COMMENT
These days you don't need to walk far in New York to catch a glimpse of home. In the city that never sleeps, New Zealand seems to be doing its best to keep people awake.
If it's not a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc at a wine shop, it's a
New Zealand music festival in Central Park. If it's not a New Zealand movie at the cinema, it's a New York Times article on New Zealand's increasingly renowned cuisine.
But it's a glimpse of New Zealand's flag outside the United Nations or Rockefeller Plaza that best warms the heart on a bitter New York winter's day. In the eyes of most New Zealanders, our flag is a beautiful thing, even more so this far from home.
One thing about our national banner has become clear, however - we need to change it. Not because there is something intrinsically wrong with our flag but because there is now something intrinsically right with our country. New Zealand has come of age.
As the Sydney Morning Herald begrudgingly acknowledged towards the end of last year, for those who have not noticed, New Zealand - a small nation off the east coast of Tasmania - has matured significantly in recent years.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in how we are viewed by people from distant lands. Gone is the patronising affection for our tiny human population and enormous number of sheep.
The affection remains, but it has been embellished with a genuine respect for our small, creative, fiercely independent nation. They've come to respect our movies about our culture and people as much as they love our movies about hobbits.
They respect our wines as much as they love the landscapes that produced them. They respect our clothes designs as much as they love the sportsmen who wear them.
And they respect that we're slowly fashioning an image of ourselves that is fresh and unique. It's as though we've finally given up trying to be a smaller version of another country.
Now is a time when New Zealand's inimitable place on the world stage has never been stronger. Our designers and artists are fashioning distinctive New Zealand images that speak for an Aotearoa New Zealand of the 21st century. New Zealand's mark on this world, from foreign policy to design to innovation, is as free from the influence of any nation as it has ever been.
Yet look at our flag and you wouldn't think so. We're represented by an icon of a bygone era. The simple fact is that we have outgrown the Union Jack. Just as we outgrew God Save the Queen as our national anthem, our national flag just doesn't sit properly in our country's psyche anymore.
Our flag no longer speaks to who we are as a people, and it certainly doesn't speak for us to the world. It hauls us back to the uncomfortable adolescence of our colonial past when a Union Jack on our flag gave our young colony some sense of security and connection to the world.
That time has past. We don't need our hands held anymore and, as we're reminded by Australia's reluctance to include New Zealand in its free trade negotiations with the United States, no one's offering. New Zealand stands independent and it also stands alone. As a nation we've come to accept that. It's time our flag reflected it, too.
Defenders of the flag will point to the sacrifice of our soldiers under this banner. Their sacrifices should never be forgotten. But they weren't fighting for our flag; they were fighting for our freedom - our freedom to change our national symbols, to govern ourselves, to determine our own destiny, freedom from the dominion of any nation. They died to prevent a swastika or rising sun from being flown over our country, not to ensure that a Union Jack forever stayed on our flag.
It would be a testament to our forefathers' sacrifice should our country be courageous enough to define our future through the national symbols and icons that best represent us today.
Our veterans have played a vital role in protecting this country's democratic freedoms, in preserving our ability to determine our future. How fitting, then, should they now elect to become a driving force behind adopting a new flag, an initiative that would forge another unique link between them and tomorrow's generations.
Naturally, adopting a new flag will take some getting used to. We'll always feel an attachment to our existing flag and it will remain an important part of our heritage.
As the Canadian Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, acknowledged on adoption of the maple leaf as the official flag of Canada in 1965, nostalgia for the past is inevitable in the succession of new beginnings that mark a nation's progress, for each brings to an end a stage for which deep attachment often lingers.
As painful as it will be, however, the difficult task of change should not be left as a problem for future generations. The longer the Union Jack emblazons itself across our southern sky, the greater the sting we'll experience removing it. As more of our history unfolds under our present flag, the flag's historical burden increases.
We risk being stuck with a flag that doesn't represent the New Zealand of today or tomorrow because the collective weight of 150 or 200 years of history is too difficult to overcome.
As our country enters an exciting new phase of its life, the time is right to embrace a new national flag. Let us harness the talents of our finest designers and artists to fashion an emblem that speaks for the many diverse voices that make up our land today.
Let us create a distinctive national flag that speaks of Aotearoa New Zealand's unique identity, wherever in the world it is flown - a flag as unique as the country it represents.
* Steven Carden is a New Zealander living in New York.
COMMENT
These days you don't need to walk far in New York to catch a glimpse of home. In the city that never sleeps, New Zealand seems to be doing its best to keep people awake.
If it's not a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc at a wine shop, it's a
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