Flag Consideration Panel promoting “fiction” as “fact”

The following comments refer to the e-book New Zealand Flag Facts, produced in association with the Flag Consideration Panel, February 2016, pp. 4 and 22:

“Introduction to New Zealand Flag Facts”:

• Page 4: The need for a New Zealand flag did not arise in 1830 because New Zealand-built ships carrying cargo produced in New Zealand could trade with New South Wales without impediment.

• Page 4: Self-evidently, a non-British ship “could not sail under a British flag.” However, neither a British ensign nor a British register was required for New Zealand-built vessels then trading with New South Wales (NSW). Furthermore, New Zealand flax and timber, the cargo the Sir George Murray was carrying in 1830, had received duty-free access to NSW five years earlier.

• Page 4: Busby was not “charged to bring order to . . . Kororāreka” because he had “no legal power or jurisdiction”, local constabulary or regular naval support to do so. Rather, he was instructed to rely on his obtaining “influence . . . over the native chiefs” in order to gain their support.

• Page 4: Busby did not met “soon after” he “arrived . . . with a collective of twenty-five northern Māori rangatira about the need for a New Zealand flag.” To the contrary, he made no mention of a flag in his address to the hui held twelve days after his arrival in the Bay of Islands. The election of a flag by the “twenty-five” rangatira occurred ten months later.

• Page 4: New Zealand produce in New Zealand-built ships was not liable to confiscation in New South Wales in 1830. Nor were Māori “plying the Tasman” in their own ships then. Māori investment in shipping began in the early 1840s and became substantive in the 1850s.

• Page 4: Busby did not write “to the colonial authorities in New South Wales, stating that a New Zealand flag would . . . solve the shipping dilemma”, because, as he would or should have known, no such “dilemma” existed. Busby’s suggestion of a flag was effectively a ruse to unite rangatira for political purposes in line with his instructions, and not for purposes of facilitating trade.

“NZ Flag Fact Number 11”:

• Page 22: The Sir George Murray was not “impounded” for “having no flag or register” in breach “of a legal requirement for any trading or merchant ship”. It required neither flag nor register to trade with NSW.

• Page 22: The Sir George Murray was not “owned by Ngā Puhi rangatira Patuone and Te Taonui”. It was purchased by Thomas McDonnell from the trustees of Thomas Raine’s estate.

• Page 22: McDonnell was not reported as flying a flag from the Sir George Murray “In March 1831”. The flag referred to was reported as being flown for “the first time” on 22 August 1831, 16 days after the Sir George Murray arrived at Sydney on its return voyage.

• Page 22: There were “no problems associated with non-registered and non-flag-flying New Zealand-built ships.”

The erroneous nature of the Flag Consideration Panel’s claims concerning the “the need for a New Zealand flag” is examined by John Bevan-Smith in “Corralling Consent”, available on the Scoop website at: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1603/S00009/corralling-consent.htm

About John Bevan-Smith:

John Bevan-Smith holds a PhD and First Class Honours degree from the University of Auckland. He worked for the Waitangi Tribunal on Stage 1 of the Te Paparahi o Te Raki Inquiry. Email: j.bevansmith@orcon.net.nz

ENDS

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