On Thursday, New Zealand’s Parliament voted overwhelming to add Red Peak to a November referendum, after about 50,000 people signed an online petition urging that the design be considered.
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The five designs which are being considered as the new flag for New Zealand.
Currently, the first referendum will ask New Zealanders to rank the alternative flags.
In that event, the Green Party will be calling on the government to adopt it as its own, the spokeswoman said.
NZ First MP Denis O’Rourke said his party would not be supporting the addition of Red Peak, partly because of its similarity to a Nazi sentry box. He could have, with the flick of his pen, have included Red Peak as one of the options if he wanted to.
THE “underdog” of Red Peak has emerged at the eleventh hour in the race to become the nation’s next flag – and columnist Toby Manhire might be one of the men to thank.
The inclusion of a fifth design to the flag referendum will cost an extra $380,000, as voting materials referencing four designs must be reprinted.
“I said I’d be prepared to go outside that, but I just didn’t want people to play games”.
The prime minister has been unequivocal about his desire for both a new flag and his preference for a silver design.
But he backtracked on that before going into parliament on Wednesday, confirming that the government would pick up the Greens’ bill in the event that it was knocked back. “We don’t want a bar of it”, Mark was quoted as saying by the BBC.
New Zealands current flag, above left, is seen as too similar to Australias, right.
The ongoing saga of New Zealand’s two votes on whether or not to change the country’s flag has taken a surprising U-turn after Prime Minister John Key bowed to public pressure and included a fifth entry into the list.
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But the postal referendum doesn’t start until November 20, and he has some hard yards ahead to maintain the momentum Red Peak has delivered. The second – between the victor of the first referendum and the current flag – will be held in March 2016.
