it was illegal for many years not to report deaf people to the government, at least they didn't ruin their lives by locking them up in prison. The same cannot be said for the substantial proportion of the NZ population arrested and persecuted to this day for using cannabis.

Happy Bob Marley's birthday. Get up, stand up. Live free or die Kiwi.

Growing Up

The goNZo tricolour is at half mast today for Lloyd Morrison. It's the least I could do for the guy who tried to get this country to grow up a little and get away from Britain's apron springs.

In truth, there would be no goNZo flag without Lloyd Morrison. The idea only became reality after I got involved with the Change the Flag campaign, which in turn was largely brought into being by the imaginative Lloyd Morrison. During the Flag Referendum campaign, Lloyd would be on the streets of Wellington, same as any other activist, egging strangers and friends alike to sign up for the Citizens Initiated Referendum.

Although the referendum failed, the idea behind it lives on stronger than it ever was. Flag change and Head of State debates have entered and remain in the MSM.

Thank you, Lloyd Morrison, for believing in Wellington and New Zealand.

Pole Land

The NZ Flag Change story continues in the NZ Herald, with a burst of support for an unusual coincidence. Both DPMC head honcho Maarten Wevers and business opiner Fran O'Sullivan are quite fond of their poles.

I myself have only recently installed my own flag pole in the Northland suburb not two months ago. It's not some big bastard, just an aluminium stick really. But the good goNZo flies night or day, through sun, sleet and retina-detaching wind gusts.

I was a bit pensive at first, wondering whether a whipping flag might annoy the neighbours, seeing how we live on top of each other. But they assure me it's neither eye nor ear polluting, and it's better than staring at the old man's beard.

They're flying our flag

On the eve of Waitangi Day, the NZ Herald has busted a gut over the NZ flag debate. The editorial notes that the sky will not fall if we choose a new flag. There's a collage of former British colonies looking like an Andy Warhol twist of unoriginality, with NZ lost in the pixels. They've consulted the oracular Order of NZ members, as well as the political party leaders.

There's a Your Views of Art, showing user generated flag ideas (including moi). Good to see Lloyd Morrison in there. He really helped spark this one off. Audrey Young has her money on a Flag Change Win, using John Key's favourite word on republicanism, inevitable.

Having had my little finger in this pie for a few years, I've come to a couple of conclusions. NZ is a nation of many flags. Flags will most likely become adopted as wind-fluttering ID cards, like heraldry is to the Brit twits, or tartan to the Scottish. It's the one thing all our cultures share, and NZ has more than enough wind to power them.

Let the tino rangatira flag fly for those who identify. I've planted my own flag in the back yard, the good old young goNZo green white and blue, and it'll drape my coffin before that ugly and irrelevant British ensign ever crosses my chest.

Second point, the silver fern is already our unofficial national flag. Just as the current flag was adopted through lacklustre inspiration for alternatives and common usage, so too will some silver fern design eventually get the official nod.

One Love "clarifies" BYO policy

Up until this evening, One Love had been advertised as "No BYO - It will be confiscated. Bags will be checked for glass and alcohol." But tonight I see that this is not so, and management have offered a clarification:

"There are no liquor control bylaws for the Hataitai Velodrome. BYO is
acceptable for the venue but organisers will strictly enforce the no-glass
policy. This clarifies previous statements that there was to be no BYO."

This is good news. I was worried that One Love was going the way of most public events, that is, turning into a kindergarten. No champagne breakfasts, but at least a bladder of wine is permitted.

In other news, David Haywood has drawn attention to Jeffy James' NZ flag design over at Yellow Peril's Forum. This took me back to the good old days (2 years ago), when I was collecting NZ Flag Referendum signatures. We had a placard of various designs. Jeffy James' one on the top right was the most popular, with Kyle McLaughlin's one on the bottom left second most popular. If it came down to these designs, I'd choose Jeffy's:

Destiny's Women

You couldn't have picked nicer weather for Waitangi Day. Wellington was wall-to-wall sun and hot as hell. I spent the day at Porirua's Festival of the Elements with an NZ Flag stall. A more multi-culural Waitangi Day, you are unlikely to see. Saw some excellent performances and heard some music from around the world. Greek dances, Korean ceremonials, Polynesian dancing, Patea Maori Club and Gary McCormick as MC. A truly Kiwi celebration.

