Frank Greenall: Let the zeitgeist take its course

AT LAST, a flag design that actually looks like a flag - the so-called Red Peak. It's sharp, vibrant, resonant and, most crucial of all, simple. Now if we could only include a Southern Cross in it somewhere. Just joking - But then again, perhaps not (maybe just a little one up in the corner somewhere).

Talk about "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley", in the best Rabbie tradition. Red Peak makes the final four chosen by the pompously titled Flag Consideration Panel look like prissy little logos for a new brand of table linen. Mind you, given the panel members' palms were greased to the tune of $640 per day each, perhaps they just found it difficult to hang on to anything that didn't co-incidentally resemble what the Prime Minister more or less just happened to have in mind himself.

Ironically, though, it's deja vu all over again again. The Canadian example is often held up as an example of how great new national flags can be achieved if a nation and its prime minister put their collective mind to it.

Key maintains there's no way the Red Peak design can be included in the first referendum process as it's not part of the process signed off by the Cabinet. But what's the "process", exactly? The "process" is a totally arbitrary one that can be changed at almost a moment's notice. This is exactly what happened with the Canadian process.

Their flag debate had been chundering on for nearly half a century before Liberal Party leader Lester Pearson made it a 1963 election plank that, if the Liberals were elected, a new flag would be instituted within two years. They duly were elected, and that's more or less what happened. Pearson was forced to put taxpayers' money where his mouth had been and start the process. Yet more public design submissions were called for, and a parliamentary steering committee established to make the final selection.

Here's where things get similar to our present situation. The eventual triumphant design was not originally part of the initial short-list before the steering committee. It was the brainchild of an academic military historian, whose military college featured, on its collegiate banner, just such a maple leaf design as is now on the Canadian flag. He borrowed the emblem, bordered it with a couple of vertical red stripes, and voila.

Fortuitously, too, this particular gentleman just happened to know someone on the steering committee who thought it a pretty good design, also, and who managed to get it admitted as a loose-cannon last-minute entry.

The similarities persist. Up until then, Prime Minister Pearson had been dissatisfied with the final selections on the table and had consequently doodled up his own design incorporating a more complicated rendition of the maple leaf. This - perhaps as a result of a bit of strong-arming from Lester - had hitherto been the front-runner. The late-entry new maple leaf design found favour too. But even then, it was only the machinations of tactical voting gone wrong by the committee's motley crew of assorted MPs that saw their present flag accidentally unanimously voted in.

By such serendipities are acclaimed new national flags born. Jonky shouldn't be too concerned about formal "process", then. Let the zeitgeist take its course and our new national flag be run up the pole.

One thing, though. What's with this Red Peak title? Why not White Peak? The white bit is bigger, and meant to represent the mountains. The red is meant to represent a wharenui/meeting house.

I ain't seen too many red mountains around the motu.