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I was sitting back in my Air New Zealand seat on NZ1 out of Los Angeles preparing for a journey I know so well, the one back home. Getting on an Air New Zealand plane anywhere in the world actually feels like I have already arrived, but something at the start of this journey caused me to sit bolt upright and do a quick mental check that the plane and I were both going to the same place. The dulcet tones of the Air New Zealand purser welcoming the foreign travelers said the flight would “take us down to our quiet little corner of the South Pacific.”

Quiet! Little! Corner! Yet again I was reminded that “language matters”. For many years I have worked against the notion of New Zealand as “small”, yet time and again it creeps into our national conversation. The natural modesty of New Zealanders, the get-it-done-without-fuss ethic, the “knock the bugger off” attitude that carried Ed Hillary to the top of Everest, are among our greatest strengths. I work with New Zealanders in what seems to be every part of the world. I can see how our gruff, chipper sense of teamwork creates priceless value wherever it is deployed. Shayne Gilbert is leading the UN relief effort in Haiti. Helen Clark is leading the UN’s development effort designed to pull a billion people out of poverty. Chris Liddell is now Vice Chairman of General Motors. Steve Williams will have Tiger Woods’ back as he attempts to pull his game and life back on track. These are each examples of turnaround situations which require a tenacious, pragmatic yet calm and principled approach. The message could be, “got a tough job to do – call in a New Zealander. They’ll deliver 100%.”

The “quiet little corner” metaphor plays to the worst attributes of our psychology: that we are subservient, under-achieving, provincial, even feral. What if the Air New Zealand announcement had spoken of the journey to “our proud warrior nation at the leading edge of change, not only world-class but world-changing, and on our flight you’ll sample the fruits of our garden in paradise, our farm from nirvana, and our vineyards from heaven.” Yes, to coin the great Kiwi put down, it’s “over the top”, but it serves to illustrate that the story we present of ourselves to the world needs a makeover.

We can turn out Oscar-winning scripts but the one for the country itself has been sorely neglected. We either underdo it, as seen in the mantra of “small” we infect ourselves with, or overdo it, as seen in the crushing disappointments that we visited upon ourselves for the past three Rugby World Cups when we built our All Blacks up to walk on water.

The 2011 Rugby World Cup is the world’s third largest sporting tournament. It will be a brilliant showcase for New Zealand, provided we are up for it. I’m not talking about the rugby – I’m going to leave that to Graham Henry and Richie McCaw. I’m not talking about whether the planes get everyone where they’re meant to be on time – I’m leaving that to Air New Zealand.

What I am talking about is our job as citizens, and our role in welcoming tens of thousands of visitors – players, media, fans – and billions of viewers throughout the world. If our starting point is that we’re a “quiet little corner of the South Pacific” then we have defeated ourselves before we start. We need to raise our sights a little, talk it up a bit, sharpen our edge, and polish our exuberance. I’m not talking about being something we aren’t: New Zealanders are naturally hospitable, let’s just imbue the conversation with a higher sense of purpose and metaphor.

Bring on the storytellers, raise up the scriptwriters, turn on the songwriters! We need a fresh New Zealand narrative that positions us well in the world at a time when millions of people will be participating in what we are offering.

Give it edge, enthusiasm and a power of emotion!

Corsica is one of my favourite places on Earth.  This Mediterranean island combines rugged mountain and coastal scenery with a wild, indomitable culture and history.  Corsica had a revolution even before the French, who copied their constitution of liberty and equality.  Part of that culture is their tradition of sacred polyphonic singing which has lingered on in secluded mountain valleys.   While on holiday walking the mountain trails, we bought a CD of a contemporary singer Jacky Micaelli, who continues that tradition (1).  She writes: “I needed too much fresh air to be able to stay at home.  Instead I delighted in weaving sounds of tenderness on the weft of space.  And the freedom of my voice made the whole neighbourhood quiver.”

I have listened to that CD many times since and on every hearing I marvel at how its sounds manage to capture so well the essence of the place.  This is not a voice of velvet clad concert halls.  Its raw edge echoes the pinnacle ridges of soaring peaks, fading down the misty gorges.  Its lingering sadness brings up a wellspring of past suffering and stoic endurance, nuanced with hope.  I am fascinated at how she achieves this and grapple with trying to understand the artistic process that produces such deeply moving results . . . mostly in vain.  It is not unique; such symbiosis of human creativity with place (by ‘place’ I mean both land and time) has been a fundamental part of every culture since our species first evolved.

