Flag debate is 'an opportunity for New Zealand'
For probably the only time ever, New Zealanders will soon get the chance to choose a uniquely New Zealand flag. The least we can do is make sure it's wearing our colours.
Let's make it a flag that inspires our people with the achiever values of those with the skill and courage to wear the silver fern on black. And I don't mean just literally in the gladiatorial arena of international sport, I also mean figuratively - those good enough to earn their fern in fields as diverse as science, film-making and opera singing.
My goal with this design is that it may be an ever-present reminder to our people that wherever they want to get to in life, they can get there from here.
Each of the three panels does double duty.
The central panel recalls how Maori would lay upturned ponga (silver fern) fronds on the floor of the forest to guide travellers home in the moonlight.
It also reminds us how, in the guiding spirit of the fern, three great men from this place led the world down into the smallest thing (the atom), up into the biggest thing (space), and up to the summit of the world's highest mountain (Everest).
The silver fern on black tells us that the best New Zealanders are world beaters. Let's use them to inspire the rest of us to be the best that we can be.
The white 'pales' either side of the black link to both our geography and human history. They represent not just the snow-cloaked alps of the South Island and the four great mountains of the North, but also the Long White Cloud that signalled journey's end for the first Maori waka and the billowing sails of the ships of the first Europeans.
As a proud New Zealander, I am deeply grateful to my British forebears for their role in founding modern New Zealand. They were great parents. But they granted us full independence in 1947. After 68 years, isn't it time we declared it? No self-respecting child keeps wearing Mum and Dad's clothes.
"What's wrong with the current flag?" some ask. Well, for one thing we're not on it. Amazingly, New Zealand's is the only old colonial flag still flying which includes no symbol unique to the country it purports to represent.
That's because it was designed in Australia to feature Crux Australis (the Southern Cross) by a man who'd never set foot in New Zealand, for a former Queensland governor who was just passing through.
While only one New Zealand flag ever made it across the sand at Anzac Cove, silver ferns were everywhere - around 30,0000 festooning the hats, collars and sleeves of our eight thousand soldiers at Gallipoli.
The flag referendum process is likely to be New Zealand's only opportunity to coordinate its national livery, or dare I say it, brand.
A brand is simply what other people think of us. The only choice we have in the matter is whether we want our brand to be bold and distinctive or timid and mediocre.
Just like people, sensible countries like Switzerland and Canada coordinate their colour schemes. Only a handful of nations don't - including Australia and New Zealand.
But fortunately, more and more New Zealand organisations are twigging to the need for consistency. Government departments have already adopted the silver fern on black.
As well as music, black is the premium colour of art and fashion. The French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir called it "the queen of colours". To Italian designer Gianni Versace, black was "the quintessence of simplicity and elegance". Such admiration for our national colour has been echoed by style icons from Coco Chanel to Yves Saint-Laurent.
Let's not blow yet another opportunity to make a quality statement of nationhood.
This time, let's get it right. Let's award ourselves a world class flag we can fly with pride for centuries.