Penny Tucker: Excluding the simple Silver Fern is a missed opportunity

Opinion

To appreciate our country's national identity it is often helpful to see it from within another country. At an event last week I sat with Joan O'Malley who sewed the first prototype Canadian flag.

On a Friday evening 50 years ago, Canada's then Prime Minister Lester B Pearson wanted to take the three final flag contenders to his house at Harrington Lake to see how they looked against a true Canadian backdrop. Joan's father recommended that his daughter, using her Singer sewing machine, could work through the early hours stitching the designs.

When I asked her about the designs, she said, "I was rooting for the red leaf. It was easy to sketch, simple to put together and immediately striking." Evidently, Mr Pearson also decided it looked great flying and was distinctive in repose. Today, I defy anyone to mistake it as someone else's ensign.

With our current flag positioned five feet from my bedroom window and my days occupied supporting efforts to promote and profile New Zealand, I often think about how to best articulate our national identity. This is why I have been a passionate supporter of changing our flag.

Our flag is not distinctive and no one outside of the pubs here showing the Rugby World Cup games would be able to identify it. Yet I am so terribly disappointed in the outcome of the "consideration" process.

The process is a perfect example of why consensus by committee invariably leads to a lowest common denominator. What they have handed to New Zealanders is the equivalent of a book about New Zealand rugby legends with no reference to Richie McCaw or a history of farming that omits references to sheep.

The glaring omission, of course, is a plain silver fern on a black background.

Apparently there is no place in this discussion for the one image that is synonymous with New Zealand around the world.

I do not assume Kiwis would want this to be our flag, but I am damn sure the polling would look different if they at least had the right to consider it.

I've heard what the detractors have said: it looks like a feather/Isis/sports brand, just as the Canadian flag was deemed cartoonish, communist (red) and crass. If a country, however, stakes ownership of a symbol and a colour and that symbol and colour resonates, then the result will speak for itself.

I find it astonishing that a small but evidently successful social media campaign can put the "peak" on the political and media agenda while the omission of an iconic fern in our national colours has barely elicited a response, aside from the odd opinion piece.

From what I can see, it's like a political group shrug. I see journalists with their own agenda pitching designs in the endless quest for Facebook clicks and opposition politicians floundering around in a paddling pool of puerile point-scoring.

Meanwhile the fern on black, which is stitched on to our military uniforms, etched on to our medals, flown with pride when we are happy or humbled, is a recurrent theme in our bicultural history, and identifies Kiwis all around the world, remains excluded from what was supposed to be a selection that covered the spectrum.

Notwithstanding my desire for a new flag, I intend to vote for the status quo.

When I recently shared this view, one friend of mine said, with respect to the multi-coloured collages on offer, "But surely there's one you can live with?"

Hmm. Probably. I will treat any new flag with just as much deference as the one which is part of my daily routine. And if a plain silver fern was in the referendum and got rejected by voters then I would gracefully concede that love of the silver fern on black is not as representative of the national character as I contend.

But I will not vote for something which represents a missed opportunity. I would prefer to wait until next time this comes up and get it right.

There is, however, an easy solution, Mr Key. I am asking this of him in good faith. Add the peak if it appears there is the support to do so. It's about choice. Add the traditional silver fern on black too and give us a choice of six. It's about choice.

And don't tell us that's all too hard or too complicated. We are generation MMP, for crying out loud.

• Penny Tucker is the wife of New Zealand's High Commissioner in Ottawa