The result was announced as a ‘news flash’ across our tv screens last night- real drama- I think not.
In the end there was no emotion or real awareness of all this process, it had seemed to fade into the background. A 67% turnout though was good one could say.
I agree with the article below written by a Kiwi in London. It was a superficial process that ddi not involve the true wider issues of New Zealand’s constitutional position and the process was very badly done.
The motley opponents of the Kyle Lockwood-designed alternative, which came out on top in an earlier run-off referendum, made unlikely bedfellows. Among them were, yes, many conservative-minded voters, set against any idea of jettisoning the emblematic link to the mother country. Alongside them was another group eager to shake off the colonial vestige gobbling up a quarter of the flag, yet unable to stomach the alternative. For them the mishmash Lockwood flag – variously compared to a beach towel, a Weetabix packet and the logo for a chain of budget motels – was such an eyesore that they were driven to plump for the unsatisfactory but less hideous incumbent.
Others were against the alternative flag because they opposed the man most closely associated with it: the centre-right prime minister, John Key. Egged on by the opposition parties, who almost universally denounced this Key legacy project as a distraction, and a waste of NZ$27m, their objective, more or less, was to give the prime minister, unaccustomed to losing anything much, a bloody nose.
