Is New Zealand's PM only one who wants new national flag?

In asking whether it should change the national flag, New Zealand’s government sought to start a conversation about what the country “stands for”. In so many joke designs, New Zealanders responded: their right to take the p**s.

In May, the government put out an open call for alternatives to the current flag, which, like Hong Kong’s colonial-era standard, bears the Union Jack. New Zealand pairs that symbol of British empire with the Southern Cross constellation. In a little under two months, members of the public - many if not most of whom had no more design experience than that afforded by Photoshop and an internet connection - put forward almost 10,300 submissions for consideration by an independent panel.

The panel may have come to regret the low barrier to entry. As long as a design did not feature offensive or copyrighted imagery, or an individual’s face, its upload was approved. The 10,292 submissions were a mishmash of New Zealand’s past, present and potential futures: some giving the Union Jack even greater prominence; others boosting traditional Maori culture; one with a kiwi shooting lasers from its eyes.

The government had made it clear that, at that point in the process, there was no such thing as a bad idea - not even those that were patently, gleefully daring it to call them out as such. A childlike line drawing of a “deranged cat raking its garden”; a crude scrawl of a man on a bicycle; the Southern Cross reimagined as a pentagram; most egregiously, a QR code. A spokeswoman for the panel said it was “great to see such a high level of engagement”.

Needless to say, none of these blatant trolls of the public consultation process made the longlist of 40 finalists published on August 10. All are variations on the silver fern, the koru, the Southern Cross constellation and combinations of the three, in blue, red, white, black and green.