Hang up the fern!
Changing national symbols proves irksome
“FARCE” barely describes the process by which New Zealand is deciding whether or not it needs a new flag. John Key, the prime minister, caught everyone by surprise during last year’s general-election campaign when he floated the idea of changing it. He wanted to get rid of the present one, which incorporates Britain’s Union Jack as well as the stars of the Southern Cross, to one that, as he put it to The Economist, “screams New Zealandness”. The immediate reaction was that this was at best an irrelevance, at worst a cynical diversion from the difficult stuff of politics.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Hang up the fern!”
From the September 12th 2015 edition
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