You can see it in adobe buildings in African countries like Cameroon or Mali, where impossibly beautiful, but practical forms are built as bodily expression of only hands and mud.  Or in Persian carpets, or Aboriginal art, or many many more examples.  You can see it in Maori carvings, in the spiraling, pierced forms of the great waka that seem to reflect the stars and galaxies of the heavens that guided them to this land, and the closely bound communities of whanau and hapu.  Totara is easily incised with obsidian and jade tools, and its bland texture encouraged added patterns, unlike the dominant wood grain of most tropical woods.

Lyonel Grant, artist and master-carver, has written about the great historical taonga displayed in the Te Maori exhibition of the eighties, and believes that today we are not capturing that deeply powerful magic in our art (2).  Why not?  I suggest the answer lies in our disconnect from the natural environment, and with it the loss of a sense of devotion.  Western society has made staggering technological and intellectual achievements of which we can be proud.  But we are learning now that they come at a price, evident in a ravaged environment and disempowered peoples.  This forces us to reassess, and look at what we have lost.

There is a species of African monkey that, when it gets sick, will travel many miles through the forest to a lone tree.  It will carefully strip the toxic bark off the twigs and suck out the juice of the pith.  Scientific investigation has proved that this is an effective medicine for that precise ailment that we knew nothing about (3).  How did the monkey know? – where to find the tree and how to use it??!  If you got sick would you instinctively do that?  No, even if you “knew” what to do, your rational brian would intervene.  The animal world is full of such stories.

There are theories that our language evolved out of the environment (4).  Early humans echoed the sounds they heard around them.  They were utterly immersed in their surroundings and could intuitively read what they heard.  Every different whisper of wind in the trees meant something to them.  The Corsican language evolved between the echoing walls of bare rock valleys which spoke those sounds, so Micaelli’s singing can only be from there.

Long, long before Europeans stumbled around the oceans in their clumsy ships, with little idea where they were, the Polynesians were colonising vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean.  Generations of accumulated knowledge and wisdom were concentrated in the one lone navigator who barely slept for days as he focused all his being on bringing up the island in front of him.  Every different ripple in the water surface, every variation in the twinkle of a star or sough of the wind, every movement of bird or fish, all these meant something to him, as he positioned himself under the rotating cacophony of stars he knew so intimately.  The human world is full of many such stories.

In so many past cultures nature was not usually something to be conquered, it was not a source from which riches could be wrested.  Those who dwelt there were absolutely a part of it.  The navigator only succeeded if he yielded himself fully to the ocean – any vestige of ego would cause him to lose his place in the wider picture.  With this immersion and dependence came a respect and a sense of devotion.  All early forms of spirituality were directed at nature and were at one with it.  As we have lost our connection to nature, so also we have lost our sense of devotion and our true spirituality.

The carvers of the taonga in Te Maori would have lived a very different life to today’s artists.  All their physical and spiritual energies would have been focused entirely on their work, overseen by clearly structured protocols that had evolved to increase that focus.  They were absolutely a part of their place, to the extent that all the their carving chips were carefully returned to the forest from where the tree came.  How can carvers of today match that focus when they are deluged by so many distractions that dilute their concentration?

We talk about seeking a New Zealand identity.  But pakeha society has no relevant past culture, only sentimental European links.  It has no language and sacred songs born out of its surrounding mountain valleys, or buildings formed out of its earth.  Its thin lipped settler society is predicated on a total destruction of the previous ecology to replace it with imported farming (5).  It is culturally destitute and lacking in nourishment.  In the saturated and distracting global stream of instant and self-centred gratification how can today’s artists connect to meaningful depths?

Talking to Kim Hill, Don McGlashan stressed the importance of stories: “Existing isn’t enough . . . You have to tell stories, otherwise we disappear.”  Many old stories remain in a culture because they provide some of its identity and because they contain morals that have enabled it to survive.  Maori creation myths include the tale of Tane receiving the three baskets of knowledge from the gods in their heaven.  Kete Aronui contained the knowledge of the natural world, of the forests the oceans and our bodies.  Kete Tuauri contained our rational knowledge and Kete Tuaatea contained our spiritual knowledge.

I designed a lighting installation based on these three kete which we first showed in Milan last year (6).  My intention was to bring something of Maori culture to the world and to show that it contains morals relevant to everyone.  I suggested that Kete Tuauri has become too big and is drowning out our connection to the natural and spiritual worlds.  Only when we get these three back in balance will we have hope for a better future . . . and only then will artists begin the long path to creating a true New Zealand culture and identity.

