27 July 2005

Flag petition to be withdrawn

The NZFlag.com Trust today announced that it is withdrawing its petition for a referendum on whether New Zealand should change its flag.

Lloyd Morrison, Chairman for the Trust, said that the decision had been a difficult one.

Mr Morrison said, "we know that there has been strong support for our campaign. Numerous polls showed variously 40-60% support for a change of New Zealand's flag over the last 18 months. However, assembling the distribution network of volunteers to enable collection of signatures proved to be a bigger challenge than expected. Telecom's withdrawal of its 'InTouch' newsletter, which had looked to have solved the distribution issue, finally made the campaign untenable. We simply failed to get petition forms in front of New Zealanders - apathy was the winner again."

Mr Morrison said that he was pleased at the level of debate that the campaign had generated. He said "the campaign has begun to get people considering issues of national identity. To this end we have achieved our goal of provoking debate and giving people the opportunity to have a say on the issue."

Mr Morrison said that the Trust would like to thank the hundreds of volunteers who had collected signatures, the high profile New Zealanders who showed leadership supporting the campaign and to the thousands of New Zealanders who had signed the petition."

Mr Morrison said that he believed that the issue would not go away and that one day New Zealanders would choose a flag that uniquely represented New Zealand for both its past and our hopes for its future.

ENDS

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