We managed to sign over 500 people up on the petition. There were the usual "not interested" comments, but that's no biggie. Only one incident spooked me.

Early on, I had signed a couple of women up for the petition. About ten minutes later, she reappeared insisting on taking her name off the petition.

A big Maori fella wearing an Enough is Enough T-shirt turns up. He wants the Flag of the United Tribes as the national flag. "Right, sign up then," I replied. "It's already the national flag," he says. "No, it's not. But I'd have no problem if it was chosen as the national flag by Kiwis in a referendum. Sign here..."

"I'm not signing your paper. The (Flag of the United Tribes) is the national flag." His presumed wife viciously crossed out her signature and her daughter's. "You keep your papers to yourself," he warned.

Destiny and Free Will are mutually incompatible.

The Real and Complete goNZo Reasons for supporting the flag change debate

Adam Hunt at Public Address has made an excellent and reasonable comment on the Change the Flag campaign, which I hope to answer with equal skill. Why do I spend hours on the streets of Wellington, asking people to sign a non-binding referendum in record time in unpredictable weather, dodgy public space restrictions, and occasionally hostile responses?

Well, if truth be told, I'm mentally ill. It takes a certain madness to face insurmountable odds. Edmund Hillary should be locked up. You are absolutely right; there's no material gain by changing the cloth. This is something that can't be bought or sold. Sorry.

There are many noble causes to support in order to alleviate suffering. Wars, pollution, and poverty are nothing new and will exist for the foreseeable future. We're already on our Forth World War ( the Cold War was the Third one). Humans have been in shitting in their nests since the discovery of fire (patent not pending). Someone, somewhere is always starving. While we are striving to fix these woes, this is something that is achievable. If we want to.

Why on earth would anyone want to change the NZ flag? Well, let's look at it:



The top quarter is a Union Jack, or the Royal Union. This is comprised of the St George Cross of England



the Scottish flag



and Ireland's St. Patrick's Cross



Significant parts of Ireland are no longer held as British territory. Scotland has recently formed its own parliament. Even the English rugby teams wear St. George's Cross.

The Royal Union set on a blue background was the flag flown by the British colonial fleet, the stars differing on the colony. Fifteen stars for Cook Islands, six stars for Oz and four for us. At one time we were going to be a dependency of New South Wales and it made sense to have a similar, if inferior, flag to Australia's. Did you know the stars on our flag are different sizes? Did you care?

The New Zealand colonial ensign was used at sea and slowly adapted to land dwellings for lack of other identification. In 1902, when New Zealand was a dominion of the British Empire, it was officially adopted as the national flag. Hastily thrown together by British seamen in 1865, our current flag is a symbol of inertia.

This is not the first time an effort has been made to overcome this inertia. After WWII, the British Empire was in smoking ruins and England was getting out of the colonial business. When the Empire fell in 1950, New Zealanders were questioning the design of our flag. In the 1970s, renowned artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (Kawa Kawa toilets) gifted the koru flag to New Zealand as a stimulus for this debate. Ask an old Kiwi and they'll tell you.

Flags are important at all sorts of times and not neccessarily at times of crises. Yes, the peaceful swastika was hijacked by some hateful ideas. Does that make it inherently evil, or was it something to do with the humans who let it happen at the time? There is a simple way to avoid the fervent nationalistic zeal that can bring symbols into disrepute. Just don't do it. Seeing as our combined miltary forces couldn't hold back a surprise attack by our nearest neighbours, the penguins in Antarctica, there is little for us to fear our flag becoming a symbol of global conquest.

Flags can be tribal things, but they also denote context and identity. More Kiwi backpackers put a silver fern or, well... a kiwi on their backpack to identify their starting point. The NZ flag? No way. There are some places in the world where mistaken identity can be fatal. Hey, we didn't vote for Bob Howard.

An old friend of mine likes taking a barge down some French river every year. Naturally, they fly the NZ flag to identify their vessel. "Fucking Brits!" yell the locals. "Fucking Kiwis!" she yells back. Immediately the locals lighten up. "Sorry about the bombs!"

