Editorial: Flag shows progress is being made

The only consensus may be that a more distinctive flag will be adopted one day. Photo / Richard Robinson

Politics can be a thankless craft. Make the right decision and, depending on the public's reception, it will seem foolhardy or unremarkable. The Prime Minister's decision last year to agree to a request to fly the Tino Rangatiratanga flag with the national flag this Waitangi Day has been portrayed as unremarkable. It is not.

It was a decision that could easily have outraged a large and vocal majority of the population, most of them on National's side of the fence. Just a year or two earlier, it undoubtedly would have done so. But John Key and his colleagues must have calculated that National's governing agreement with the Maori Party had changed the temper of the times, and they turned out to be right.

By his own account, Mr Key asked himself when Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples made the request, would the country look back one day and regret it? He doubted that. May his judgment be right. The flags flying on the Auckland Harbour Bridge and some Wellington public buildings today are not the flags of the National and Maori parties, they are symbols of the larger partnership signed this day in 1840 but still to be satisfactorily agreed.

Neither side has a unanimous view of a desired partnership. Disagreement among Maori over the status and suitability of the Tino Rangatiratanga flag has been evident at Waitangi this week. The flag's title, translated as "chieftainship", implies a degree of autonomy, but how much? And should it be tribal, as it was in 1840, or can it be pan-tribal today?

Meanwhile, the Herald has called attention to the other flag on the harbour bridge, asking whether it represents a post-colonial state. The case for a new national flag has found support from most of those honoured with membership of the Order of New Zealand but, predictability, political leaders are more wary. The only consensus may be that a more distinctive flag will be adopted one day. We have asked, why not now?

Some responses suggest the advent of a Maori flag makes this the wrong time to change the national ensign. Our suggestion is not to co-opt that flag; indeed, we've argued that its origins as a protest banner make it unsuitable. It has since suffered the indignity of an attempt by a Harawira family member and its sole surviving designer to copyright it. Its future as a unifying symbol for Maori is by no means certain.

But some such expression of partnership is bound to endure. Maori leaders have shown no interest so far in debating the design of the national flag. They may be uncertain whether we are looking for a flag for one side of the partnership or both.

Ideally both, but it is hard to predict how the exercise will evolve. Both sides need satisfying, enduring symbols of their distinctive identity in this country. Only then, perhaps, might the symbols and substance of the Treaty partnership be settled.

That is for the future. The immediate need is for the National-Maori political pact to work for both sides. So far the flag that flies today is the Maori Party's main prize. It has also the promise, reaffirmed by Mr Key yesterday, of agreed law governing foreshore and seabed, and has secured concessions for forestry carbon credits if emissions trading eventuates. But it has been denied, at the insistence of National's smaller partner, reserved Maori seats on the new Auckland Council. That blow would have been hard to absorb.

The partnership is going to face greater tests this year and next as Maori Party voters demand more signs of its leverage. But so far it is working, and giving us ever more hopeful Waitangi Days. Celebration is not a word normally used for our national day. But it should be. We are making progress.