References.

1. Corsica Sacra by Jacky Michaelli, Auvidis label.
2. Keynote lecture at Cumulus conference at Unitec, November 2009.
3. Biomimicry by Janine Benyus.
4. The Spell of the Sensous by David Abram
5. Theatre Country by Geoff Park
6. www.davidtrubridge.com/2009/

My very first awakening to the power of brand, more importantly the power of a nation’s brand, came when I was six years old.

I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday. I grew up on a sheep farming property up the Rakaia Gorge in Canterbury, in one the most picturesque, pristine places on the planet.

Three times a week a mailbag arrived with all our mail and anything that had been ordered from the big faraway city of Christchurch.

This particular day out of the bag tumbled a tiny shoe box, the shoes inside for me to wear to a very special wedding.

My mother opened the box, took out a pair of the most beautiful pair of shiny red shoes, I had ever seen, and turned them over. On the bottom of the shoes was printed three words “Made in England”. That means they are good quality she said.

Obviously nearly half a century later things have changed. The reality is a country is a brand, and that brand has a value – positive or negative, and creates or destroys value on every output from that country.

My vision for brand New Zealand is that ‘from New Zealand’, ‘made in New Zealand’, or simply ‘of New Zealand’ instinctively means to someone on the other side of the world that this product or service originates in a country which leads the world in environmental, social and cultural best practice delivered in a context of inspiring design values. We are uniquely placed to really earn this set of country brand values, and to deliver something with values that money can’t buy from anywhere else on the planet.

These brand values touch deep into the soul of the new global consumer.

This new global consumer has a growing desire to re-invest their lives with a sense of value and spiritual worth.

This consumer is more thoughtful.

This new consumer movement is a mindset, not driven by the ability to pay.

This new consumer movement is driven by consumers no longer wanting to buy things they do not need. It is driven by wanting to feel good and be inspired about each purchase, shopping with an ethical, social, civic and eco conscience for emotional, spiritual and personal wellbeing.

This consumer will reward ethical brands and penalise errant ones – including national brands.

It is now 2035, our new consumer has selected a New Zealand product or service. Its design and delivery is inspiring and they know that the quality of life in New Zealand is inspirational.

They know that to visit New Zealand they’ll have to pay a little at the border, but once there they can enjoy the cleanest, most unpolluted outdoor environments and urban centres; stunning facilities; the country is safe with high employment right across population sectors – and that the food they eat will be alive and bursting with goodness. They can see New Zealanders long ago stopped saying why it can’t be done, and have come up with a raft of supposedly ‘impossible’ outcomes for a country of its population and resources. Impossible in the same way that solutions in Curitiba, Brazil implemented were ‘impossible’, addressing infrastructure issues as transportation, the information highway, waste, energy and green space. New Zealand has, for example, invested in getting cyclists safely away from vehicles on roads finding, that children and commuters are now cycling to school and work reducing road congestion and improving health and wellbeing, and ultimately the balancing of the books too.

Our new consumer knows that in New Zealand it is no longer cool to drive when you can ride or use efficient mass transit services. They know New Zealand is developing sound practical policy based on all the information now freely available as information technology becomes ever more efficient. Our new consumer, knows already they would find most importantly a country that has recognised the value in investing in education in its most comprehensive sense.

They know that this is a country that has discovered the secret to success is to never forget the heart…that to dwell in the head for too long dries out the spirit, that their country will only ever be as good as their people. They know there is an acceptance that the human spirit demands stimulation in order to grow and that competition still remains the best mode of achieving that end. Competition has been reintroduced into school life in New Zealand coupled with the drive to find the good and the strengths in every individual and celebrate these.

Our new consumer knows young people in New Zealand are motivated and have extraordinary levels of self worth, both attributes worryingly diminishing decades earlier. They know it is a country that has embraced new ways to access learning in different types of learners. They know it is a country that understands that when one embraces competition the innate qualities that every human has begin to come to the fore – effort, focus, determination, passion, love, imagination, strength immediately start to surface. Call it survival, call it a desire to win or simply call it a desire to feel great….it all adds up to energy. If one does not work with the above qualities one cannot possibly have energy…and without energy, success at what an individual or a country wishes to achieve becomes impossible. New Zealand has as a result become a hotbed of innovation and successful innovative business.

This is why New Zealand has risen to the top of the OECD in hard economic terms and has the highest Gross Happiness Index (GHI) In the past there was almost always an inverse correlation between GDP and GHI. New Zealand delivers the most exciting compelling products and services to the world in a way the planet can sustain and thrive on.

