The Flag Referendum… again.
So New Zealand has chosen: the old flag remains the same, with 56.6% votes, and the new designed flag will not be used as NZ’s flag because it only got 43.2% votes. There has been a lot of debate going on about wether to keep the old flag or not. Kiwi’s who voted in favor of the new flag probably were annoyed by the fact that the old one looks almost like the Australian flag (among other reasons). As was John Key, Prime Minister and initiator of the whole referendum. I mean I get that. Although I’m German and the German flag does kind of look like the Belgium flag. But really, I have never thought of changing the German flag because of that. Needless to say that I would not have the resources to do so, being the small student that I am.
The new flag, designed by Kyle Lockwood, was mocked by a lot of people. Personally, I think the fern looks quite nice and it would have been a flag rather different to the flags of other countries, except for perhaps Canada’s. The resemblance to New Zealand as a country seems to be missing though, ferns grow in Germany, too.
Now I could go on a bit about the pros and cons for either flag, but I won’t. Because I think this topic is overrated, especially if you consider the fact that NZ spent $26 million on the campaign!!! Just because the pride of some Prime Minister gets hurt, whenever he sits in front of an Australian flag in a meeting does not mean he has to force his opinions about rather unimportant matters on the people of New Zealand.
New Zealands government should really consider using such an amount of money on the improvement of the environment or on the issue of family violence. Apparently NZ has got the ‘worst rate of family and intimate-partner violence in the world’. The police had to attend to 105,000 cases of domestic violence incidents in the last year. If that would not have been enough, the total amount of cases, including the ones that had not been reported, counted 525,000. The number just makes me feel sick. The NZ Herald is using this week to give victims of abuse a voice and raise awareness. I think it’s about time.