Boating is a damned good reason not to have the silver fern on a black background as our national flag. On the waters, you wouldn't see it at in full moon, let alone a dark and stormy night. That's why pirates had black and white flags.



I bloody hate the NZ Flag logo. It has the sterility and moral backbone of a Nike swoosh. Nice if you're trying to sell a brand, but I agree with Adam Hunt. Kiwis can't be branded. While the silver fern is good for sports teams, and looks flash next to an adidas logo, it's not so good, for example, for our military. It is mistaken for a white feather (coward symbol) by some people. Maybe these people need to be properly educated. It's their fault. We can educate them over the gunfire.

Just as well, then, that this logo thing is merely a reference point for the debate, not some definitive choice.

Instead of just bitching about other symbols, I considered a question. If I didn't relate to the existing flag or the logo substitute on offer, what did I think would be better? So I put this together, based on the hills, the white cloud and insurmountable blue. The hills are in the wind. Hat tip Hundertwasser.



But hey, that's just my opinion. Jeffy James has got a nice one. So has Nick Wood of Rosehill College, Auckland. More designs are popping up the whole time. There are about four million Kiwis here and more abroad. Do you think between all of us, we could find something better, something that more accurately represents who we are?

Flags are dynamic things, as the evolution of the Royal Union flag shows. Hell, even the Yanks have changed their flag on numerous occasions, even if it is to add a star or 37. Before fellow Commonwealth member Canada changed its flag in 1965, 6000 design submissions were received. It is a good example of how common sense and general knowledge can help us come to the best possible answer. I hope all Kiwis take their opinions and stick 'em on paper and send them in for a go. One of us has the perfect flag, and it will be interesting to find out what it looks like.

Canada was "almost unique" in changing the flag without significant constitutional upheaval, although my late English teacher Mr Guerin would have berated me for poor word usage. If New Zealand has to wait for a revolution or civil war before looking at changing a national symbol, we'll be waiting another 150 years or more. If some people think referenda are expensive, it's certainly cheaper than civil unrest! The flag debate is not about republicanism, although there are some supporters of flag change who are republicans. When New Zealand considers this subject later on, we'll have enough to discuss among us without having to ponder a new flag too.

Machiavelli once said that one change leads the way for others. If this NZ Flag referendum is successful in motivating our representatives to actually do something, it will set a precedent for all future referenda. The NZ Flag referendum has learnt from previous attempts. The question is concise and unambiguous, as opposed to the Norm Withers petition. It is not a direct attack on our representatives' jobs, unlike Margaret Robertson's one. As far as partisan political topics go, this is pretty neutral ground. So what is the big tricky question we want the permission of our government to ask in this year's election?

"Should the design of the New Zealand flag be changed?"

If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Doing the Cuba Mall Shuffle

Just got home after collecting signatures in Cuba Street for the nzflag.com referendum. Absolutely stoked by the level of support for a new flag. If this level of interest continues, Kiwis will get to have a say on election day next year in a Citizens' Initiated Referendum on the issue.

The people in Wellington never cease to amaze me. A diverse bunch of ethnicities and eccentricities, styles and smiles. Even the few people who disagreed with the 'change the flag' idea did so in an amicable way. No wonder I moved back here.

A highlight was getting former mayor and National candidate for Wellington Central Mark Blumsky to sign the petition. OK, it was a soft sell. He pointed out the nzflag.com flag he was flying from his apartment roof further up the street.

Couldn't resist name-dropping David Farrar into the conversation. Old habits die hard!

Working for the dole

For an unemployed person, I'm pretty damned busy. Not content with putting my hand up for a few NORML things, I've just gone and doubled my workload by volunteering as the Wellington co-ordinator for the nzflag.com referendum campaign. With a little luck I might one day talk myself into a position that actually pays the bills!

In the meantime, there's intense media training to be done. I'll soon be learning all the buzzwords and soundbites for the media outlets. I've already been reading up, perusing books like Seven Highly Effective Ways to Sell Ice to Eskimos and the Goebbels Guide to Marketing. Very soon, I reckon, I'll excel at spouting bullshit communicating effectively with target markets.

If anyone from WINZ reads this, I am still actively seeking employment, OK?