Hamish Bidwell: We all need to have a say on country's name

Hamish Bidwell says the renaming of our country should be put to the vote just as the flag debate was. Photo / NZME

OPINION:
Were you one of those New Zealanders who wrapped themselves in the flag debate?

Did one speak for you and your view of this nation? Did it signal your virtue and your care for your countrymen and women?

Plenty of folk I worked with at the time did. They wore the T-shirt, plastered the backs of their phones and laptops with stickers and never missed an opportunity to tell the rest of us which ensign was appropriate.

Me? I can't even remember what they were. I've no idea which one I plumped for in the end or what the others looked like.

I think I just opted for a design that seemed the least crap.

But that was democracy in action. That was those who wanted change putting an idea to the people and then us all reaching a conclusion.

I'd have been happy for the flag we still have now to have gone, provided that's what enough of us wanted.

It had been put to a vote, after all.

That differs from what we are witnessing now, with the gradual phasing out of the name of this country.

Like the flag, I have no quarrel with Aotearoa permanently replacing New Zealand, if that's what enough people want.

I don't regard an accident of birth as the most interesting thing about you, me or anyone else.

Hamish Bidwell.

I always remember travelling on a plane to London and being sat next to a lovely woman from the Netherlands. I tend to avoid talking to people on public transport, but she was eager to chat and we got along fine for a couple of hours.

Right up until she took very strong offence to the fact that I hadn't seen The Lord of the Rings.

"But you're from New Zealand,'' she insisted, more than once,

Actually, I was from Island Bay at the time and unaware that we all had to think the same because of the country we come from.

So, on that basis, I'm not bothered what we call this place. I know who I am and where I'm from, just as well as you know yourself.

But let's not try and go through the back door here. Let's not slip Aotearoa into articles and news reports in the hope it becomes common usage.

Let's be big girls and boys and have an adult chat and an adult vote.

If the will of the people is that we become exclusively known as Aotearoa and that our athletes get to walk out near the start of the Olympic and Commonwealth Games opening ceremonies, rather than where New Zealand puts us in the alphabetical order, then cool.

We're a young and evolving country and, like the bilingual singing of the national anthem, there's nothing wrong with us changing with the times.

But I'd much prefer that we were all involved in that decision, than have a self-appointed few try to engineer that on our behalf.

There's plenty of things about this country that I'd want to address before we got to the name, but that's not my call.

I have too much respect for other people's opinions to demand otherwise.