What was the point of a flag debate if the only one that’s attracted support gets ignored?

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
35
2

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Am I living in some sort of alternative reality here?

Why the hell are we blowing $26million on a vanity project for the Prime Minister that’s designed to be a smoke screen to hide other political machinations if the only flag design that’s gained any kind of support just gets ignored?

Campaign pushes for fifth flag option
A campaign to try to force the Government to add a fifth design to the shortlisted alternative flags has almost 14,500 signatures after three days – but the Government has ruled out any changes.

Why not? Look, I don’t want to waste 1 more second on this joke, but surely if the people of NZ are actually excited about one of the designs, then shouldn’t the Government listen?

What was the point of the consultations if they don’t want to hear the peoples views now?

The Red Peak has become a Blue Bottom.

This is a farce.

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35 COMMENTS

  1. If any one of the four flags chosen were shown to slightly resemble an american company’s corporate logo, there would be howls of outrage. If one were shown to be simply a cropped version of an existing company’s logo, there would be calls for Key’s resignation. However I can virtually guarantee the support for the Red Peak design will still be there despite it being just that, a cropped version of an American cargo equipment manufacturing company’s logo.

  3. Democracy in action giving us the choice of Silver Fern, Silver Fern, Silver Fern or token Koru. What a bloody farce.
    Red Peak has a simplistic appeal that no other choice has. It actually looks like a flag rather than the logos we have been presented with.
    And that’s the reason it wasn’t chosen…It’s so good it may have won if given a chance.
    Dear Leader has spoken, he would like a Silver Fern so the Judges gave him silver ferns plus a token offering that has no show.
    yep this one was just too good.

  4. It’s a good flag, so good it couldn’t be picked.
    JK wants a Silver Fern and the Judges obligingly gave us a choice of 3 plus a token koru.

    Can’t have anything that stands out and has a certain class, it might win.
    Dear Leader wants a silver fern so that’s what he will get with this manipulated and managed referendum.

    • @ Glenn – Correct there.

      Since when has FJK ever listened to the popular consensus from ordinary Kiwis? If it doesn’t fit his corrupt and very dirty agenda, then it doesn’t see the light of day!

      And let’s not forget too, FJK has his favourite toy of the moment Richie McCaw, doing his bidding for him, promoting anything with a silver fern on it!

      Yes, I have a sick gut feeling regardless of the referenda outcome, the rigged result will be FJK’s silver fern choice, to satisfy his severely flawed character!

  5. I don’t think the ‘choices’ offered are anything other than the so-called expert panel’s (who were they anyway? Any flag experts on there?) subconscious desire to please John Key, they probably knowing of his own preference for pushing the All Blacks brand further into prominence and his legacy fantasy. Three white feathers (sorry, ferns) is no choice and a truly bizarre outcome of the process.

    Still, I have faith that this proposal will be spoiled at the real referendum next year, if not this time by lack of electoral turn out.

    • Agree. He probably told the panel something like “if you want to get paid, and/or want to see your kids again, this is the flag we’re going to have”

  7. The four options are somewhat of a joke. Three of the four are basically just alternative colour options of the same scheme so in a sense you really have only two to choose from, plus the existing. It would have made more sense to have had four different designs. I also think that five or even six options would have been better.
    Also the four silver fern based options are uncomfortably close to existing commercial logos so one might be excused for thinking that the flag committee have forgotten that the NZ flag is, and always should be, about our sovereignty before anything else.
    Whatever the merits or otherwise of the chosen flag designs it doesn’t change one basic reality about this whole exercise: This is a $26 million John Key ego trip. If there is a good turnout and especially if NZ adopts a new flag – Key will inevitably claim it as a vote of confidence in his government. If there is a poor turnout – he will blame the flag committee and the apathy of New Zealanders. He is completely out of touch with reality on this one.

  8. Watch the four-minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tENhOnfD82M
    Look at Red Peak and note use of flag design principles. Note equal space given to Maori colours (red, white, black) and Union Jack colours (red, white, blue). Note wharenui in the middle bringing both sides together. Note snow-covered NZ mountain signifying aspiration to be the best we can be.
    I love it.

  9. Seems that the flag debate has been proceeding on two different fronts; the first being the “official” route consisting largely of public meetings, polls (many rather unscientific), submissions and correspondence from clubs, associations, etc. The other is via social media. The problem is that the two don’t have much in common. Public participation at the public meetings held (at taxpayers cost) around the country have been very poorly attended, sometimes nobody turned up. There are some New Zealanders who feel strongly one way or the other but the majority simply are not very interested. Why is this?

    It could be because they feel that now is not the time to be doing this, either because of more pressing social ills that need to be fixed, or it is too expensive, etc. It is also because it is seen to be a process in which the opinions of many New Zealanders are simply being ignored, as if it is only the outspoken and the politicians that have a stake in this.

    I think that the politicians driving this referendum, particularly John Key, need to think very carefully about what happens after this first referendum. If there is a low turnout or high number of invalid votes cast this should be a warning that the country doesn’t want this exercise to go any further, and if this is ignored it shows further disconnection between the politicians and the people.

    I predict there will be both a low turnout (-50%) and a high number of invalid votes.

  10. I agree, it does seem like a farce @ Martyn Bradbury. The key word here though is ‘seem’.
    ( You will know this, just rehashing for my own sake. )

    Spending what will blow out to $ 28 million, once the new flag design is swindled past us, ‘seems’ like an excruciatingly maddening waste of your’s and mine’s money but lets not let the reasons behind the yankee doodle psycho jonky-stien initiative to a flag change go un debated .

