14 June 2004

More big names say 'flag the flag'

Five more high profile New Zealanders are the latest in a line-up of household names backing the recently launched campaign www.nzflag.com to change the New Zealand flag.

Saatchi boss, Kevin Roberts; fashion designer, Karen Walker; mountaineer, Graeme Dingle; artist Dick Frizzell and Trevor Grice, Founder of Life Education Trust are all lending their weight as official endorsers.

'The current New Zealand flag is irrelevant and unidentifiable', says fashion guru, Walker, 'It's not a flag to build a future on'.

'Peter Jackson and LOTR has raised the ante.' says Roberts.

'New Zealand is again a hot dinner topic in Los Angeles and New York. We must capitalize on this and not let the opportunity slip. We need to keep the conversation going; increase our national identity here at home and overseas.'

The diverse grouping of Dingle, Walker, Roberts, Frizzell and Grice is indicative of the wide range of New Zealanders supporting change.

Forty six prominent kiwis across a range of disciplines including sports, the arts, education, religious and business are pushing for a referendum on a new national flag.

Their names and photographs appear on the www.nzflag.com website alongside Olympic gold medallist, Barbara Kendall; world champion squash player Susan Devoy; musician, Neil Finn, and businessmen Stephen Tindall and Chris Liddell and Mayors Sukhi Turner and Garry Moore.

The www.NZFlag.com Trust, established in April seeks to gather around 300,000 signatures early next year to hold a referendum asking New Zealanders to have their say on whether New Zealand should change its flag.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>