Petition To Change Flag
In January 2005, the Trust launched a petition to bring about a citizens' initiated referendum on the issue. Had it been successful, a referendum would have been held at the 2005 general election. However, the Trust failed to attract enough signatures, and six months after its launch, the petition had been signed by 100,000 people (the signatures of 270,000 - 10 per cent of eligible voters - are required). After Telecom New Zealand and New Zealand Post reneged on an offer to distribute the petition nationwide, the Trust withdrew the petition.
Lloyd Morrison attributed the failure to apathy from the general public, while supporters of New Zealand's current flag attributed the petition's failure to the popularity of that flag.
Read more about this topic: NZ Flag.com Trust
Famous quotes containing the words petition, change and/or flag:
“Maybe we were the blind mechanics of disaster, but you don’t pin the guilt on the scientists that easily. You might as well pin it on M motherhood.... Every man who ever worked on this thing told you what would happen. The scientists signed petition after petition, but nobody listened. There was a choice. It was build the bombs and use them, or risk that the United States and the Soviet Union and the rest of us would find some way to go on living.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)
“In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile—movable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“—Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole. . .
And now what? Why, go back.
Turn as I please, my step is to the south.”
—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)