THE country’s prime minister, recently re-elected to a third term, is a cast-iron monarchist. Even so, John Key is bent on coming up with a new flag for New Zealand, one in which Britain’s Union Jack will no longer feature. Instead, he says, the flag will “scream New Zealandness”.

The current flag, Mr Key told students at the University of Victoria in Wellington a few months ago, “remains dominated by the Union Jack in a way that we ourselves are no longer dominated by the United Kingdom”. To The Economist Mr Key explained that changing the flag is “about our place in the world and how we see ourselves…confident, outward-looking, multicultural.”

Other New Zealanders seem to care more about the fact that their flag looks uncomfortably close to Australia’s—both share the Union Jack and the constellation of the Southern Cross. Either way, on October 29th Mr Key announced that the country will get to vote in two related referendums on a new flag. The whole process will be over by early 2016. A panel of “respected New Zealanders” is to survey potential new designs.

Besides the prominence of the Union Jack, many criticise their flag for making no nod to indigenous Maoris. It was not always so: New Zealand’s first flag, in 1834, was chosen by an assembly of Maori chiefs. Other flags competed with it, and the current flag was adopted in 1902 after arguments over which one should go with New Zealand troops into the Boer war. Since then, many have died for that flag, one reason plenty of New Zealanders will be against a new one.

Those keen for a new flag will in the months ahead emphasise values that New Zealanders have a right to be smug about: being the first country to give women the vote, championing human rights, supporting the UN and multilateralism, paying reparations to Maoris for past wrongs and being open to Asian immigration.

Yet self-confidence has not yet led to an unstoppable groundswell of support for a change. Many see Mr Key’s initiative as a diversion from more pressing tasks. He himself says that “in the context of the economy, health, law and order and the environment, it’s not the big issue.”

And then comes the question of what the new flag should look like. Mr Key favours the quasi-national emblem, the silver fern, on a black background. But that risks looking variously like a logo for the All Blacks national rugby team, an advertisement for marijuana or even the battle-standard for the antipodean branch of Islamic State.