    What is a flag? It’s representative of a sovereignty. A belief system, a culture, a collection of individuals.

    Changing the flag is symbolic of a change in that order. Otherwise , why change it? Just for fun??? $28million dollars could buy a lot of fun that didn’t mean a change in our flag.

    I think any change to our current status quo would be a disaster given how completely fucked up things are right now. Jonky’s a nut job. Lets be frank. He’s a nutter. A hair tugging, egotistical narcissist but more ominously, he’s a rich, powerful and influential one and I’d eat my own underpants if proven wrong because I bet, he also owes BIG favours to big scary bastards .

    One only needs to watch House of Cards or Mr Robot to aid ones imagination to foresee our future.

    I’d urge that the flag, warts and all , to stay unchanged . Any alternative , no matter how pretty-sparkle or wanky-symbolic of perhaps of some truss wearing sportster or some cheap-fabric entrepreneur who’s selling you their idea that his or her Company is better than thousands of years of class, tradition and style that gave us the Queens Chain, the right to travel our highways and byways unhindered and a metaphorical mantelpiece to rest our weary heads upon, as may be tempting? You’d be making a terrible mistake . And you’d regret that mistake, certainly as you age and die knowing that your kids will inherit the consequences of our lack of thinky-thinky which handed their future on to a handful of 1%er corporates.
    Let me go on record here and state with confidence that once the flag change is done the next yankee doodle psycho jonky-stien innitiative will be to push for NZ to become a Republic .
    Honestly , this whole things smells really, really bad.
    For Gods sake! Keep what we got until our country’s back under our control and our fellow Kiwis are less vulnerable.

    • “…the next yankee doodle psycho jonky-stien innitiative will be to push for NZ to become a Republic…”
      With himself as the first President of NZ perhaps.

  11. Martyn

    Bloody arrogance of this arrogant dictator Keyster to spend our precious taxes on a bloody flag change no one wants as the latest
    poll agrees it is a sheer obscene waste of our taxpayers money when we need our rail transport and provinces restored instead of this crap.

    https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/flag-change-opposed-by-two-thirds-poll-q09308.html

    “Two-thirds of New Zealanders who took part in the latest ONE News Colmar Brunton poll don’t want a new flag.”

    The poll, taken before the final four potential flag designs were announced, shows 66 per cent want to keep the current flag, up 2 per cent from 18 months ago.”

  12. my reading of red-peak is the blue and black symbolising the unholy alliance between the tories and the all blacks..

    ..and the red the progressive forces in new zealand..kept down..

    ..and the white is the white-noise/spin the tories/media use to keep the nz public ignorant and bigoted..

    ..i find the whole thing quite depressing..and more of yet another tory in-joke/manipulation around this whole flag-thang..

    ..a tory trojan-horse..

  13. I think the corporate logo style thing as abominable.
    What does it signify?
    There is a suggestion of mountains in the white chevron, but what’s the red about?
    If that was green, it would make more sense on the marketing image front.
    Blue for sea and sky, O.K., but I see no emphatic statement of national identity there. It’s insipid!
    Chevron oil might pick it up as a logo for one of their subsidiaries, or is that what we are now with the TPPA expectant?

    Get something that makes a statement that identifies us as New Zealanders on the thing.
    I would prefer the koru (which is already a fern) because it makes a statement concerning Maori identity which applies solely to New Zealand.
    But that doesn’t have to be all that is on the flag.

    Employ that to split up the flag into two areas of green and blue to typify the 100% pure, which, hopefully, we are geared toward doing some work toward regaining, then one or two other elements, at the very most, using the green and the blue as backdrops.
    But keep it simple also.

    And remember.
    This is just Key’s expensive ploy to distract from his criminal level of incompetencies, geared more toward catering to his expensive greens fees, than any thought of promoting New Zealand interests.

  14. What was the point of the consultations if they don’t want to hear the peoples views now?

    One point of the rigmarole was to prove that National listens despite the fact that they then wouldn’t listen.

    The whole point was to distract from the fact that Key and National are doing nothing to turn us into an independent nation and are, in fact, making us ever more dependent upon the US/UK.

  16. Best thing about this blog is the comments are funnier than most current tv comedies. Go on, someone make a comment that the triangle flag looks like a butt plug.

  17. So far every referendum held has been ignored … when the asset sales referendum was held the government sold our assets ….

    Now we have a binding referendum and the the thing is stacked so there is only one choice …

    Ummmmm is that an elephants arse I am looking at or what ….

  19. A couple of serious questions:
    1. Are these two referendums binding?
    2. If the flag is changed, what happens if someone refuses to accept the new flag and insists on using the existing flag? Will they be breaking the law and if so, what will the penalties be?

    • Only govt offices are obliged to fly the official NZ flag on those days designated by the govt for flag-flying. Anyone, or any body, is free to fly whatever flag they damn well like, every day of the year. (Sorry I can’t remember where I got this info but it was from an official source.)

  20. What is the point? Of the polls I have seen a sound majority oppose changing the flag. You can’t blame them, as there is only one flag to choose from, and to most people it straight out sucks. On the final referendum, the vote will be to keep the current flag. It will kill the flag debate for another decade, as there will be talk but no political action.

  21. How very interesting. Just this afternoon (Thursday 10th September) Jacinda Ardern has led a frontal assault on the integrity of the “independent panel” and the selection process. Where to from here?

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