New Zealand confirms plans to hold referendum on ditching the Union flag..

New Zealanders are to vote on whether to change their national flag, with many including the country's prime minister wanting to see it replaced with the silver fern symbol used by the All Blacks rugby team. Prime Minister John Key today announced plans to hold a referendum within three years, receiving the backing of his political opponents who said they would follow through with plans even if they oust Key in this year's national elections. The current flag depicts the Southern Cross star constellation and includes Britain's Union Jack in the top left corner.

SEE THIS PROPOSAL:

Some of my Kiwi friends explain the proposed flags to me thusly:

* One icon is the four red and white stars of the Southern Cross, which has been seen on our flag since 1869.

* Another is the Silver Fern, particularly associated with New Zealand sport and businesses. Wherever these two icons have been used in the world they are identified with our country.

* The third icon is the colours of our stunning natural environment: the blue, white and green. These colours are frequently used by New Zealand businesses big and small, including Air New Zealand and Fonterra. The colours are often used in the logos of local government. The blue-white-green colours may remind one of looking down at the sea, the sand, and farmland. Or looking up at the amazing forests, the white mountain peaks, and the clear blue sky. The colours reinforce our clean green image that is so important for our tourism, agriculture, forestry and fishing industries.

It certainly could be argued that my opinion,not being a Kiwi,means little or nothing in this debate.But that doesn't mean I don't have one.My understanding of NZ’s history,from the time of Captain Cook to the present,is that without Britain their country would just be a couple if tiny dots in a vast ocean.IMO their current flag symbolizes both their independence *and* the debt they owe to Britain.

Can't really blame the Kiwis for wanting to replace the current flag as people think it is the Aussie flag.

Which is rather ironic as their flag is the older of the two designs.

This is a matter for New Zealand, of course, but the same debate occurs periodically in Australia. I'm opposed to a change, and there's a little poem that explains why. It's not entirely irrelvant to New Zealand, as a part of it relates to Australia's convict past specifically, but most of it applies:

Our flag bears the stars that shine at night
In our southern sky of blue
And there's a little old flag in the corner
That is part of our heritage too,
It's the English, the Scots and the Irish
Who were sent to the end of the earth
The rogues and the schemers, the doers and dreamers
Who gave modern Australia birth.

And you who are shouting to change it
You don't seem to understand
It's the flag of our laws and language
Not the flag of some far away land
Though, there's plenty who'll tell if you ask them
How when Europe was plunged into night
How that little old flag in the corner
Was a symbol of freedom and light.

It doesn't mean we owe our allegiance
To some forgotten imperial dream
We've got the stars to show where we're going
And the old flag to show where we've been

It's only an old piece of bunting
It's only an old coloured rag
But there's thousands who died for its honour
And fell in defence of our flag.

IMO their current flag symbolizes both their independence *and* the debt they owe to Britain.

Something worth noting is that when the UK chose to embrace the European Economic Community (forerunner of the EU), it had significant consequences for the New Zealand economy which was fundamentally based on being a supplier of agricultural products to the mother country. A lot of New Zealanders remember this quite vividly, and it tempers any loyalty they feel.

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