Editorial: Two flags, or a new flag?

OPINION: The Government's decision to make room on the nation's flagpoles for the tino rangatiratanga Maori flag has managed to get knickers in a twist up and down the country.

The chief proponent of the idea is, naturally enough, the Maori Party, which has consulted widely on a flag and pushed to get it run up the flagpoles to recognise the special status of Maori in this country. Crucially, the party won the support of the National Government, which has given its official blessing to the Maori flag.

Prime Minister John Key's view appears to be that there is little harm in the move, so why not? Politically, it is an expedient way of keeping the Maori Party in the Government's waka.

Chief complainants, led by Labour MP Shane Jones and political exile Winston Peters, say the flag is just a sop to the Maori Party and the product of a shonky consultation process headed by Hone Harawira. Mr Jones argues that it is Hone's flag, a political symbol of the Maori Party and nothing else. He supports the 1835 Maori flag, while Mr Peters does not appear to like the idea of a Maori flag at all.

The flag debate has split the Labour Party – leader Phil Goff had been agnostic about it but Mr Jones broke ranks to criticise it – and ignited the telephone wires in radio talkback land, proving the issue is far from a dead duck.

Many New Zealanders will be not be worried at seeing the Maori flag fly and it really is not a big issue in the grand scheme of things. After all, Maori is recognised as an official language, we sing our national anthem in Te Reo as well as English, the haka is our national war cry, we have Maori MPs and the Treaty of Waitangi is our founding document. Having a Maori flag to fly alongside our traditional flag, which recognises our colonial origins, would seem a reasonable thing to do.

Mr Key insists the flag will only be flown on Waitangi Day but Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples clearly has greater ambitions than that for it. In short, this is likely to be only the start of the flag debate.

All of this gives rise to the broader question of whether we need to lower both national flags in favour of a new one that brings together our Maori and colonial past in a single format.

Incorporating both elements in a new flag would put an end to the two-flag debate, and effectively kill off what is a divisive issue. A new flag would be a symbol, once and for all, that we are one nation.

Traditionalists will hate the idea, as will elements of the Maori community who will push for an independent emblem.

But it is hard to deny the logic behind a new flag. The tino rangatiratanga flag is a sop to Maori. Our existing flag is outdated. Arguments for a new symbol are much more compelling than those for persisting with two.