Posts by Lewis Holden
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Graeme said:
And the Union Jack representing the history of the other major immigrant people here, with whom a lasting Treaty was entered into by the Tangata Whenua; the flag, combining representations of how the two people who combined to form this country came here - the Maori under the stars, and British under the Union Flag representing the fusion of two cultures...
With respect Graeme, the history of New Zealand's current defaced Blue Ensign negates your somewhat wistful view of it. The current flag came about at the height of the New Zealand Wars and was largely used on Colonial Government owned gun boats, to distinguish them from the Imperial (i.e. British) units fighting Maori at that time. So really the current flag has precious little to do with unity under the Treaty. The flag is Anglocentric, which is exactly why groups like the National Front love it so much, not because of some invented nonsense about blue representing the Pacific (If it did, how do we explain the Falklands Flag? or the former Flag of Hong Kong?)
I think the Canadian example is relevant. The Canadians had a flag, much like ours, that reflected the Anglocentric nature of Canada post the British invasion of New France. This pissed Canadians of French ancestry off so much that they had their own flag (sounds like Maori, no?). The government of Lester Pearson sought to reconcile this difference by bringing about a design that was truly Canadian. There is an obvious parallel between the Canadian experience and the problems with the current New Zealand flag.
Of course, that's only one reason to change. There's many others, such as maturity and wanting to have a flag of our own...