This is why New Zealand has the most aspirational country brand there is.

This is why it is a joy to travel about the world as a New Zealander, and live beyond New Zealand but retain ones connection with New Zealand.

But back to 2010. New Zealand has a chance to put substance behind its already positive brand and to make this vision for our brand real, but we need courage, commitment and speed. Have we got all of that? If not, can we get it?

History shows us we undoubtedly have the courage. The commitment is what groups among the KEA network can support in generating – and if the commitment is strong enough the speed will come.

Jaime Lerner, Mayor of Curitiba for twelve years, said:

“There is no endeavour more noble than the attempt to achieve a collective dream. When a city (or country) accepts as a mandate its quality of life; when it respects the people who live in it; when it respects the environment; when it prepares for future generations, the people share the responsibility for that mandate, and this shared cause is the only way to achieve that collective dream.”

He also said that as long as we are prepared to say we couldn’t do what Curitiba did, “because….”, we are leaving undone a great opportunity to make positive change, that it simply needs us to say ‘yes’ we will make it happen.

The new consumer is here now.
There is no time to lose. But it is not too late.

It took Navman ten years to reach a turnover of $4m, a further three years to achieve $40m,  and an additional five years to break the $400m barrier.  The company did not survive well under its first foreign owner but eventually each of the four business units found new owners and all of them continue to operate successfully today. They all maintain an R&D focus in New Zealand. The fleet tracking business, Navman Wireless, also continues to maintain the number one market position in NZ and Australia.

Of the $450m of sales achieved in 2005, $300m was attributed to portable car navigation devices, truly the “odd man out” business unit from a New Zealand point of view. The remaining three business units, marine navigation, fleet tracking and GPS receiver modules could be considered a closer match to the more typical “narrow vertical” Kiwi business model but still punching well above the Kiwi average in terms of global market share.

There are several key ingredients to the success of any business. New Zealand has many well managed companies who grow steadily in the good years and manage to hold their own in the bad, but very few ever shift into “hyperdrive” and achieve international success.  Why is this?

I have read many different papers written over the past ten years on the “key elements of success”, there are many different views but top of my list is the culture of the management team.  To replicate a Navman success in a similar time frame the core team must manage the business with a sense of desperation and urgency. The management team’s view on what success looks like MUST be documented in a business plan and preached to the whole company. It is NOT enough to simply say we are $50m this year and will be $70m in two years. The plan MUST provide absolute detail as to how the goal will be achieved. Our plans could be termed as “anal” in nature but it worked.  This level of detail must be visible to everyone in the entire company and everyone MUST believe the plan is achievable for it to work.

Once the company can tick this box on the plan, the rest is simply down to good old common sense, knowledge and EXPERIENCE. The reason it took Navman ten years to get to $4m in sales was our lack of relevant experience in the market we planned to operate in. We could do the development and manufacturing bit but we didn’t understand how distribution worked within our market.

New Zealand is building a successful track record in several international markets with its wine exports. We can clearly see that the successful companies are the ones who understand the power of brand and channel. Unfortunately the old “colonial, sell it at the gate” culture still exists and if left to run rampant, this can destroy the good work of the few stars who lead the pack.

New Zealand has a lot of great small businesses. Their greatest weakness is lack of ability to commercialise on a global scale. The brand and channel issue is one of the biggest stumbling blocks but lack of general business experience is our greatest weakness. Unfortunately you cannot learn this stuff at University and even if you could the typical Kiwi business owner would not be able or willing to take the time to learn it in the lecture room. The ONLY way to gain this knowledge is to hire in people who have “been there and done that”.

I truly believe that Kea is in a position to provide the means to connect Kiwi’s around the globe together. That is not to say that the guy you want to hire in Brazil will be a Kiwi but there is a good chance that there is a Kiwi in Brazil who will be able to connect you to a “head hunter” who specialises in finding the people you need.

The other key factor to Navman’s success came from building new business units that levered off, and added leverage to the business we already had. When we were making one million GPS receivers a year our cost for GPS chip sets, LCD displays and all the other components that made these products were about as low as they could be on a global scale. This allowed our marine electronics business to become VERY competitive. It provided our Navman Wireless division with the lowest possible cost solution in the world allowing the company to become the largest fleet tracking operation in the UK within three years of its market launch.

