For Immediate Release
Attention: Chief Reporter

RE: NZ Flag campaign

11 April 2005

Winning students to present Leaders with new NZ Flag

Photo opportunity on the steps of Parliament at 1.10pm

Stacey Shaw, winner of the Sunday Times www.nzflag.com schools' competition to design a new New Zealand flag will present political leaders with her design for a new flag at Parliament tomorrow.

Stacey along with Emma Cody, who won the essay section of the competition, will spend the morning with Oscar winning Richard Taylor at Weta workshop and the afternoon mixing with political leaders on a very special day out in the capital.

Open to year 9 and 10 secondary school students nationwide the students could either design a new NZ flag or compose an essay on why the design of the flag should be changed.

More than 80 schools submitted entries to the competition with around 2500 individual student entries. The public were polled and Stacey's black and white silver fern image was the clear favourite attracting 37% of 6480 votes.

CEO NZ Tourism George Hickton, and Artist Dick Frizzell were among a panel of judges who determined the final flag designs. Among the essay competition judges were Cate Brett, Editor Sunday Star Times and TV3's John Campbell.

Emma and Stacey will spend the morning at Weta workshop. They will then go to Parliament where they will meet leaders of a number of political parties and the opposition spokesperson for Education, Bill English.

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The www.NZFlag.com Trust, launched a petition in January 2005, asking New Zealanders "Should the design of the New Zealand flag be changed". The Trust seeks to gather 300,000 signatures, which is the number required to enforce a citizens initiated referendum, by October 2005.

Petition forms can be downloaded from www.nzflag.com and can be returned to the NZflag.com campaign office by post.

Nearly 100 prominent New Zealanders across a range of disciplines including sport, the arts, education, religion and business are endorsing the campaign and pushing for a referendum on a new national flag.
Their names, photographs and endorsements appear on the www.nzflag.com website (http://www.nzflag.com/endorsements.cfm) and include Olympic gold medallist, Barbara Kendall; world champion squash player Dame Susan Devoy; musician, Neil Finn, and businessmen Stephen Tindall, Dick Hubbard and Chris Liddell.

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