Wairarapa men on flag panel

PANELLIST: Sir Brian Lochore, legendary All Black captain and Wairarapa-Bush rugby icon.

Two men from Wairarapa will help choose a shortlist of designs to replace the New Zealand flag.

Sir Brian Lochore, legendary All Black captain and Wairarapa-Bush rugby icon, and historian and former Greytown man Malcolm Mulholland, Ngati Kahungunu ki Wairarapa and Rangitane o Wairarapa, have been included in the Government-appointed panel announced on Thursday.

Mr Mulholland, who spoke to the Wairarapa Times-Age late last year about the possibility of a new flag, wrote a history of the national flag and anthem that was included in the book Weeping Waters published in 2010.

He also wrote about the flag and the possibility of change in the 2013 book Future Challenges for Maori.

Also on the panel will be reality television guru Julie Christie, businessman Rod Drury, former Defence Force chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones and sporting legend Beatrice Faumina.

Deputy Prime Minister Bill English announced the Flag Consideration Panel, which will be chaired by John Burrows, the former deputy chancellor of the University of Canterbury. Writer Kate de Goldi is deputy chairwoman.

Others include Nicky Bell, the chief executive of ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi; former Dunedin Mayor Peter Chin, youth councillor Stephen Jones, and Maori studies academic Hana O'Regan.

Mr English said the group was chosen from names nominated by a cross-party group of MPs and "each member has committed to undertake the flag consideration process carefully, respectfully and with no presumption in favour of change."

The process is expected to cost $25.7 million, of which $17.3 million is for the two referendums and the remainder for public consultation.

The panel will meet in early March and seek public opinion from May to June. Members of the public would be invited to submit new flag designs, which will be shortlisted and put to voters in a referendum later this year.

Mr English said the referendum would run under a preferential voting system so voters could rank the designs in order of preference.

The most popular design would then go up against the current New Zealand flag in a second referendum next year. A bill to legislate for those referendums would be introduced to Parliament soon.

"This process will given New Zealanders the rare privilege of having a say on one of the most important symbols of our nation," Mr English said.