This “leverage” strategy is something the Japanese are masters of and something Kiwi companies need to learn. We are not naturally good at working together but when we travel and work overseas we begin to understand the power of the collective mentality. If we can translate what we do on the rugby field to business we will have a better chance of creating more Navman’s in the future.

In 1981 the New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon made a speech to the Worshipful Company of Butchers in London. Here’s part of what he said:

There’s a story told about Sir Walter Scott, who was walking with his wife at Abbotsford one day when they came upon a flock of sheep with new-born lambs playing about them. ‘It’s no wonder,’ he said to his wife, ‘that poets from the earliest ages have made the lamb the emblem of peace and innocence.’ ‘They are indeed, delightful animals,’ replied Lady Scott, ‘especially with mint sauce.’

Poetry is all very well, but we in New Zealand are most interested in the mint sauce end of the animal.

The prime ministerial words were actually written by a witty member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but probably Sir Robert enjoyed reading them aloud, just as he enjoyed making jokes about McCahon paintings, Australians, and trans-Tasman intelligence levels. And surely the butchers — for some reason I imagine them all sitting in freshly pressed, striped aprons — would have chuckled.

Of course, most New Zealanders are pretty pragmatic. ‘What is it for?’ is the first question we ask of something. Or, ‘What does it do?’ The problem with poetry is that we are never quite sure how to answer those questions. There it is, and we meet it at school, and feel mildly anxious, and we worry about how to spell ‘onomatopoeia’, and sometimes a phrase or two sticks . . . but it doesn’t seem to help with the balance of payments. Poems have no weight in the marketplace. You can’t hang one on the wall and watch its value appreciate.

And yet . . . every time we go to a naming ceremony, a wedding, a funeral, a memorial event like Anzac Day, there are the poems among us, at the very centre of our lives. Worth nothing, they are somehow worth everything — particularly during those rites of passage when we are drawn together by the deepest things we have in common.

1981 was hardly one of New Zealand’s glory years. Back then, distance seemed an especially difficult thing. I was living in London, and I remember writing a poem called ‘Zoetropes’ that was full of geographical distance. It was prompted by my more-than-usual need for news from home – the Springbok tour had become a dark, looming cloud on the horizon. But the poem was also about that unsettling thing that happens to all travelling New Zealanders: your homeland vanishes when you leave it. ‘Zoetropes’ begins with a familiar experience: the one where you turn the page of a newspaper – in London or New York or Melbourne – and glimpse a heart-lifting capital Z out of the corner of your eye, only to make the immediately disappointing discovery that the word in question is Zimbabwe, or Ziggurat, or even Zoetropes.

So in London in1981, as the Springbok tour approached, I was desperate for news from home, and found it very hard to get. Occasionally someone would phone; or a package of clippings would arrive in the post. These days I suppose I would be a little troubled, but not in that big, agitating, disconnected way that I recall, because of course the problems of distance have since been modified by the internet and other forms of instant communication. No one now is likely to feel, as one of our first poets, R.A.K. Mason, did back in the 1920s, that New Zealand is a ‘far-pitched perilous hostile place . . . fixed at the friendless outer edge of space’.

Happily, one of the aspects of New Zealand that now travels most easily and immediately is poetry. The quality of our poets has always been one of the country’s best kept secrets, and at last word is beginning to get out. Our poets are published in a range of overseas markets. The English publisher Carcanet has done an anthology of recent New Zealand poetry. There is now an anthology of contemporary New Zealand poetry in German translation, Wildes Licht (Wild Light). There is even a Russian anthology, Land of Seas. My own recent book Lifted was recently published in Italian translation.

And now the web makes New Zealand poetry accessible everywhere. Notable websites include the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre which currently archives the work of over 30 poets, and Best New Zealand Poems, which I’m personally proud to have brought into being. Each year a different BNZP editor chooses the best 25 poems from the last 12 months. There are notes on the poets and their poems (often by the poets themselves), and a whole range of links – for example, to journal and publisher sites – for readers who want to explore a particular poet’s work further. The site has become a shop-window for New Zealand poetry, and has visitors from all around the world.

The 2009 Best New Zealand Poems has just gone on-line, edited by Robyn Marsack, an expat New Zealander who directs the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh.

It’s sometimes said that poets are the antennae of the human race. The two poets who have been chosen most often by the BNZP editors over the past decade are Jenny Bornholdt and Geoff Cochrane. Anyone who wants to keep up with the places the New Zealand imagination is going should be seeking them out.

