John Roughan: New design would have to win everyone over

There are just two ways, I think, to change a flag. One requires a constitutional catastrophe on the scale of war or popular revolt, in which event more than the flag would change. Another way is simply to design a better one.

Unfortunately, there is nothing simple about it. A design out of the blue would have to be so right, so obviously, sublimely emblematic of us, that just about everybody would say, yes, that's it. Contention would kill it.

It would need to be stunning to supplant the present flag which isn't bad. It niggles me that the Union flag leads Americans to believe we are not quite independent but British colonisation is our founding fact of life, a heritage we share with Australia.

If the flag is confused with Australia's overseas I don't care. We are much the same people, increasingly so. We ought to retain a sovereign state and currency in my view but I like the open border and the mateship.

The only problem with our flags - and it is a fatal one - is that they don't look permanent. They look like insignia of states in transition, which they are. Both countries have been adrift since Britain gave its priority to Europe nearly 40 years ago.

Forty years is a long time to be drifting. We call ourselves a young country but we are not. We will be 170 years old tomorrow, older than most states of the world.

We are the lucky offspring of wise parents who learned from their mistakes in North America and readily gave us independence - more independence than we wanted for a while, but we are well over that now.

They also gave their last antipodean colony a Treaty with native chiefs whose descendants will not allow it to be ignored in any constitutionally symbolic steps the country takes.

A new flag would need to express two national identities. Maori are now well expressed in the banner that will fly alongside the national flag for the first time tomorrow. Its design has everything a flag needs: beauty, simplicity, distinction. But we cannot appropriate it.

We could borrow its koru, unfurl it and put a white fern, not too large, in the middle of a deep blue background. It could look like a lovely sprig of life alone in an ocean.

Run it up your mind's flagpole and see if it works.

Email us your design for the NZ flag