New Zealand reveals new flag shortlist: Union Jack absent from the selected designs

New Zealand has revealed 40 shortlisted designs for a new national flag. Interestingly, none of them features Britain’s Union Jack in it. The ambitious flag project seeks to change the 112-year-old flag by giving New Zealand's 4.5 million citizens the opportunity to make a choice through upcoming referendums.

With the 40 flag options placed in public domain, the country will move closer to a vote in deciding whether a change is required in its national standard. In all the designs shortlisted, the silver fern is the most conspicuous fixture. The government panel chose the hallowed 40 designs from a voluminous 10,000 public submissions.

Flag Panel chairman John Burrows said the designs were noted for the timelessness and potential to work in a variety of contexts. In the next step, the short list will be cut to just four and a public vote will follow by the end of 2015. A second referendum will be held in 2016 for people to make a choice between the existing flag featuring Britain's Union Jack and a new design.

Spirit of New Zealand

According to John Burrows, the new flag will celebrate New Zealand as a “progressive, inclusive nation that is connected to its environment, and has a sense of its past and vision for its future.’’ Prime Minister John Key has already said in an interview that a new flag is "gonna be worth billions over time through people recognizing and buying our products." However, many New Zealanders are still skeptical and have questioned the issue in social media, asking whether the project is really worth the NZ$26 million (AU$23.3 million) price tag.

Break with tradition

However, the quest for doing something new is associated with New Zealand’s reputation in breaking tradition and being innovative. New Zealand has many firsts in history-it was the first country to introduce universal suffrage in 1893 and a century later, it also commercialised bungee jumping, notes a Sky news report.

But in the matter of new flag, such excitement seems to be missing from the public, despite Prime Minister John Key’s assertion of breaking away from the colonial past and maintaining a distinct identity. Only 739 people turned up for public meetings to hear about the project. For Labour party leader Andrew Little, the flag-changing is a "hugely expensive and highly unpopular vanity project.”

Military veterans are also opposed to the flag-change, calling it an act of disrespecting the memory of those who fought for their country. A NZ current affairs television program led a survey on the issue and found that 84 percent of the countrymen think that a new flag is not warranted. Now the Flag panel is tasked with detailed due diligence of the 40 designs, including intellectual property checks, as many are strikingly similar despite differences in other aspects.

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