Anyone interested? A meeting in Christchurch about whether to change the New Zealand flag was attended by 14 people.

Ex-serviceman Denis Hampton first saluted under the New Zealand flag at age 19.

He still feels as strongly about the national symbol more than 50 years later.

The 74-year-old was one of 14 people to attend a meeting on whether the flag should be changed.

A meeting held earlier this month attracted just five people.

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It took Hampton two bus changes and a half hour walk from Westfield Riccarton shopping centre to get to the meeting at Addington Raceway on Wednesday evening.

He waved his New Zealand flag the whole way, as he does regularly from intersections around the city.

From 1960 to 1985, he "saluted daily to the flag" serving with the Air Force. He does not want it changed.

The Government will hold to postal referendums on whether to change the national flag. The first decides what design to put up against the existing flag. The second to see if the public wants to oust the flag with the selected design.

The estimated cost of public consultation is $6.7 million.

The Flag Consideration Panel, led by Professor John Burrows, heads the consultation process.

There was a "lot of confusion" around the process, Burrows said.

School programmes, public meetings and websites were used to inform the process, he said.

"A flag represents a country and what it stand for... a flag tells the world about us," he told participants on Wednesday.

The two youngest participants, Jamie Nokdajun-Knox,10, and Julia Nokdajun-Knox, 8, wanted the existing flag to stay.

"Because it shows respects to the Anzacs who died under that flag. If we start a new one, we are not respecting that flag," Julia Nokdajun-Knox said.