On February 4 this year, two days before two flags flew for the first time on Waitangi Day on key government buildings and the Auckland Harbour Bridge, the New Zealand Herald began a high profile series calling for a change to the older of the two — the blue flag which carries the Southern Cross and, in one corner, the Union Jack.

Much debate until then had focused on the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, chosen to represent Maori on Waitangi Day. 

On Australia Day, broadcaster Ray Martin, one of the nominees for Australian of the Year, had suggested his nation should replace its flag with one that reflected its own identity. Our view was that Waitangi Day was surely the time when our thoughts should turn down the same path.

Flags say much about how a people see themselves and how they want to present themselves on the international stage. In return, they help to shape the way the world sees us. The present flag is a statement cherished by those who value tradition. It harks back to a time when maps of the world had huge slabs of British Empire red on them. But it says little else. Worst of all, it is nondescript. The flags of more than 20 countries and territories carry the Union Jack in their left corner. Three-quarters of these also feature a navy blue background.

New Zealand’s flag is virtually indistinct from many of these.  On the day we launched our flag campaign we published all of those flags and our own on the front page of the paper.  The blur of Union Jacks and seas of blue, white and red spoke profoundly of post Empire stasis and lack of individual identity.Canada addressed this issue 45 years ago. It came up with its much-praised and instantly recognisable maple leaf design. The debate there was solely about identity, not about wider constitutional matters or the embracing of a republic. It need be no different here. The debate need not become bitter. Changing the flag is not about dishonouring those who fought under the present flag, just as that ensign, introduced officially in 1902 during a wave of patriotism occasioned by the Second Boer War, was not a slight on the New Zealanders who had fought under the Union Jack.

The Herald called for a serious examination of the merits of change, not a once-over-lightly diversion of cartoon colours and symbols.  We have not presumed to say what the design of the new flag should be. Many people have their own favourites, perhaps featuring the kiwi, the silver fern, variations on the koru design or even the Southern Cross, the focus of the current flag. New Zealand, unlike Australia, is fortunate in having a good range of potential symbols to form the centrepiece of a new ensign. Then again, New Zealanders could embrace a flag devoid of such emblems but rich in colour, stripes or striking shapes.

We published the views of ex servicemen and women, sports people who have represented New Zealand under the current flag, Maori, new immigrant communities, designers, brand marketers and the country’s most decorated citizens, members of the Order of New Zealand.  We also commissioned a Herald-Digipoll of public opinion and found just over 52 per cent thought it was the right time to consider a change.  Somewhat perversely, though, a high number also favoured retaining the Union Jack within a redesigned flag.  Of the other symbols, the silver fern was clearly favoured over the Southern Cross, the koru, kiwi, or tiki.  In previous campaigns over a new flag, public polling had found just 25 to 30 per cent support for change.

The Herald believes it would be wrong to misappropriate the Tino Rangatiratanga flag as the new national flag. It has only just been recognised as the flag for Maori and should remain as it is and was intended, a symbol of Maori renewal. It has, in achieving that status, virtually ruled itself out of a search for a new, broader national symbol.

In the first instance, in the interests of canvassing what is possible, we believe vexillologists and some leading artists and designers should be commissioned. Then a panel should select the most suitable candidate, which would become the subject of a parliamentary bill. At that stage, public submissions would be heard by a select committee. It is unlikely that politicians of a leave-well-enough-alone outlook will rush to embrace the cause, but those for whom identity is important will recognise the need to lead.  Even the RSA believes the will of the people ought to prevail, not a blind belief in the status quo.

Our hope, probably overly-ambitious, is that we might have a new flag to show off at rugby’s 2011 World Cup. But even if that timetable, of 17 months, is too tight, it is becoming clear that the time for a change is near. Perhaps the most compelling evidence comes from the Herald’s survey of the members of the Order of New Zealand. A majority of these patriots and paragons support a new flag. Probably none of these people would suggest a change of flag is the most important issue facing this country right now, nor would they say this is a matter worth pursuing if it leads only to rancour and resentment. But they are convinced this need not happen.

The Herald’s campaign will continue, with a monthly focus on moves towards a new flag and regular publication of new designs offered by readers and design professionals.  The nzflag.com website and campaign organised by Lloyd Morrison and others is pushing ahead with plans to seek alternatives with public input. The time is right. New Zealand’s flag says virtually nothing about how this country sees itself today and how it wishes to be seen. It is, indeed, time for a change.

For the full Herald series, plus picture galleries of alternative flag designs, go to nzherald.co.nz.

–  Tim Murphy is editor of the New Zealand Herald.