Flying the f lag for adding Red Peak

Warmth – mahanatanga (mar-har-nar-tonguer)

THE flag debate refuses to die. Politicians who gambled that the idea of changing the flag would bore the voters have lost. If it causes violent arguments in pubs and newspapers, it’s not dead: it’s alive and biting.

Now we’re fighting about whether the Red Peak flag should join the final four for the referendum later this year. And it obviously should. The Flag Consideration Panel botched its job and ended up with three fern designs and a koru. What sort of choice is that?

The Red Peak movement has gathered 35,000 signatures on an online petition. That can’t be dismissed as just a digital bubble or a storm on a Facebook page.

The argument here is not that Red Peak should become our new flag: this newspaper has not picked a winner to back. But the Red Peak should certainly be one of the finalists.

John Key says the Government would have to change the law to allow a fifth finalist. So what? His administration will change the law at the drop of a hat if it really wants to. It did so to alter the opening hours for pubs during the Rugby World Cup. So it’s not an argument about quick-draw law changes. National is fine with those, especially when it’s about beer and circuses.

And here is the clue to Key’s real attitude. He thinks that adding a finalist would hurt him politically. He must be privately worried that his flag campaign might blow up in his face. In particular there is a noisy lobby that says it’s a vanity project.

Left-wingers think it’s a giant diversion he is practising to hoodwink a gullible electorate while he imposes a plutocracy behind their backs. This is idiotic and shows a real contempt for the voters.

They are, in fact, capable of thinking about more than one issue per term.

Right-wingers think he is trying to expunge the mother country not only from our flag but our hearts. The ‘‘colonial and proud!’’ lobby suspect this might be a half-way house on the road to the republic. All of which is equally daft: Key is an enthusiastic monarchist.

But everyone, left and right, agrees that we don’t want politicians designing the flag. And Key doesn’t want to be caught designing one either.

The trouble is that the Flag Panel, by going for three versions of the fern, John Key’s favoured pennant, has made it look as though he has designed it by proxy. Especially now that he has given his backing to two – or is it three? – of the fern designs they chose.

The panel didn’t take orders from the PM, and nor did it try to please him with a bouquet of ferns. It went its own way and screwed up all by itself.

Now Key could obliterate all suspicion by adding a rival to his favourite three (everyone assumes that the koru is a dead duck). He would then show that he is prepared for the race to be an open one rather than one stacked with flags that he likes.

He would also show that he likes the idea of giving the voters a genuine choice. The National Government is usually big on choice.

So Key arguably has the means, the motive and the opportunity for changing his mind about the Red Peak.

It’s not as though he hasn’t changed his mind before.