It is true that the symbols of the flag's design origins are referential of our colonial past, and that its forerunner, with stars and St George's cross is symbolic of Maori independence.
The official flag (1903) is one under which our men and women have fought and died.
Respect for their honorable sacrifice, alone, should make us invoke the conservative aphorism: "When it is not necessary to do something, it is necessary to do nothing."
Current interest in flag redesign, we are told, originates in the embarrassment experienced by our Prime Minister, John Key, when at international forums he was occasionally seated before an Australian flag.
There was no apparent embarrassment on Mr Key's part when he sought, along with Aussie ex-PM Tony Abbott, to foster our identity with Australia in sending our military personnel as Anzacs to battle Isis.
The embarrassment over the flag mix-ups ought not to have been Mr Key's anyway, but rather the protocol people who cannot count the number of stars on each flag in order to distinguish them.
A further embarrassment is that of riches ... that of the $25 million allocated for this process.
I have been wondering about where that money - which could be better spent on children's education, or children's healthcare, or child poverty - is going.
I've decided that quite a lot is underwriting a public relations campaign designed to keep the public attention on flag choices or other bright shiny objects, rather than engage in discussion of serious present problems that need our attention - the immigration and refugee crisis.
The mass migration from the Middle East and North Africa is largely due to war and its effect on civilian lives and civilian economies.
Those wars bear heavily the imprint of the US and Britain, starting with the great strategic blunder of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Those two countries are, at the same time, the most resistant to accepting the refugees their wars have created.
The IRC figures for 2013 indicate that 1.3 million people from non-member countries were in the process of emigrating to the European Union. The number is larger now.
What is New Zealand's responsibility in helping to alleviate a problem of such massive proportions?
New Zealand has successfully lobbied for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, but with success comes responsibility. We can influence a fair response to immigration on the part of other much larger countries by creating a standard of acceptance of a number of immigrants equivalent to 1 per cent of the home population.
In our case, that is roughly 4000 immigrants.
That number of new people would be beneficial to our need for a younger, hardier population in our regional centres.
Many immigrants are skilled and educated and we can, after assuring their conformity to security requirements, make it a condition that they settle in areas where they would be welcomed and needed and prepared to make a contribution.
-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
