Donald Clarke: Plan to change New Zealand flag has a mad logic

It's the final of the Rugby World Cup. Huge men from the southern hemisphere will run dementedly at one another while smaller men and women yell at them in saloon bars. One side's fans will wave an ensign with a union flag in the upper left-hand corner and stars elsewhere. The other side's supporters will wave an ensign with a union flag in the upper left-hand corner and slightly more stars in the remaining blue space.

Citizens of New Zealand and Australia – like those of Ireland and Britain – are forgivably sensitive about any confusion between the two nations. They cannot, however, get too furious about neutrals mixing up their flags. Indeed, New Zealand prime minister John Key has said news reports (from foreign outlets, one assumes) have superimposed his image on that of an Australian flag and his counterparts from across the Tasman Sea have experienced similar complementaryconfusions.

Political rearrangements

This is one of the reasons behind a most unusual pair of referendums about to go before the New Zealand electorate. Few countries have got through a century without changing their flag. Following political rearrangements with near neighbours, most of Ireland swapped the Union flag for the trídhathach na hÉireann a little less than 100 years ago.

The US has been adding stars throughout its history. And while some Germans got their horizontal tricolour back in 1949, others had to wait until 1990. And so on.

All those changes accompanied significant constitutional or territorial conflagrations. The proposal before the people of New Zealand invites a much more rare circumstance: swapping the flag while leaving the state otherwise unaltered.

Such changes are not unheard of. In the 1960s, Canada, another Commonwealth nation that retains the Queen as its head of state, had a furious debate about replacing its own ensign with the now familiar Maple Leaf.

So, there is precedent. But the campaign faces challenges. Chief among them is the absurdly convoluted structure of the twin referendums. The first postal vote, to take place between November 11th and December 11th, will ask New Zealanders to rank five proposed alternatives in order. From March 3rd-24th, 2016, the electorate will then decide between the current flag and whichever image triumphed in the first plebiscite.

The plan has a mad logic. It would surely be unfair to place the existing flag – under which Kiwis fought in two world wars – on an equal footing with five freshly minted designs. On the other hand, to suggest punters decide between the current image and some mysterious, undecided pattern would be absurd. What if the electorate then voted for the Kiwi bird with laser eyes, as suggested by James Gray of Auckland?

For all that, the clunking, wheezing mechanism is sure to put some people off. Estimates put the potential costs of the referendum at 26 million New Zealand dollars (€16 million). Apathy and frustration are already competing for dominion over the New Zealand psyche.

Then there are arguments about the alternatives. The initial invitation for submissions generated about 10,300 entries. The barmy jostled with the banal. Gray's killer Kiwi became a social media favourite. Sean Clifford from Bay of Plenty submitted the sort of pentagram beneath which English occultist Aleister Crowley used to sacrifice goats.

In the end, New Zealand ended up with four fairly uninspiring designs. Three offered variations on the fern image rugby fans will recognise from the All Blacks' jerseys. The fourth features a Maori koru pattern that apparently depicts, yes, another unfurling fern.

Flag boffins

Columnists fumed. “I just felt sad,” Russell Brown wrote. “After all this contemplation, we seemed to have wound up with what you’d get if you hadn’t really thought about it.”

Worse still, a representative from the International Congress of Vexillology – the world's leading flag boffins – suggested the designs barely counted as flags at all. Eventually, after much pressure, Key allowed a fifth design, something that looks a little like a cubist mountain, to take its place on the ballot.

After all this faffing, a recent opinion poll reveals about 70 per cent of New Zealanders do not want to change the flag. The chance to remove an imperialist symbol from the national emblem, point the country in a new direction and help foreign picture editors distinguish one antipodean banner from another looks to be drowning in a soup of civil compromise.

This is not how history used to be made.