What do the colours of the New Zealand flag mean?

Blue: the sea and sky surrounding the country. Red: the stars of the Southern Cross. White: the borders that keep the red stars legible on blue.

How do you tell the New Zealand flag from the Australia one?

Australia has six stars — the five-star Southern Cross plus a large seven-pointed Commonwealth Star under the Union Jack — and all of them are white.

When was the New Zealand flag adopted?

The current design dates from 1902, and its official ratio is 1:2.

The flag of New Zealand

A blue field with the Union Jack in the canton and four red, white-bordered five-pointed stars in the fly forming the Southern Cross.

Ratio 1:2 · current design adopted 1902

New Zealand

Field and colours only. Not shown: the Union Jack canton and four red stars of the Southern Cross.

The four stars are the practical difference from Australia's flag: New Zealand leaves out Epsilon Crucis entirely and gives its stars five points each. A 2015-16 referendum on replacing the flag, costing around NZD 26 million, put a silver fern design against the existing flag; the existing flag won with 56.6 per cent. Because the two flags are so alike, Australian and New Zealand delegations have repeatedly been given the wrong one at international events, including at a 1984 Australian visit to Canada. The 1902 Act made official a design that had been the colony's ensign since 1869.

Flags it gets confused with

New Zealand

Field and colours only. Not shown: the Union Jack canton and four red stars of the Southern Cross.

Australia

Field and colours only. Not shown: the Union Jack canton, the Commonwealth Star, and the Southern Cross.

Drawn at each flag’s own official ratio, which is itself the difference in some of these pairs.

Flag	How to tell them apart
Australia	Australia has six stars — the five-star Southern Cross plus a large seven-pointed Commonwealth Star under the Union Jack — and all of them are white.

What the colours mean

Flag laws usually specify a Pantone chip, a CMYK mix or just a colour name. Converting any of those to sRGB is lossy, which is why published hex values disagree.

The symbols on it

What	What it stands for
Southern Cross	The constellation Crux; four stars, omitting the faint fifth

Ratio: 1:2
Current design adopted: 1902
Colours: blue, red, white

Common questions

What does the flag of New Zealand look like?: A blue field with the Union Jack in the canton and four red, white-bordered five-pointed stars in the fly forming the Southern Cross.
What do the colours of the New Zealand flag mean?: Blue: the sea and sky surrounding the country. Red: the stars of the Southern Cross. White: the borders that keep the red stars legible on blue.
How do you tell the New Zealand flag from the Australia one?: Australia has six stars — the five-star Southern Cross plus a large seven-pointed Commonwealth Star under the Union Jack — and all of them are white.
When was the New Zealand flag adopted?: The current design dates from 1902, and its official ratio is 1:2.

New Zealand Capital, area, population and currency
The flag of Australia Routinely mistaken for this one
Every flag with blue in it
The flag of United States Ratio 10:19
The flag of India Ratio 2:3
The flag of United Kingdom Ratio 1:2
The flag of France Ratio 2:3
The flag of Russia Ratio 2:3
The flag of Brazil Ratio 7:10
The flag of South Korea Ratio 2:3
The flag of Ukraine Ratio 2:3

Sources

Official vendor product documentation — At One Place

How these figures are compiled and checked