Paul Holmes: A banner to unfurl with pride

Dick Frizzell's design for a new national flag is bold and beautiful. Photo / Supplied

When an august organ such as the New Zealand Herald launches what is called a serious debate, as it did this week, about the New Zealand flag it tells one of two things, perhaps both.

Either it is early February and there is not much news about or there is a real quickening of the momentum towards changing the design of the flag.

Either way, the debate is timely.

The Herald gave its debate some real weight by polling 18 of the 22 members of the Order of New Zealand, the country's highest ranks, on whether they thought the flag should change.

Eleven of those who responded, including Jim Bolger, Sir Brian Lochore and Dame Catherine Tizard, want to see a change in the design. That is a serious result.

As I've written before, the current cobbled together thing is a big, fat nothing.

It could represent any number of some 30 Caribbean or Oceanic outfits, as the Herald front page illustration showed.

In fact, showing us the 30 flags similar to New Zealand demonstrated once and for all what a pathetically weak thing ours is.

The Union Jack is simply not us any more. The stars representing the Southern Cross are fitting but too modest.

The flag has no use as a marketing tool. It is not immediately recognisable, like the Union Jack itself or the flags of the United States, Canada, China or South Africa.

At any sports meeting the flag of choice is the silver fern on a black background.

This appears to have been a natural evolution as a result of so much of our national self-esteem coming from the success of our sportsmen and women punching far above our weight internationally.

But I understand that there is a problem with black fabric. The colour can fade and the fabric rot quickly in the sun.

In any case, a black flag indicates piracy. And ferns occur right across the world. There is nothing especially unique about a fern. And black is glum.

In January we visited my friend, the acclaimed, down-to-earth artist Dick Frizzell, at Haumoana in Hawke's Bay, just out of Hastings. Dick and his wife Judy lived most of their adult lives in Ponsonby and their children grew up there but moved to Haumoana a few years ago.

Dick grew up in Hastings, but Haumoana is where I grew up. There was nothing flash about Haumoana in the 1950s and the 1960s.

Now Haumoana and its sister village, Te Awanga, just along the coast towards Cape Kidnappers, are the domains of elegant, successful people.

The shingly lands along that coast which once grew only dock and fennel are now grandly sweeping vineyards.

Some serious Auckland money is moving there. Used to be there was an axis between Auckland and Queenstown. If you did well in Auckland, you got a place in Queenstown. This was very 90s.

And those Aucklanders who moved to Queenstown found the place was very tight, very inward looking, very South Island and closed and suspicious of northerners.

I knew several who made the move, lasted two years and couldn't wait to get out of the place. It could simply have been that the beauty of that southern lake town was too distracting, too overwhelming, or that the whole place became too incestuous.

Now an axis appears to have developed between Auckland and Hawke's Bay, in particular that very coastline between Haumoana and Te Awanga. Dick and Judy have designed and built a lovely house and studio just back from and below the great bank of the stony beach.

Dick doesn't put much store by theories about climate change and rising seas.

Whatever happens in the future, however, right now that view from Haumoana across the sea to those soaring white cliffs that stretch out to Cape Kidnappers is stunning. Whether Dick's house ends up under the sea it is too early to tell.

But in his studio that day, Dick showed me designs he has come up with for a new national flag. The one printed on this page is his favourite of the three he's developed.

I find it immensely pleasing. It is bold. It is a beautiful piece of graphic design. Its colours reflect the current flag, under which so many have died. It has strength.

The blue background reflects the sea and the sky, and the strong Southern Cross speaks of our position in the Southern Pacific Ocean. It cannot in any way be confused with the flag of Australia. As a marketing tool, it is clear and distinct and warm.

I asked Dick why he didn't go with the silver fern on the black. He replied that he felt that symbol has been taken over by sport. Meaning, I guess, that we are more than sport.

He tried working with it and nothing he did seemed to make it work. He also felt that the fern on whatever colour he tried, including green, didn't have the dignity required of a national emblem, a national flag. And some of the most recognisable and successful flags in the world use red, white and blue.

I don't know what you think, but Dick's design does it for me. But don't you dread the process that will be involved in any change? Let us call for designs, seek public submissions and vote for one of two finalists in the next election.

And let us hope the unfortunate tendency of New Zealand to withdraw from bold action, collapse at the end and surrender to modesty does not get the better of us. And let it be something that will benefit us commercially.

Let the flag be something our exporters will place on their packaging with pride, in the knowledge the world knows who flies a flag of such strong confidence.

Email us your design for the NZ flag