Sir Bob Jones
nopunchespulled.com
I’m an avid newsreader but I guess it must be the ravages of age for somehow I missed the referendum or Act of Parliament or whatever which formally changed our country’s name.
I say that as Wellington’s dying Dominion Post and increasingly in the Herald, plus politicians, sports administrators et el, this year all now only refer to the name of our country as Aotearoa. No-one told me about this change.
New Zealand is of course a ridiculous name, as I’ve written in the past. Aotearoa sounds much better but is also absurd. Who wants to come from a country called the “Land of the Long White Cloud”?
Given there was no pre-European sense of nation by maoridom, and that they constitute 15% of our population, any change should reflect the reality, specifically that we’re an English-speaking country. But most important of all in a democracy, a name-change should be the choice of the people by referendum. And while I’m on this subject, why in God’s name have we allowed our country’s representative colour be black?
