Tino Rangatiratanga flag: what modern day NZ looks like.

It is the process itself at an executive level that is something of a break through in Maori-Pakeha and Maori-Crown relations rather than the flying together of Crown and Maori flags on Waitangi Day itself.

There is unity in abundance (both with the Crown and the 80%+ of Maori participants who wanted the option which has prevailed); but there is also division symbolism available for those who care to search for it in what the government has ordered. The government should be congratulated for taking this step.

Phil Goff and his unconvincing Brash-inspired speech was supposed to tap into that hater side of suspicion, fear and prejudice. The same timidity and reflexive conservatism that kept Labour from ever doing anything that could leave it open to accusations of Maori-loving (the ultimate Tory smear) meant the trigger point for this whole issue - the reluctance of the transit authority to allow the flying of a Maori flag of any description alongside the current official colonial-inspired NZ one on the Auckland Harbour Bridge - was an electoral hand grenade they never had the nerve to pull the pin on.

Anyone who would seriously want to find division in the flying of these two flags together on the one day of the year when the two distinctive strands of national identity and constitutional foundation has its anniversary will bite on the bait from Winston rather than whatever half-medicine Trevor cooks up for Phil to dispense to the Pakeha provincial audience.

On many levels this Cabinet decision is one of the few National - Maori Party relationship issues that has gone well. Some policies have remained opaque, in limbo, or composed of many unknown parts and have not received the credit (or examination) they may have deserved and never will have given their narrow windows of news-worthiness. However far from being unrecognised most other co-owned crises and negotiations between the Nats and the Maori Party in the first year of office seem to have gone awry or fallen victim to poor political management. Magnified by media scrutiny that has an anti-Maori bias to start with and locked in what must seem a fruitless competition with the Act Party - sometimes to the public it looks like there are no runs on the board at this point in the innings. Today there are very visible runs on the board - and they accrue to the Tories (due to their sense of pragmatism and commitment to a long-term strategy) as well as to the Maori Party. As with most formal gestures and accommodations it is mundane and yet it is also significant and profound; if only because the previous Labour government was so scared of a "Pakeha backlash" they studiously avoided ever being put in the situation where they would have to directly face it.

The way in which an issue of cultural and national significance and potential conflict can be seen in terms of "letting Maori work it out" by the government and that this is accepted as the obvious and preferred method of decision-making on that class of Crown-Maori national issue is an interesting development. When you take Winston Peters and the conservatives (who now find themselves in government) out of the equation the sum of racial heat and constitutional wailing is minimal and attempts to whip it up will prove unsustainable by the media without the politicians. The media need someone with a public mandate to say the racist things some of the media want to hear (out of prejudice and out of the need to manufacture some easy, lazy, visceral, stories to fill the space) and without that they have little to prop up the race-baiting and inflammatory stories they would prefer to run. The poor buggers.

As for the practicalities of the Waitangi Day changes I heard a news report on RNZ saying the status of the flags and their relationship "was not official". Well I'm not so sure. Any type of pronouncement or regulation made by government in respect to the flags is official isn't it?
Ministries publishing guidelines must be official.

List of NZ flags

My preference was for the United Tribes flag and the Union flag - representing the two sovereign groups specifically named in the Waitangi treaty. That was a minority view however and congratulations are rightly accorded to the designers of the Tino Rangatiratanga flag: Hiraina Marsden, Jan Smith and Linda Munn.