Dialogue: Forget our Aussie-lookalike flag, bring on the silver fern

By WILLY TROLOVE*

You may have heard this story before. It could be true. It could just be an urban myth. Either way, it is too good to resist.

It is April 1988. The finishing touches are being made to Australia's new Houses of Parliament in Canberra. This billion-dollar building is the Federal Government's bicentenary gift to the nation.

The New Zealand labourers who have worked on the building spend the last few weeks of construction dreaming up a prank to play on their Australian counterparts. An idea comes to them while they are putting up the monstrous stainless steel flagpole that tops the building.

"I know," one Kiwi whispers to his offsider, "let's swap the flag."

"What?" his mate replies. "We can't do that."

"Of course we can," the first Kiwi says, his eyes twinkling with mischief in the rust-red sunset.

The flag on Canberra's Parliament House is bigger than a double-decker bus. On a good day, if you squint a bit, you can almost see it from the upper slopes of Ayers Rock.

So the Kiwi labourers go off in search of the largest New Zealand flag in Australia. We don't know where they find it. Perhaps they break into the New Zealand Embassy. Perhaps they head to Sydney and raid Frank Renouf's pool shed. Perhaps they smuggle it into Australia in a contraband shipment of Marmite. But however they get it, the night before the official opening of Parliament House, they swap the flags.

Opening day dawns and everyone has turned up. Bob and Hazel Hawke, Paul Keating in an Italian suit, the cabinet, the Senate, Aboriginal leaders, captains of industry, foreign diplomats, the press. Even the Queen is there with her handbag.

School children sing Waltzing Matilda. Bob makes a speech. The Queen declares the building open and cuts a ribbon. A band strikes up Advance Australia Fair. RAAF fighters fly low over Lake Burley Griffin and maul a flock of hapless galahs. Then the flag is raised.

Down the back behind the ambassador from Djibouti, the Kiwi labourers erupt in a fit of giggles. But their mirth is drowned out by warm applause. The worst possible thing has happened. A huge New Zealand flag flies lazily in the breeze over Canberra and nobody has noticed.

Bob escorts the Queen around the building. The Queen points at things. Bob explains knowingly (this Prime Minister, at least, keeps his hands to himself). Then it's tea and cucumber sandwiches in the new Great Hall and, as the day ends, nobody realises that the Australian capital sleeps under a foreign flag.

Dejected, the Kiwis return to their homes, but the prank is not a complete disaster. For a week the New Zealand flag flies proudly over Canberra and then, one afternoon when the wind has come up a bit, a bureaucrat counts the stars on the parliamentary banner. He comes up two short. The dung hits the fan.

Frantically another Australian flag is found and, in the dead of night, the New Zealand flag is lowered, escorted under armed guard to an undisclosed location deep in Kosciusko National Park, chopped into small pieces and buried under the shade of a coolabah tree.

As I said, this story might not be true. But it illustrates a point.

Last month, I was one of the diehard Olympic supporters yelling themselves hoarse in support of our women hockey players.

On the day New Zealand played Australia, we were dressed in black, had just performed a haka and were returning to our seats when an American, on seeing our New Zealand flags, commented: "Oh, I thought you guys were Nooseelanders, but you're actually Ostrailians, is that right?"

Forget petrol prices. Forget Closing the Gaps. Forget pensioners fundraising to extend their driveways. The greatest threat we all face is being mistaken for Australians.

The Union Jack and the Southern Cross might be faithful old companions but, as the Olympic opening ceremony showed, these are symbols the Australians are increasingly claiming as their own.

In a world obsessed with brands, our flags are just too similar. We may have drifted closer together in economics, citizenship and defence, but as our brains drain to Sydney and as we contemplate a common currency, we must make sure that we don't become just another second-rate state of Australia.

However close we grow, we don't want to end up like the Tasmanians (remember: jokes about sheep are always preferable to jokes about interbreeding).

So in this new millennium, perhaps the time has come to dust off the old sewing machine and belt out a new flag (how about a crisp silver fern on a night-sky background?).

That way, when we hoist it over the Australian Houses of Parliament, everyone will know exactly what's going on.

* Willy Trolove is an Auckland writer.