New Zealanders favor new national flag

UPI ^ | February 11, 2010

[myknowledge]

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- A majority of New Zealanders want to change the nation's flag, with more than half favoring a design incorporating a symbolic silver fern, a poll indicates.

A survey by the New Zealand Herald showed 52 percent thought it was time for a new design. The largest support came from those ages 40 to 70, the Herald reported Thursday.

The silver fern is widely used as a symbol of the nation, and is featured on the coat of arms of New Zealand and on the country's $1 coin.

[goldstategop]

Keep The Union Jack in the canon and replace the stars in the fly with what else? - a kiwi - which is New Zealand's native bird!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus

[wardaddy]

I would keep a Jack in prominence but I can’t say I like either.

[wardaddy]

duh, it’;s the times we live in...weak times for crackers worldwide

[UnwashedPeasant]

I like this one:

[Rodamala]

Thank God for Setanta.

I DVRed all the Air New Zealand Cup matches I could last year... American football is a complete bore.

[NZerFromHK]

It seems most of the establishment in New Zealand favours changing the flag, including political insider David Farrar, most of the editorial team of the New Zealand Herald (in fact, the whole debate was stirred by them).

You can bet that by looking at how John Key has pushed policy agendas down - by denying their plausibility or even existence at first, and then doing an 180 and push it through Parilament at lightning speed, that we may well see a new flag for NZ one year from now.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10624890

“Flag debate: John Key favours silver fern”

This is New Zealand.

[NZerFromHK]

Ping! Would you like to make any comments?

[naturalman1975]

I think it's a matter for New Zealand, of course, in the final analysis.

But as for the suggestion that the Australian flag and New Zealand flag look very similar, I see that as a good thing really. Brothers often look very similar.

Australia faces the same calls periodically and there's a poem I like on the issue. It is Australian so not quite everything applies to NZ - but a lot of it does.

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.

[NZerFromHK]

The way I see it, NZ tends to have a more British/European political culture that the talking/pundit class can move things regardless of what the public wants, and once something has become a fait accompali by a enacted through a simple majority vote in Parliament in Wellington, ordinary New Zealanders will never bother to unroll them.

The chance is that Australia will probably keep the current national flag in 5 years’ time, while the NZ flag will probably belong to the museum by then just from observing how the “conservative” Prime Minister John Key has done so far in power. I don’t demand anyone less than another Ronald Reagan in government, but it would be nice if we get a John Howard. Instead, we have got another Jim Bolger and a rerun of the 1990s unprincipled and welfareist National government.